Everything that was wrong with Andromeda. A video that sums it up well.

“Asari Vorcha offspring have an allergy to dairy....”
😁

I would add geth to that list. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, as I cannot honestly say that the game has quarians&friends in similar sense as the game has krogans, salarians, etc. People who were disappointed that their favorite races were not added have a legitimate reason to be so. Tbh, ME games are not text-based choose your own adventure RPGs. For a storytelling purpose one passing mention and couple lines of dialog are hardly sufficient (I suppose it could’ve been worse, like a canned text message or codex entry. So, I have to give some credit for that one scene). There must be some build-up and presence for narratives, word building, emotions, mood to have any impact. If you never encounter them in the game itself, nor ever have any kind of interaction with them, they are no a part of story in any meaningful sense. In RPGs like ME, primary means of relaying these mentioned components are visual, cinematic, and most importantly interactive (their presence should at least be seen and heard at some frequency, even witnessed, preferably you should have some chance to interact with them i.e. do some quests or talk to them). If their purpose was to convey this Arks for all the major races of MW-narrative, it didn’t really come off from the product we had. Also, it doesn’t negate why krogans aren’t in the same list with batarians, vorcha, geth and yaghs. All info pre ME3 would put their presence as dangerous, costly, and counterproductive for the success of overall mission, like the rest non-council races.

Take the same team as made MEA. Have them spend 3-1/2 years creating "procedurally-generated" worlds. Have them scrap that and start over from scratch. Let's read one of the complaints from a user on Metacritic: "Andromeda is the way to kill a good franchise. Everything that was enjoyable from the ME trilogy was destroyed in this sequel. The graphics are not much better but the animation, models and overall aesthetic design are notably worse. The story is not particularly bad but the forced SJW PC culture characters make it feel less realistic and more like a "we want to be politically correct" manifesto. The gameplay is where they really destroyed the game. You don't control teammates, the battles are basically a cover whack-a-mole from easy to hard and the only difference is how many hits the enemies take and how many there are, this makes fights more tedious but not more difficult as you go from easy to hard. There's some stupid additions like platforming segments with unresponsive big clunky 3D characters are just dreadful, the sudoku puzzle mechanic is not terrible but very unoriginal and the vehicle driving through the open world wastelands with nothing of interest in miles and miles are the guidelines on how NOT to make open world games. Instead of embracing what makes Mass Effect good this sequel tried to add more elements with poor taste leaving behind the gameplay elements that made ME an enjoyable game."

Now, what do we have? Graphics, "SJW", gameplay (battle is "cover whack-a-mole), fights are tedious, sudoku puzzles a repetitive element, boring environments (um, ME1 worlds were near-barren, but whatever). Remember, the SAME team would be writing MW-based game as wrote MEA. Why would you possibly think the location of the game would have any bearing on the quality of the game? The issue is you don't like the team who created the game. It doesn't matter what they create.

Funny, though, that the critics themselves didn't hate the game. They were equally positive and mixed with only a single negative review. It's the fans who complained they weren't getting what they wanted. They often latched only hype and ran with it. I mean, a guy who reviewed in November 2017 said the bugs at release were unacceptable, even though by then they had no more bugs than your average MET game. (Ever play ME1 on an AMD computer? Go to Peak 15 on Noveria. Go to Ilos. That was NEVER fixed. In ME2, ever do a biotic charge and find yourself stuck on top of a crate, in a wall or just in mid-air? Also happens from just running at times. Never fixed. In ME3, if you stand in the wrong place in the cockpit of the Normandy when talking to EDI, you get stuck. One of the ladders in Leviathan can't be climbed down unless you do some weird trick up looking upward as you walk to the ladder - which is damn awkward. Never fixed these bugs. I'm sure there more but people seriously have rose-tinted glasses when it comes to the MET. And let's not even touch the endings. I doubt that got any less criticisms than MEA.)

Maybe you want to complain about storyline. ME1 had the best underlying story of the entire MET but lacked in certain other areas (info-dumps for characters were kind of annoying). ME2 was like some weird side-trip away from the actual theme of the trilogy. The Arrival DLC actually made a better bridge between ME1 and ME3. I've even read from someone who thinks ME2 is the best say ME3 is "ME1, part 2". It's not hard to notice ME2 did not fit the theme. ME3 got a 5.7 user rating on Metacritic while MEA got a 4.9. Not that huge of a difference.

