Everything Wrong With Mass Effect: Andromeda

I think its less traditions, and more poorly thought out call backs

the Nomad springs immediately to mind

Fans didn't call for any of that though which is what was implied in your initial post, from what I seen it the opposite was the case. After playing as Shep for 3 games there was an appetite for change as a PC, I thought we'd finally get our shot to play as an alien character. Along with anything other than a "saving the galaxy" story, not to be on either count of course.

ME:A though failed as a game first, too many of the basics were either done incorrectly or simply not well enough. As has been discussed for quite a bit, even the tone isn't quite right. Warts and all I can still play and get excited by the tone the original ME instills, even though I've played it dozens of times and know exactly what happens & what to do. Even something as simple as going through the galaxy map in ME feels that much more adventurous & exciting than a lot of what ME:A tried to do.

The next ME game will have to reel in the obsession of scale, at least on the planetary sense. Get a setting, story and a small group of main/squad characters nailed down first, then build up from there. Story and characters need to come first, not how many planets or how big they might be. Small & lively is always better than big and lifeless.

First things first, you brought TW3 up, not I. So now we've cleared that up and brought the ME:A lamb to the slaughter, TW3 is crafted in such a way in that it feels as organic and alive as it can be for a video game. The open country for most of the maps fit because it's.....well open country. You can move between main quest points and run into a bunch of other things you can choose to either take on and go on a side track, or push on to where you wanted to go. It makes quite clear what's just a quick distraction, side quest, main quest or challenge, which is very good because there is a lot out there! In contrast ME:A on the whole is so empty, you just click and go to any blip thingy on your map since so little is on there.

ME:A has the look and feel for the most part of rush rush rush, with quickly thought up time fillers for your side work. Planets are "supposed to be harsh environments"? Firstly, no one said they all had to be Earth clones, they certainly had to be varying, different and alien, on nearly all counts they failed there. We've had 2 barren deserts in DAI, could have something different for a change, but no no we had to get 2 more because that makes people think of the original Star Wars movie, and that was a popular film once so that'll make our game a banker doing that again. That's why I enjoyed the ravaged moon as an environment, much different look and different dynamics introduced by the low gravity. It was particularly lacking in the stuff to do department for sure, but in terms of being a planet, that was my personal highlight from the game as it was something we'd been crying out for after ME1 came out. Second, that's not what our space magic Geth telescopes said we were getting, nor was it the in-game reason for the Initiative for going. If they were all barren busts, they wouldn't have bothered in the first place.

If the story was crafted for the PC to be actually first to these planets and the first to be doing this stuff, then that could have added an extra dynamic to the gameplay and story. Maybe even throw the player off a bit by handing them a fairly lush planet as the starter world to lull them into thinking this pathfinding stuff is quite easy. Then the next planet, boom dad and other people died, and on top of that the planet needs some serious work that Initiative can't afford to do at this stage to make it sustain life for any period.

I don't disagree that there is "lots" to do, in much the same way food from McDonalds fills you up for a while like any other meal, but that doesn't make it good. Unfortunately a lot of it outside the main quest-lines are pretty meaningless and on the whole aren't even re-visited again or played out later in the game. (A couple excepted in a very rudimentary manner, and for a game of this category that's atrocious.)

Either no lessons were learned from DAI, or what I think is more likely, they burned so much time with the bust procedure world mechanic, all they could do was take stuff DAI did & slapped that into ME:A, and then also tried to replicate things in ME1. (Which they did pretty poorly at I might add.)

So I still stand by my points, the main one being ME:A failed as just a game first and then as a Mass Effect game. It could have been great with more solid direction and management, but of course that didn't happen.

Well, we've cleared up at least that the densities of quests on the maps is not so different between the two games... which is the point I was making in response to your comment about empty expansive environments.  I made no comment on relative quality of those quests, which is a different debate altogether.  I did say that ME:A has an issue with how they portray NPC movements during conversations (this is a criticism of ME:A made by me, BTW).  TW3 did that particular thing much better than ME:A.

