Was the trial a mistake?

But it's his opinion.

Fine - than here’s an objective truth - you have an extremely unpopular opinion when it comes to this game. Both when compared against critical, casual (and corporate) viewpoints.

But that’s okay. Some people liked Superman 64 too.

When Mass Effect: Whatever BioWare Calls It is released Mass Effect: Andromeda will be considered the best Mass Effect game ever made.  I have seen that trend in any BioWare game, the current version is the worst, but the one just before it is a masterpiece.

So are we back to ignoring the idea that MEA had a lot of problems with it that goes beyond a demo and animations?

Yes, the demo did give a head start for a lot of MEA hate, but even without the demo, gamers would have eventually discovered the shortcomings at launch.

I dont speak for everyone but my take on your points are this:

1) I never felt MEA had to be perfect. In fact, I was never angry about the ME3 ending as I found the "Control" ending for me to be a good ending for MEA and thus in my canon run, Control is the ending. In the old BSN I was never bashing the ME3ending. I just wish the endings better represented our Trilogy choices but I was satisfied.

2) I was actually excited to goto Andromeda. Going there felt like I would be able to play Intestellar the videogame so to speak. I was looking forward to going to worlds to be the first MW species to step foot on. I looked forward to doing renegade playthroughs where I can ravish a native species in order to advance the goals of the MW races. I was also looking forward to a MEA trilogy that could top the MET.

3) I actually liked the premise of MEA going in and wasnt forcing myself to like something that I know I wont like.


After all that, I played MEA and decided that ultimately it wasnt what I was expecting. A LOT of gamers had the experience that I had. My dislike for MEA didnt come cause of memes or gifs (cause I was hiding in the non spoiler thread) but through organic experiences.

Why is this so hard for some here to accept? Was MEA hurt by the memes and gifs? To some extent yes. But is the THE ONLY reason why MEA failed to take off? No.

Again, look at GamerMD's response to MEA as proof that there were many longtime Bioware/Mass Effect fans that were excited for MEA but for many (non animation/demo) reasons, just couldnt get into MEA and thus dropped it.

Oh that's funny. But hey at least we played the game and can give a fully formed opinion.

More so than her summing up your own feelings, she is an example that combats the idea that the only people who disliked MEA were people who from the very beginning were out to get MEA for whatever reasons.

People here ignores the fact that many more people such as yourself wanted MEA to succeed but the game just failed to grasp you, GamerMD, myself and MANY others the same way MET did.

Why is that so hard to accept? Why are we still looking for other scapegoats to blame for MEA's performance? Yes, the demo and the memes/gifs had a role, the clickbait youtubers had a role, AND the overall quality/ execution of MEA had a role.

I like Gamer MD but she's one person, there are plenty of people who enjoy ME:A.

Referencing GamerMD was not to show that everyone disliked MEA cause there are those who like it and those who dont.

I referenced her to intefer with the theory that everyone who disliked MEA were a vocal minority and had an agends from the onset to take MEA down cause of SJWs....ME3 ending....and dislike for going to Andromenda. GamerMD is a reference to show that there were STRONG Bioware supporters and ME fans who was looking forward to MEA but due to NON MEME/GIF/DEMO/ANIMATION reasons, did not enjoy MEA. But of course that will be ignored because some still want to use animations and demos as a scapegoat for people not liking MEA.

Yeah, it always felt my defense of the game has come implied baggage for some posters that "this game is without flaws" and that's not true.

I recognize some of characters are "under-cooked".  In ME:A, Drack is my favorite story arc because it is the most complete - he has a solid introduction, he has a logical motivation for joining the team, his support and disagreements for differing actions of the Pathfinder are consistent, and it had a satisfying conclusion if you engaged and completed his companion missions.  The other team members?  Not so much, in varying degrees.  I liked Peebee because she wasn't Liara or Samara but she also wasn't the "anti-Asari Asasri" like Sera from DA:I was an "Anti-Elf Elf".  She was different but her character was too much "I tell you" as opposed to "I show you"...instead of saying "I'm a wild-card, a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants unknown quantity" I wanted them to show that through her actions and let the nuance speak for itself.  Ans, for F sake, her writer seriously needed to edit out the human idioms ("Water under the bridge", "Lickity-split", etc).  Same with Cora.  I wanted her resolve to deepen and her inner-strength to be more evident after her companion mission but, apart from her "Eos garden", it was not really developed more fully.  I wanted more opportunity to show off her resourcefulness so I could appreciate badass-ness.  I wanted Jaal to be more fierce, Gil to more like the character who said "heard you were screaming when you fell on Habitat 7", Suvi or Kallo to join in the action at some point like Joker from ME2, for Liam to do "something" remarkable at all and Lexi to be romanceable, dammit.

Yet, despite all of these recognizable flaws, to me, I liked the crew, I like a good portion of the dialogue, I liked the Nomad banter, and I wanted more of them because they had same potential as info dumps like Garrus and Tali were in ME1.

Then the shitstorm would have raged earlier, damaging the product even more. The whole concept was flawed. They obviously relied on their ghost testers that this was a game deserving of a ranking in the 80ies, or someone at EA though, this would be a good move to promote Origin Access. And yet they were wrong on so many levels. From a professional standpoint this was PR suicide. They made a big secret over the game, not allowing professionals to lay their hands on early review copies, but opened it up to the general public in all it's unpatched glory. The results were as respected.

If the time between an early trial and release had been used to address problems seen in the game it's a shitstorm that could've been handled, particularly if another trial was released after fixing prior to the release. The key would be addressing bugs found by the player base.