I am not an apologist for MEA. I don't feel like I got a complete game, some of the characters weren't well fleshed out (no different than ME1, tbh), we saw NPCs that were almost one-dimensional, no DLC, lingering plots being completed in novels. Ryder not being Shepard? Not a problem but people like to complain about it anyway. A young, inexperienced PC who was thrust into a role he/she wasn't prepared for, not to mention situations being entirely unexpected (no Golden Worlds). Go join the military at 18. During the next four years, act as nothing more than a glorified door guard. Now get sent to a paradise with some powerful and charismatic leaders. When you get there, learn it's actually a wasteland, all your leaders were killed and an accountant is in charge. Remember, you have just about no experience but it's your job to help everyone survive. Are you actually up to the task? About 99% of people aren't. Ryder somehow managed. S/he is not a veteran soldier and so can't be written as one. Biggest complaint here is lack of Renegade-style options. For me, Ryder was just fine personality-wise but I understand how people might want one who's a little rougher - though at 22 that still won't make up for lack of experience.

Yes, I think you are right. Like said, it was just speculation and thinking. I cannot give any realistic prognostication for the future of the ME, but what you say feels plausible.

Isn't it the guard's duty to keep the item or whatever they're guarding safe and secure? In MEA, someone is able to sneak on the tempest to take the robot. When that same robot is recovered, its not scanned to see if it has a tracer put on it or scanned for anything else. The asari squadmate decides its ok to use the escape pod that endangers the pathfinder and other squadmate and jeopardizes the safety of the tempest crew. You have the Kosta squadmate who thinks its ok to give vital information to unknown individual/s. Then you have little Ryder, who is informed by Suvi that Archie has seen Ryder's memories, and knows everything little Ryder knows, fails to inform anyone that the kett might show up at Aya or the Nexus. But little Ryder summed it up perfectly, after Eos on the tempest, by saying, I don't care. Lets talk about what a kicka** team we have. Overall little Ryder failed miserably. I would guess she/he wasn't a very good guard. For someone who's been in the military for 3-4 years, and the child of a former N7, little Ryder shows none of that.
As true as that is, little Ryder should be able to stand up for themselves. Experience has nothing to do with that. Why can't Ryder respond to the asari knocking her/him to the ground? The same with what happened with the escape pod? How about getting in the face of the one's that tell him/her off? I'm not asking for Ryder to shoot or punch everyone, but I like to see Ryder be able to show they have some backbone. For me, I wouldn't tolerate a lot of the stuff in the game. The asari would never have been recruited. I would have left her on the planet for what she did with the escape pod. After dealing with the Kosta mess, I would have turned around and shot him dead where he stood. For my Ryder, he/she would turn both over to Nexus security for them to explain why they did what they did.

This seems like a language issue. I don't mean you dislike the team on a personal level. I mean you don't like what they created. My point was that if you didn't like a game set in Andromeda by this team, changing the setting won't make them produce something better.

Ok, it’s cool. I just simply cannot stomach, when people try to mindread or gaslight me. You get an enemy for life, if you do that. Good that it wasn’t your intention, but just a misunderstanding between us.

I have twofold disagreements with that. Firstly, I cannot make an accurate assessment or judge MEA developers’ (or writers’) competency or all the potentialities of what they could have been. The way I see it, BioWare is a black box, unless you are in a position where you are involved in their inner-workings of the company at a high level. I have never met any of the team, I don’t even know who they are, I have never been in a single company meeting, seen a budget, or internal memo, observed them working over extended period of time, talked with them over the watercooler, actually seen how individual performances of specific devs play out, and so on. That sort of information is not simply available to me, because companies are not transparent to public. Breadcrumbs of information that sometimes fall of the system are always colored and selected by motivations of why they are released (almost always PR reasons, sometimes leaks, but how accurate leak is more about why it was leaked, which is hard to know), and I can never confirm whatever I have enough or even adequate number of breadcrumbs to actually make any solid or good judgment.

