Andromeda: Not As Bad As I Remembered

We can safely say that is an irrelevant segment of the population for video games. What about the people that do have access to the internet, talk about video games and buy video games? The video game industry is a multi billion dollar industry, at this point and we can see that a lot of people buy video games. At this point, 3 million copies sold on release for a triple A game is entry level, the bare minimum the publisher expects and gets, out of sheer available population.There are 100 million PS4s sold alone. Never mind XBONEs, never mind the crazy amount of PCs.

Oh I'm sure multiple threads could be created to talk about those topics. That said my personal opinion is that if you mention something like that you should at least provide a couple of examples. Even if you want to avoid going on a large tangent about if they are or are not plot holes and other issues it provides a frame of reference for comparing and contrasting different views.  What specifically constitutes a plot hole in ME3 and how is it larger then the lack of military capabilities and the fact the story frequently revolves around the lack of military capabilities of the Initiative. 

That is not what I am talking about. A lot of recent games require a constant internet connection, in spite of being SP games. I remember that for a lot of AC games. I specifically refrained from buying AC: Brotherhood for a couple of years, for that reason alone, until they dropped the constant internet connection in a much later patch, years down the line. I do have an internet connection at home. It's not great, but I do have one. Another reason why I don't buy modern AAA games is because of the sheer size of their downloads. Have you tried to download a game like DOOM (2016) with a max dl speed of 320kbps with drops to 0 every other second? It ain't worth it, man. But you can still do it, you can still buy, dl and play that game. If you live in an area with a single internet cafe and no other residential internet, you can only play games while in that internet cafe. If you even buy a PS4 and have it in your home, how are you going to play the latest "Live Service" game? Take it to the internet cafe and play it there? The latest version of Denuvo on PC, as implemented on Borderlands 3, has been reported to upload constantly to the internet using 2mbps. How the fuck are you gonna play that? The point is that an internet connection that is convenient, stable and fast is a must, in order to play modern AAA games. Unless you buy them today and aim to play them 10-15 years from now? Maybe?

A good thoughtful post, thank you.

I absolutely agree that there are individuals who react with humour (bad or otherwise) to whatever horror life has thrown at them. I myself rememember a grand uncle who survived the Eastern front, got shot through both elbow joints by a soviet sniper for sport, and came back with a really nasty sense of humour.

However, I would submit that just because individuals may definitely react like that, it still doesn't explain if the entire story has a tone of levity about it despite some of the dark aspects it contains. For example, just because my grand uncle came home with that special sense of humour he became notorious for in our family doesn't mean that a movie about the Battle of Stalingrad made with MEA's type and amount of humour would work out.

The Lethal Weapon and Die Hard franchises are great examples of how serious tones were scaled back in favour of comedy moments as the franchises progressed. Both started out as serious suspense and in the case of Lethal Weapon even with a suicidal main character, with occasional moments of humour... and developed towards cool one liners with lots of gun shots and explosions. They became lighter entertainment with each new entry. And I'm not saying that's wrong or bad, just that it happened.


Other than the "#WeComeInPeace" hashtag, was that lack of armament ever mentioned as a plot point in the game?

There is definitely a lack of vehicle mounted weapons in the game, but other than that, almost everyone seems to carry a gun and there isn't much hesitation to open fire on the Kett on Habitat-7. Is any serious attempt at a peaceful resolution ever made? I don't remember any. And most of your research is about weapons and armour anyway. Would you believe someone came in peace if they showed up in an unarmed truck or ship, but everyone in it was armoured and carried an automatic rifle?

Now an unarmed spaceship may still make sense, since according to the Codex, any engagement becomes impossible once a ship reaches FTL speed (which absolutely makes sense) - only to be contradicted by the absurd scene where the Archon's fleet intercepts the Tempest (look, another plot hole!). That explanation however cannot work for an unarmed ground transport like the Nomad, so the AI is really lucky that the Kett never thought of developing armed dropships or vehicles either, eh?

The most likely explanation is that BioWare wasn't able to and/or didn't want to include vehicle combat since it can really change the gameplay focus too much. They wanted to make a squad based cover shooter, not Battlefield Andromeda: Desert Warfare. Which is absolutely understandable, but it did lead to those funny moments where both sides ship in armed infantry with unarmed transports to duke it out on the ground and no one ever thinks "what if I shoot down that drop ship before it dumps a dozen Kett on me?"

Oh, you can bet they know better than you and me that there is such a market. And that they did the math and figured their half assed MTX ridden disaster at the end will bring them more cash than what 5+ smaller SP games would.

Now I understand what you mean, but those are players that the triple A industry can't monetize through MTX, so they conveniently disregard them. To put it plainly, they don't care about them, so to them, they are in fact irrelevant.


I will need you to expand on this, for I have no idea what you mean.

One thing that works against them just raising the price is the amount of piracy that is already taking place.  I also believe this is what is, in part, driving the movement towards live service and rapid updating... an effort to stay ahead of hackers and a means of checking for people with pirated versions accessing the servers.