Everything Wrong With Mass Effect: Andromeda

So I'm assuming it's based on how many foot steps you take?

Sorry...I jest!

They're a bunch more issues I had, these were just the biggest ones.  The main issue is that when you play a game from the OT or a DA game, you get the feeling that there was a universe before the current story, and that this story is just one this universe has to offer.  In ME:A it's like they came up with a story first and then made the entire universe match this one particular story, so the universe just never felt fleshed out in any way.  So who cares if Ryder's entire purpose in the game is not really being a Pathfinder, first boots on the ground, making first contacts, actual wild frontier stuff, but having his/her sole purpose in the game be fighting Kett and activating vaults.  Neither of which anyone knew about before they arrived.  I just never got into it.  Without these things what would have been left, all of the actual Pathfinder stuff had been done by the time you woke up.    

Yeah, those are presumably an extreme abstraction of our Pathfinder's mental and emotional growth. It's a cool fetch-quest skinned in a creative way, ultimately. The hunt was easy, and the payoff good, so I liked it.

"The Beginners Guide to Picking Nits in the Adromeda Galaxy"

It would have made more sense if the trigger locations were related to actually doing stuff. Most of the triggers seem to be at scenic views instead. That would have turned Ryder Family Secrets into a completionism check, though, and I guess they didn't want any more of those.

Thinking back to what you said about how the metroidvania style might not suit ME all that well, here's another idea, Dark Souls 1 and even Fallout New Vegas did this. You get large open worlds, but they are smaller compared to the ones in ME:A and have much less fetch quests, you also "lead" a character down a certain path, and by this I mean that every other way other than going to say a certain part of the map would mean, for a while at least until you've sufficiently leveled up, almost certain death, or a really tough time. Take New Vegas for instance: You start off in Goodsprings, if you just go North, you'll run into Deathclaws that would immediately whoop your ass, but you go south, you won't die as easily. Or in Dark Souls, sure you can go right to Blighttown, provided you started with the Master key, but really, if you go anywhere other than to the Undead Burg, you'll get your ass whooped. (Fuck those skeletons and necromancers man)

If any story was set up for open world it was this one, it's about exploring.  But the way they set it up you didn't really explore you just drove from marker to marker calling down dropships and then going to three vaults and ultimately the spot they already had marked for you make the colony. 

Why not let you explore looking for a good place to make settle, testing the water in certain areas, cataloging the wildlife.  Going into caves, and subterranean caverns, with different surrounding than the surface, perhaps glimpses of what the planets used to look like because these pockets were protected from the scourge.  Then once you start a colony have the side quests tie directly to expanding your colony, adding science labs, adding hydroponics bays, etc.  People would have been way more into doing them because they would have wanted to see if and how they affected their colonies.  Then they could have tied in what type of pods you opened into this as well.

I all honesty, I wouldn't even have done the vaults at all.  I would have just given each viable world its own story and challenge.  Some non-humanoid race inhabiting a planet, killed the colonists in your first attempt to colonize it.  You find out what they are, why they're so protective of the world.  Do you exterminate as a conqueror or let them be and move on.

You find Angarans on a planet, a real first contact.  Earn their trust finally get taken to their main city.  

This way it isn't just going to a planet calling down the forward bases, activating three vaults, go to the marked spot, start a colony.  Rinse and repeat.  Then you could have picked the best option, started on colony, and had that colony expand over the rest of the game while you as pathfinder explored the surrounding systems to see if there were any threats to your colony, other races, resources, etc.

Another thing that never made sense to me was, you have twenty thousand humans, why are you starting multiple colonies and spreading them out the several systems with limited resources and no way to defend them.  The entire setup of the Initiative, the initial mission, the current mission made absolutely no sense whatsoever.  

But if you had to have the vaults, just have Ryder discover a vault on the world, and ultimately figure out that these vaults were used to create entire worlds.  Maybe even have a world were the vault malfunctioned, something like Habitat 7, so you could see what the worlds would have been like if the vault wasn't able to finish the job.  Then you could have still ultimately still found out about the Angarans and the unknown race that created parts of the cluster.

 

And what exactly was there to pay attention too or are you just talking out your ass? I'm betting the latter.

Ironic, right?

As for the contamination, If it had been that bad then Ryder would have been screwed from the onset of the game when his/her mask cracked. This is the far future where they can travel FTL but can't have a suit that can properly filter a contaminate once inside the the suit...

Either way it's just a game and something minor to contemplate.

Ha! We got ourselves a lucky one. I can't remember why the heck exactly did I say that.

Don't flatter yourself. I tend to automatically forget stupid things in order to keep my faith in humanity up.

Good video. Looking forward to part 2.

"I'm convinced that the Andromeda Initiative was created to banish stupid people from the Milky Way"

Damn, that would be a great plot twist for a sequel. It makes total sense. Imagine, the Benefactor is actually a good guy that wanted to ban the most stupid people from the Milky Way so they wouldn't screw up against the Reapers.
It would be a much better plot than Andromeda.

*Fans nitpick over every little thing, then wonder why the developers didn't think the game was worth continuing.*