The good thing about that is, that I don’t even have to judge their competency, because in the end I don’t really care about BioWare (not singling them out or anything, I just don’t care about any company that I don’t have any personal connection to). What I care about is the output of what they make, a final product that is the games they release. That’s what I am criticizing and that’s what I like to talk about. When talk about different possibilities, I talk in a very general sense, not like is this scenario X that I am proposing achievable to the team that made MEA. I don't know their actual capabilities, nor I think anyone here can actually make that assessment. They might be most incompetent shitheels in the business, or maybe they are one of the bests, but the product was entirely result of external conditions they were given. Cannot know, don’t know, so no reason to speculate or talk about them. There's no basis in saying that Andromeda is the best product they could've achieved, as it is the only product, data point and point of reference we have.

Secondly, ofc setting alone doesn’t determinate whether a game will be good or not. I think, I’ve established that. Saying that a setting doesn’t make any difference is nonsense. If you set your game in one room, or multiple fantastical locations across the rich sci-fi galaxy, it will produce two drastically different games in the end ceteris paribus. There’s couple reasons why the Milky Way probably would’ve been better or more satisfying. The MW galaxy has been built by three previous games, there’s plethora of pre-made materials, ideas, races you can utilize and refine. These are tested, and at least I find them to be interesting a priori. When they decided to go for Andromeda, there wasn’t anything ready that could be capitalized, all had to build from the scratch. In the end there was almost nothing interesting about the whole galaxy (there was some stuff, but it totally dwarfs compared to the richness of MW). This could’ve been entirely avoided or mitigated by staying in the MW.

More importantly, going to Andromeda forced game to be heavily themed and styled as an exploration story, but the game dismissed or didn’t take themes, tropes, and possibilities of exploration very seriously. These were treated more like annoying obstacles or low-effort fetch quest quagmires, which were just in the way of the real meat of the game, which was MET style epic space opera. When I think about the exploration as a genre or its themes, it’s stuff like polar expeditions, the Age of Discovery, the space race, hard sci-fi novels and movies what come to mind, and that's the style and challenges I except to have. Like as an example, for an exploration a final goal and climax of a story is more like discovering a new continent, establishing livable colony, climbing at top of the impossible mountain, that first step on the moon. If a story is focused that you travel to the moon, to fight dastardly villain who wants to blow it up, it’s not exactly an exploration story, but something else.

In MEA establishing intergalactic colonies was almost trivial, and ofc there just had to be terraforming magic. The actual challenge and climax of the game was defeating villainous villain, who wanted to enslave or destroy (or whatever his end goal was) the galaxy. That’s an arch / goal for epic space opera, but that doesn’t really mix well with an exploration. In exploration it’s not that you shoot or talk you way through hordes of bipedal humanoids, but it’s more about enduring elements, surviving harsh conditions where most basic functions can laborious and dangerous, and you overcome these by ingenuity, resilience, and courage. Everytime conditions or challenges were presented, MEA just hand waived them away with super advanced technology.

Like as example, as an angle for exploration it would be interesting trying to solve or deal with the fact, that all information you have about your destination (Andromeda) is always 2,5 million years old. So, it’s a challenge for ingenuity, that how you can plan anything with any precision. So, instead of trying to work something interesting, clever or involving player agency, they’ll just evoke Reaper tech geth super telescope. Not only it’s hacky, breaking established lore, but the most damaging aspect is, that it completely refuses even trying to deal with an element, which could be an interesting challenge for the exploration themed story they tried to tell. Ofc, space exploration typically almost inevitably goes to hard sci-fi territory, which doesn’t exactly rhyme with space opera. They don’t cancel each other out, but typically they do not mix well, because one is in a way of other and other dilutes what makes other interesting.

MEA tries to do two genres, which don’t reinforce other’s strengths (they don’t exactly cancel each other out, but certainly they don’t complement each other), and in the end it does neither very well. Yes, I’ve heard about procedurally generated worlds, which could have made exploration really fascinating. But intentions and could’ve beens don’t mean much, if they are not in the game we got. Only reason, why whole exploration was necessary, because they had decided to set the game in the Andromeda galaxy. In the MW, you could’ve tried to exploration of some sort, but if it didn’t play out or they didn't feel like it was their strength, then they could have abandoned the whole idea and try something else.

