Two years on, time for a reappraisal?

In a lot of cases, it's just confirmation bias at work. They hated the game before it released, so now that it released they find in-game reason to hate it. And it doesn't mean they played the game, as I know people who shit on every new BioWare games, but haven't played a single one of them since DAO.

I think some of them believe that if they complain enough about MEA, BioWare will go back to make a 4th Shepard game instead. Just go in the "Mass Effect 5 " thread to see people who believe that will happen...

Peebee actually had one of the most natural character developments arcs of all Mass Effect squad mates. Crazy how much of the hate boiled down to 'haha she looks like a racoon kinda, wtf Bioware'.

The trouble is, as much I'd like to say Andromeda didn't deserve it's criticism, I believe it did. The game is a mess. There's some strands of mess that are good but damn it's still a mess. 

Yes, given the circumstances under which the game was made, the result is actually a testament to the determination and perseverance of BioWare's dev team, no doubt. It takes some grit to keep your head clear enough for coding during times of excessive stress.

A friend of mine worked at UbiSoft's QA for a few years and was playtester for WatchDogs, Assassin's Creed Black Flag and Assassin's Creed Rogue (named Assassin's Creed Comet during testing). She said that the thought of "this wasn't playtested" is almost always wrong. Games get playtested a lot and bugs get submitted a lot, and are then considered low priority unless they are a complete showstopper that prevents you from continuing the game, and are thus not fixed before release. And BioWare's post launch support has never been that great... it always felt almost reluctant to me.

That's because there's effectively too many quests and if you try to follow everything in the log you end up swamped and overwhelmed. This was another dubious design decision. It would probably have been better to have a far shorter number of quests and missions, but make each one deeper and weightier..... but then fans would have complained about there not being enough content.

On the other hand, there's a kind of historical logic to all of it given the alternative would probably have taken the form of achievements and collectibles.

Long post alert - A brief history lesson:

When the concept of achievements was first introduced to games back in the mid noughties, they were initially seeen by game designers as stuff that players would naturally complete as they went about their main business within the game. If there was a tricky boss you needed to kill to progress - sure, give them an achievement for doing so... hit level cap, gain X amount of gold/credits/caps etc. give them an achievement. It creates a sensation of reward without entailing much addition development work - it's a cheap, effective treat for the skinner box.

But gamers, being gamers saw things differently, and they had a mindet of "MUST COMPLETE EVERYTHING! ALL OBJECTIVES MUST BE COMPLETED!"

If there was a menu, log entry or pointer pointing at it, then gamers needed to do it for 'completion', else they felt that they hadn't truly beaten the game. Therefore they went out of their way to systematically complete each achievement in the game - treating them as actual quests in themselves rather than achievements.

Devs picked up on this, and achievements started to get increasingly silly and extreme as they chellenged players to jump through increasingly ludicrous hoops - "complete the entire shooter without firing a gun" "laboriously carry a garden gnome with you thoughout the whole campaign" "defeat the end boss while balancing a tea tray on your head".... and gamers saw these not as optional fun that could provide some alternative challenge to the game, but as essential, mandatory tasks that must be completed at all costs.

And then along came collectibles in games - "find random bottles and mozaic pieces throughout the world"... and once again, gamers jumped through the hoops and went out of their way to find these items in the name of completion.

Now, in the case of ME:E, these kinds of optional tasks are not labelled as 'collectibles', or 'achievements', they are called 'tasks', and have their own place in the quest journal. Few of them add anything of substance to the game, embellish the story, (save in the most superficial manner)or provide any real level of challenge to the player. That is not their function - they're 'tasks' extra bits and bobs of busywork you can complete while you're going about your main business.

Unfortunately, gamers being gamers view them as mandatory, essential content that MUST be completed - despite doing so being tedious, and lead to utter burnout with the game.

The one good thing about tasks is that they do reward you with credits, XP, items AVP, viabilityand materials in a way that achievements and collectibles rarely do - so in some ways they are better.

But the point of this long-winded post is that there is absolutely no need whatsoever to do any of them, they can be utterlly ignored if you so choose with no lessening of the game.

Yesterday I bombed through the game from the settling of Eos through Hunting the Archon just to get a clip of Scott hugging Sara in the Medbay (because in my original Scott playthrough he lied to her and she doesn't hug liars). I stopped just before Khi Tasira, but I had never gotten to that part of the game with so little accomplished before. I had no outposts besides Prodromos, had not been in the vaults or even activated any monoliths on Voeld or Kadara, and hadn't even visited Elaaden or Havarl yet. Needless to say, I hadn't found the Turian or Asari Arks or done any loyalty missions either. A part of me wonders what the game would be like if I try to go to Meridian now with only 25% of the game completed. Is it even possible? Who would turn up in the final fight except for the Salarian Pathfinder?

It turns out I didn't need the clip anyway, but it was interesting to see how far I could get in the main questline after having done almost nothing but rescue the Moshae.

The vaults are one of my least favorite parts of the game. I find them annoying, confusing, and generally frustrating.

I hate jumping puzzles and the sudoku puzzles at the monoliths can GDIAF. All my life I've suffered from this weird kind of numerical dyslexia and so puzzles of this kind based upon sequential logic mean absolutely nothing to me. If you told me to translate a page from Swahili to Eskimo I'd probably have more luck with it. Even the simplest ones on Eos are far beyond my ability to solve. I get around it by simply printing out the solutions to the vault puzzles and then referring to them. Thank God they aren't randomly generated, else I'd be screwed.

So not doing the vaults at all is a tempting proposition, and I didn't know they all went to 100% viability after Meridian. That's interesting - and of course it makes sense, given Meridian's function.

I'll probably continue to grit my teeth do them though - I'm a bit of a completionist. I actually do most of the game's tasks too. It's very hard to ignore those markers on the map.

Most obnoxious one is Elaaden. Deliberately designed to be super-confusing and puzzlecentric. Did it earlier this morning, and still got flummoxed despite having done it before on my first playthough in 2017. I guess some people enjoy this kind of thing, but it's not to my taste, as I royally suck at puzzles.

Having said that solving it did give me a sense of satisfaction.

And not in the fun way.

Be that as it may, what could to be done to not have this happen? I find it odd that people just started hating on Bioware for no reason.


I like tRoS better than TLJ; it may be stupid, but it isn't insulting. I like Andromeda more than I like ME3.

Worst game in the series.

BioWare was niche before EA bought them,  nothing changed there.

ME3 was after EA bought them, as was ME2. EA bought them as they were working on DAO.