ME:A - The Video Game Awards Gameplay Video

Oh great, sync kills are back >_>
Anyway, Female Turian
Gameplay looked fast-paced and fun, biotic charge looked even more awesome than in trilogy (who would've thought that was possible)...I'm starting to feel the hype

Actually it's what AI inner instructions tell. Wallters (?) dodged direct question about "secret" AI motives.

I'm both extremely hyped now and as apprehensive as never before.

Nothing except maybe the shuttle hovering sound and the fact that there are Milky Way races reminds me of Mass Effect anymore. Visually this is DAI with guns. And even gameplay looks so much like the wild effect frenzy of Inquisition.
The game has more of a Star Wars or Firefly feel of dusty rundown makeshift settlements rather than the sleek geeky cold steel style of the trilogy. Now we have an earthy look. Tribal even with bone parts in armor. I even got a Fallout 4 Diamond City vibe from it, that shaved skull chick could be a raider...

THAT SAID, I'm in love with the visuals same as with DAI. As a stand-alone sci-fi western frontier game this can be a lot of fun. If the game can pull off its own identity, there's no reason it can't be a compelling new setting, no matter how radically different from the Milky Way. Looks like many things of DAI will be back but hopefully improved. I'm pleasantly surprised about the size of that settlement. I wasn't expecting much, so this was nice. If the Nexus is fully explorable and at least as big as the ME1 Citadel, this will be a MAJOR improvement over the sad little box that was Val Royeaux, and Redcliffe was super small too. There really weren't any cities in the actual sense of the word in that game to explore. Things already look much improved.

I loved crafting in DAI and am looking forward to having this in MEA as well. Scanning LOOKS cool at least.
I really dig the tight female armor design. Both the catsuit version and the more armored dark one. Armor customization is always good. The more, the better.

The female Turian squadmate looks great. While I liked Nyreen, her head reminded me of a burn victim. Most unappealing. For a Turian, Vetra looks fairly attractive. I'm pretty sure she'll be a romance option.
The Krogan's voice is not as charismatic as Wrex but hopefully he's more interesting than Grunt. Surprised he looks so old.
Still no face reveal of Liam. Shame.
Funny how the accent of the male off-screen voice sounds different to everyone. I thought Indian, as in Hindu, lol. Voice sounds nice, not particularly outstanding but nice. If this is a Quarian, I'll be extremely happy. Pleeeeease, Bioware.
We get a male EDI this time. Figures. Voice is pleasant but sort of bland? EDI had real personality. Also, I hope the settlement girl with an attitude is not Aria's replacement. Missing all the charm, but a five second cutscene hardly allows for final judgement. So I'll try not to read too much into that childish scene. The trilogy had some cringe-worthy dialogue as well.

So far none of the voices we've heard sound exciting to me. Not like Thane in the trailer, DAMN. But too early to tell. Still on the fence about femRyder. She looks and sounds so damn young. Can't imagine her as a leader AT ALL. But we'll see. Surprise me, Bioware. Don't repeat the mistakes you made with the inquisitor.

Now that we've finally got combat impressions I'm relieved it looks decent enough but also super worried it will play exactly like DAI, meaning just spamming the attack button. Sure, there are a ton of attacks you can use, it seems. But in DAI it was mostly just flashy visuals without feeling any different. At least as a mage. It was a hectic mess of pretty special effects. I get the same feeling from this video, though not as extreme. What I loved so much about Mass Effect was how every power, every weapon felt unique. Two nights ago I played some more ME3 and got the Scorpion, and I gleefully ran around spamming the projectiles and enjoying the explosions like a child with a water bomb. I never paid much attention to weapon sounds in games before the trilogy, but gosh do I love how everything sounds in Mass Effect. Very space-y.

Like others have commented, the video didn't seem to show any weapon impact. It just looked like everything was feather light, which is weird to me. Everything about combat in the trilogy was about impact, hitting hard. Taking apart, crushing. That satisfying deep biotic boom was addictive. Here it looks like DAI: you spam your attacks and it feels like the enemy just soaks it all up until the health bar is finally depleted. It was so boring...