Yes, I had to admit that it would radical change for the series to take it more hard sci-fi direction. I can see why people don’t like that as much, and they tend to be far less popular than space opera or space fantasy. It wouldn’t have been my preference for the series either (I listed my preference couple posts earlier). However, when I heard that it was Andromeda we were going to have, I instantly hoped for that option, because I couldn’t really see any benefits with Andromeda narrative over the Milky Way, except potential for exploration. Prospect for epic scale and doing galaxy changing decision doesn’t mean anything, if the galaxy is not interesting and is devoid of content. Besides, it had been done so recently with MET. At least, I prefer creativity over repetition with my games, even if there are risks by venturing into unknown.

Would’ve fans wanted it. Probably not, but predicting these things is quite hard. Did fans demand or want MET before it was released, or when they didn't know anything about it. If you made a conclusive market research back then, they would’ve probably wanted another KotOR or BG3. I can only thank gods that I don’t have to make living by trying to predict or cater what kind of entertainment masses want this year.

Tbh, if exploration isn’t a genre or theme they wanted to really concentrate on, I see hardly any benefits in going to Andromeda in the first place. It’s like setting your game in Omega, but not wanting that game to have anything to do with crime or violence. Sure, it can be done, but it seems counterproductive and wasteful.

Could there have been MEA without any exploration? I cannot think much possibilities, unless every exploration mechanics or theme is either autopiloted or done off-screen. Perhaps, there could galaxy migration as a refugee-narrative. Let’s say, if Andromeda galaxy was inhabited in similar manner as the MW was, and there couldn’t and wouldn’t be any possibilities for colonizing planets. So, the narrative would have been trying to integrate and adapt to new larger galactic community. Kind like district nine, but as an alien. Still I cannot think much of angles how to approach Andromeda, than what was done.

Btw, didn't care too much for ME1 "exploration" either. During the first playthrough it was ok, because you didn't have to do it that much (imagine 40 hours of ME1 Mako exploring, would've been torturous) and I suppose there was something like wanderlust to look at every unpolished and barren cranny and nook of the new exciting world. Still, it wasn't exactly exploring in similar sense. More like scouring wild west or some other uncivilized wildernesses for something (it's been awhile since I've played trilogy, that I don't even remember if there was ever given that much reasons or incentives for combing backwaters of the galaxy. Maybe it was signs of geth activity or something).


I don’t think it was totally unnecessary, for the initial MW planning phase / the big picture plans (I don’t remember there being much if any details, but then again, I can hardly recall any details. Perhaps my mind is protecting itself). I can understand why they decided to add that, but you are right of course, that in a geological scale +two million years isn’t that much, and neither is it for celestial bodies.

I think, there’s some unpredictability or wide time-frame predictions considering for certain supernovas / hypernovas and their effects (I am not an astronomer, but I’ve seen a lot of movies, so I might be totally wrong). I remember hazily that long time ago I read predictions about when Betelgeuse was going to go, and I recall predictions had some wide ranging between them, e.g. hundreds of thousands of years. This was due distances mostly, so the core problem remains (until lolprimes observatory). There could be problems for exoplanets, even if these are quite distant (let’s say beyond ejected material, ultraviolet radiation, and x-rays), because gamma-ray bursts, which can be problematic for habitable worlds. This might not be any issue at all, because it’s an easy empirical question, if there are stars at that stage or close to it in Andromeda or in “close proximity”. Then there could be "Impact events” like asteroids and comets. Ofc, observing and predicting these have taken huge leaps, even in our close history, but really long cyclic comets can be difficult to predict.

The best reason to get FTL info is to scout for possible advanced alien civilizations in Andromeda. Is there any, where they are and how advanced they are, because two million year plus is long time for any civilization (advanced like in Kardashev scale i.e. II–III civilizations. Energy usage for star faring or II–III civilizations should be detectable even from afar. If a civilization harvests non-trivial amount energy from stars, it changes stars’ radiation spectrum appreciably, which can be noticed with FTL telescope, or even with instruments we current have, but due distances peeking into Andromeda or anywhere far atm is not fruitful for that purpose). You could always plan oneway intergalactic voyage without it, but I can see a lot of hazards by doing so.