Here's another comparison:  A map from an ME1 planet, a map from the ME1 BDtS DLC and the same interactive map of Voeld from ME:A.  People hold ME1 up as the gold standard for exploration in the MET series... yet, which map is it that has the highest density of things to discover?

masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/File:Sharjila_PMap.png

masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Asteroid_X57?file=Asteroid_X57.jpg

game-maps.com/MEA/Voeld-Planet-Mass-Effect-Andromeda.asp

@anarchy - How is it that you think I'm being dishonest in these posts?  I'm merely posting links to the publicly available maps to these games so that people can make a direct comparison between the two.  I didn't either draw or alter the maps.

ETA:  Also, I'm not sure I see a material difference between 1) MEA - See shuttle drop kett in some rubble or see remnant flying about amid some remnant pillars, go and kill said kett or remnant, loot and sometimes find a data pad or other device that connects it to another site as part of a little side story... and 2) TW3 - be attacked by random bandits while riding by a building or battlefield, kill said bandits, loot and sometimes find a letter or note that connects it to another site as part of a little side story.

Both seem to me to be about the same level of "McDonald's style" map filler.

I agree that ME:A would have been much better off had they not attempted an open-world.  The open-world is one thing I really hate in a story-driven game.  It is THE major reason I I found I simply could not "stay with" the story in TW3,  However, I would also say that the actual numerical ratio of "fetch" quests to "longer side quests" is really not all that different to TW3 either.  TW3 did do a better job is "disquising" their fetch quests, but many of them actually break down into a "get this for me, Geralt" fetch assignment or simple hunts for various pieces of equipment/loot.  There is also a need to gather items for crafting - in the case of TW3 it's plants and flowers and wolf drops and in the case of the ME:A it's minerals and "bug guts."  Both also have an ability to purchase those items as well.

Andromeda was definitely in sore need of some narrative rails. *Especially* when it comes to Kadara and Elaaden. If everyone KNOWS that Kadara is an issue, and there was some stupid narrative block preventing us from "discovering" it in the first place... that's a bad gap. The enemies all scale, so... wtf? I can wander hither thither and yon, but go to where I KNOW the Krogans are? Nope. Where the Exiles led by Sloane Kelly are held up? Nope. Gotta find those Memory Triggers first. It made no sense, and the narrative wasn't tight enough to feel like keeping those planets out of initial grasp was really necessary.

I'm fine with Dragon Age stretching tentative fingers into open worldness, it seems to fit better - but Mass Effect needs to be tighter.

As Alan implied, it has nothing to do with finding memory triggers.  The ability to go to Kadara and Eladaan opens up immediately after returning the Moshae to Aya and accompanying her into that vault to discover that he holds the key to Meridian and that Vehn Terev, who betrayed the Moshae to the Archon is the one who likely knows where to locate the Archon's ship.  The main story is about finding Meridian... the key to turning on all the vaults at once (much more efficient than turning them on one at a time)... and it's actually pretty tight.  It's certainly easy to tell what quests are part of the main story line... they are clearly labeled as Priority Ops in the journal.  Settling AI infighting - with both the exiles and the Krogan is just a very lengthy and elaborate series of connected side quests.  You do not need to find a single memory trigger to complete the main story.

Some of that "sightseeing" feeling can be circumvented by the player though... simply by sticking to the Priority Ops and not doing the majority of the side quests until after finding Meridian.  There are a few that cannot be postponed and done after the epilogue, but not very many.

I'm also somewhat bewildered as to how people seem to want them setting an atmosphere of starving Nexus peoples while complaining that the planets are not lush and life-filled enough to suit their tastes.  There are also things in the game that clearly indicate that resources are in short supply.  For example, on Kadara where exiles are eating other exiles.  You can pick up data pads that show supply lists that really don't have much on them.  You can see a "soup kitchen" set up by Dr. Nakimoto on Kadara.  There is a side quest on Aya that is all about securing a plant food source for the Nexus... and then using an Angaran method of making a nutrient paste to make each fruit feed far more people. 

More perhaps could have been done... but I wonder how many players are really just ignoring what indications are present anyways... perhaps they should have seriously limited Ryder's access to weapons, armor and ammo.

I think the cringing is more from the fact people couldn't walk out of the trilogy perfectly intact without consequences.

The most passionate haters of the game from top to bottom want this badly and have presented slews of bad ideas they think are good to make it so. Merely showing what the community is bringing to the table. All the endings for ME:3 for this crowd were too complex and had some negative consequence to save the galaxy in them, which makes this crowd very upset.

*does a shot*



*does a shot*



*chugs the bottle*



*slips into an alcohol-induced coma*