why Andromeda was not capable of inspiring..

Yeah just... "Look at the characters"... Right.

It fails because:
-Face animations are stilted, it's hard to be immersed in any of it, even compared to 'Rape face' ME2 Shepard
-Lack of "direction" just in conversations which still lacked cinematics like DA:I. (Imagine if 50% of ME1's conversations were not in-cutscene).
-The world building is both derivative of Mass Effect 1 and also 2 and 3 whilist not picking up enough inspired new sci-fi ideas that could've been exclusive to the setting. Colonization is trodden over with very light footing.
-Art direction lacks better sillhouettes, better intent/direction of colors, creatures and armors are nitty-gritty and over-designed while their striking features are bland.
-The music puts me to sleep and don't ever hire John Paesano again.
-The story is not coherent enough.
-The voice casting is actually mediocre and the direction/acting is often audibly bored or monotonous.
-The game itself lacks focus. You spend the majority of the runtime doing errands that have more gameplay-weight to them than narrative payoff and even when there is narrative payoff it gets stuck with tired tropes and ideas that have either been done numerous times in the trilogy before, or it's just sci-fi 101 but with the "character"-knob turned to 11. BioWare thought that if they lacked minutia or attention to detail of lore they could mitigate it with charm and jokes, and they couldn't. Because a sci-fi heavy character like SAM has the likeability of a slug.

Sounds like a very conclusive statement on your part. I'd argue the opposite; ME3 was the part that a lot of people wrote ME off, if not by the game itself, but by Bioware's handling of customer dissatisfaction.


But ME1, at the time, stood on its own legs, whereas Andromeda didn't.


So you want them to make ME2 again. Which is exactly what I had been saying for the longest time. But you can't monetize ME2 enough in a sufficient Live Service way that EA wants. So that is completely out the window as an option.

I'm just saying that a lot of time there are customers that are unhappy with products, that is nothing new, but there was a very large customer dissatisfaction with ME3. We wouldn't have the EC if there wasn't, but the EC was a half-measure that didn't address anything and even with the Citadel DLC, which was completely fanservice, they missed the complaints people had with ME3 as well, although it was great in terms of fanservice. For the record, I don't think fanservice is bad, but you have to earn it first and admittedly ME3 isn't exactly the place for it. Which is why ME3 feels so out of place.


But my opinions are irrelevant as well. What matters is the future performance and reception of Bioware games and what can be done to improve upon them. I have given my reasons as to why I think we should go on a different direction than the one you are advocating for, because doubling down towards a failed direction has rarely, if ever, worked.


You want Andromeda 2 and, as you've said, you want it to be the ME2 of Andromeda. Correct me if I am wrong, but we've had that conversation before, haven't we?


Do you want people to simply agree with you? That doesn't sound much of a discussion, more like an echo chamber. It's good to want people to agree with you, but to do so when your opinion or argument has earned that. I will concede to an argument, when it has successfully made its case, but your argument, i.e. leaving it up to Bioware to repeat the mistakes of the past, without a cohesive vision, when they've astutely displayed their inability to be creative or original with their new ideas, is not a viable tactic and just saying "let them do what they want" is simply further enabling an already self-harming habit. Without a clear change in leadership and creative direction, Bioware will, at the very least, require a nudge toward the right direction to be able to produce a mildly viable commercial product and a serious slap in the face to accomplish the things that Bioware needs it to.

Well, it depends on the emotion you were going for. Discontent, anger and a very vocal general dissatisfaction are equally valid points, I guess.


Andromeda 1 was patterned to ME1 and your guidelines do allude to a much more ME2 approach.


My argument is towards what Bioware should hope to achieve, if they want to stay alive. We've already established that EA doesn't particularly tolerate failures, Bioware Montreal closed down and in spite of EA's so far touted investment in Bioware, it is only true until it's true no longer. It wouldn't be the first time and it wouldn't even be the first Bioware studio.

Touché

There's very little in the way of sequel status affecting Andromeda's quality as a story. They managed to create a new narrative framework where all of the past storytelling could be mostly relegated to referencing and fanservice. Andromeda fails because the story it tells by itself is not as meaningful or strong as the one Mass Effect 1 tells, and I also think it's understated just how bad the game's design also is by comparison.

By AAA trends and standards Andromeda is very conventional 2019. ME1 broke new ground with the squad-based cover shooting and abilities, the tactical pausing in an action game and stuff. It had the conversation system too and it was very consistent about being a game where 50% of the time spent is in cutscenes with dialogue choices next to the time spent driving the mako or shooting things in the face.

Andromeda tries to do too many things and a lot of what it tries to do isn't complimentary of the experience ME1 made. Instead of being given side quests that take you to a remote site that leads to more conversation and consequences you mostly get side-quests that were the bog-standard "collect 10 of these things" which results in nothing of value.

There's a reason only the most core player would do the Matriarch Writings quests in ME1. They were always nice to pick up, providing EXP but very few actually finished them even on replays, and I think I've only done it once. There were maybe 4 of those collectathon quests but Andromeda constantly ties that type of quest design into the narrative, and it doesn't compliment it. It's shy of making purely conversation driven quests that may or may not become violent. It has that one, pretty great quest about tracking the hacker "Knight" and that leads to a place with friendly NPC guards who will turn into enemies if your cover gets blown. But it just has that one quest.

Mass Effect 1 had many quests where an NPC you could first talk to would turn enemy if you failed a certain check or decided to antagonize them. It was effective ludonarrative design but Andromeda goes all "video-gamey" making the game largely about questing in big open spaces but only doing it to give excuses to have more gunplay and constantly moving the goalpost for your objective.

Everything has to be open world nowadays. Grand Theft Auto said so.

Just like with Beyond, when it got renamed and remade into Anthem, it feels like everything story wise is tacked on, rather the core out of which everything springs out. Which makes the SP an underwhelming experience for me, whereas the previous Bioware games, pre-Inquisition and especially games like ME2, felt completely built around a narrative. Whether you liked that narrative design affecting the game design is subjective, but it was objectively better received. There is a very nice developer commentary on narrative gameplay design for God of War (2018) somewhere. I'd look for it, but I am at work currently.