I guess but then why Kasumi?  She's not much of a team player.  Zaeed is willing to kill innocent people to get revenge.  Not such a good guy.  Mordin?  Sure, he's great for science but not really needed as a squadmate.  Liara?  Well, I'm not sure she ever should have been a squadmate.  I guess my point here is that the MET was just as plagued with poor squadmate options as MEA.

That said, yes, I agree that after the LM's for Liam and Peebee, it's clear neither can be trusted.  Funny to think that Jack is more trustworthy than either of them, and she's kind of a psycho.  Though Liam's intentions were good his judgment is terrible.

I wonder who would replace them, though?  Not any of the crew (Suvi/Kallo/Gil/Lexi) because they're too essential.  In thinking of ME2, maybe a kett who defects would be able to fight with us and provide information about his race.  I'd like Kandros, though I don't know how he could be lured away from the Nexus.  Without him and Kesh, that place would fall to pieces.  And then there's always downloading SAM into a robot body, but that would be too similar to EDI. 

With no replacements, that would be four squadmates.  ME1 could get by with four (Liara, Ash, Kaidan and Tali - even less after Virmire) so I guess it's possible.

I do agree about Zaeed. Even a few times when I played renegade, I punched him for what he did. And you and others know I don't agree having T'soni as a squadmate since the trilogy shows she's not squadmate material. Kasumi is an option. None of them were a traitor like Kosta. And I don't believe any of the squadmates put the crew in danger the way the asari squadmate did

If there was an option to not recruit Jack, I wouldn't.

I've finshed ME1 with 3 squamates. Don't recruit Garrus. Rescue the asari before going to Virmire. Kill the krogan. There you go. Only have the quarian, A/K and the asari at the end of the game.

You need to take off the nostalgia googles because ME:A is much better than ME1 in those departments.

In ME1:

You had the same damn buildings with boxes in different places and the same with the mines, ME1 makes DA2 looks like vast an open world.

The planets in ME1 are DEAD there is no life (other than the villains you have to shoot) some with vague environment threats.


In ME:A:

You had more a wide variety of places to explore on all of the worlds and a lot less of recycled environments to put up with.

The planets in MEA are ALIVE with animals, plants, and you can see and feel what the environment threats are.


Simply put IMHO ME:A was ME1 done right in every department. The Archon's plan is simple he wants Meridian so he can force everyone in the Heleus Cluster to submit to exaltation or be destroyed. That is all we need to know we don't need his damn sob story of how the other Kett misunderstood him and exiled him and his followers or anything because it's not relevant to the story. He has a plan that he explains several times by the way to Ryder, and his followers and if you can't understand it then that your problem not the games.


Now the following is my general feelings about the MEA haters:

"If you dummies can't figure out a simple plot in a piece of entertainment, then you dummies need to find new way to entertain themselves and that is not an insult, that is a fact of life."- to paraphrase Eli Drake professional wrestler and the namer of dummies.   

In ME:A the combat is fun, the villain is evil, the story is great, the Nomad is better than either of those stupid tanks were, and other than Jaal none of the characters aren't walking exposition dumps and have their own personalities and are way better than any of ME1. For me ME:A is everything ME1 should have been. It was a bunch of  butthurt crybabies still whining about the ME3 endings and armchair animation morons crying about facial animations, and a bunch of of talent less ME fanfic hacks who don't a damn thing about story, characters, and writing in general and the usual alt-right bigot trolls crying "SJW" about every character that isn't a cis-genered straight white male and whining about not getting to bang a virtual bimbo supermodel because they can't get laid in real life and their dicks are too small that ruined ME:A as well as those who hate everything EA does regardless.


So in the end: NO, I don't blame BioWare for ME:A reported "failures", I blame ME:A "failures" on the above mentioned haters, they are the ones who ruined Mass Effect. Personally they can all fuck off as far as I'm concerned.

Since you hid my post in spoiler tags, and dismiss them with "lol", so I have to assume that you are afraid of them. So what are you afraid of?

Did I trigger you and you need a safe place you poor little snowflake. I stand by what I said and I'm not ashamed of them. If you got nothing of substance to say then don't say anything.