I want enemies staggered, dangling in the air, torn apart. Maybe I just didn't pay attention but I saw little of that. Enemies seemed glued to the ground and apparently just circling them and spamming firepower is sufficent. I'm sure it will feel a lot better playing myself when the sound effects are properly implemented. I just hope Bioware remembered the different behavior and feel of each weapon and playstyle. It's what made the trilogy stand out and where DAI utterly failed imo.

Yup, still extremely worried about combat. *sigh*

Well, combat DOES look fast-paced at least. Charge is still there, hell yes, it should be a decent experience at least. Bound to be better than DAI. I hated the anime look and cartoonish action style moves of DA2 at first but then it turned into my favorite combat style of the franchise. DA2 was fun to play.

Overall, gameplay looks better than expected. Really cool video. AT LAST. Despite some reservations, I can't wait for release. I think Bioware has improved some of the glaring flaws of DAI. Not all of them apparently, facial animations are still horrific and really immersion-breaking. But I'm more optimistic than ever.

It's looking pretty fucking sexy. So glad they put the work they did into environments and what we can explore. Although I am curious to see how exactly are Milky Way species in communities/colonies already and seem to have a crime side to it all, all that takes time especially when you're from another galaxy.

But more importantly...



VANGUARD MASTER RACE

Since these are quite big, I'll put them behind spoiler tags. Sorry if somebody already posted similar

Sniping


Equipment wheel


Settling Kadara- mission objective

Collecting minerals, yay

Left a bunch of pics in the CSI thread with some personal rants in each of them, but in that spirit gonna bulk them all here in a huge ass spoiler:


Thoughts on the trailer itself:
Good stuff, they showed gameplay in general, no scripted or in engine stuff.

*Animations are a bit meh, gonna admit. But honestly I never cared too much about that.

*Gunplay felt odd, no recoil on the guns, I didn't get a good feeling about it, but it could be because I saw a video instead of playing it myself, also they used a pissing gamepad and that really confuses me when they show gunplay, I can't see recoil patterns and I can't get a "feel" of it in general.

*The HUD and UI was the worst part imho. Didn't like how much shit on the screen we have at the same time. The flying health bars for each enemy is just beyond cluster fucky for my liking. I prefer the old system in which the bars are static in the upper part of the screen.
Also the curved health/shield bars for the player are a bit annoying for me personally.

However, I did like the game for the most part. 

I watched the trailer, and despite all of the cool looking moments I still found myself visibly cringing when the mineral gathering section came up. Please, for the love of God don't be an exact repeat of Inquisition in this department. I don't want to have to run around for hours gathering Lithium crystals (or Not-Elfroot as I like to call it) just so I can go and craft that slightly better armor piece with improved health regen. At the very least, if material gathering has to be a part of the game, allow us to call down automated collectors to gather all this crap for us.


Also, I seen lots of talk about how Andromeda is harkening back to that ME 1 vibe, and I would have to say that visually and concept-wise (exploring uncharted worlds etc.) that's true. Though the big appeal of ME 1, for me, was the 'alien' element to it, and not just in the appearance of some weird glowing bushes in the background. Time will tell if BioWare is able to once again capture that otherworldly feel with the various alien species we encounter. Will we meet an alien on par with the Rachni and (ME 2) Geth? Or will everyone just be a human in a rubber mask?

Personally, I don't want to get my hopes up too much.

I did the mistake of reading the Youtube comments.

Somehow people got fetch quests, shitty writing, and EAWare from the 5 minute footage.

Jesus Christ I think I dodged a bullet by choosing to not be a game dev.

Big issue with DAI crafting for me was exactly that crafted stuff wasn't slightly better. Not only it felt like artificially padding length, it trivialized opening loot chests. Find "The Legendary Staff of Legends of Ultimate Destruction", look at it stats and see 5x worse numbers than "generic crafted staff" your party mages are using.

To be clear here, I have nothing against scanning things for info/lore, actually I would love that. I didn't mind finding quarries or logging stands in DAI and DA2 handled the resource picking well too, imo. But tedious mineral/flower picking... no way in hell, thanks. I will buy it from the black market or plain cheat.