What is the best balance of story-driven vs gameplay, dialogue-systems and combat?

The Witcher 3 did a great job at it oh yeah and Yennifer would pimp slap Ashley from ME 1 any day

At least spell her name correctly >_>


As for topic, you never really had the option to resolve conflicts through diplomacy in ME...sure, it appeared here and there, but it was really rare...Only example I can think of is UNC Major Kyle, Feros doesn't count IMHO because you have to fight colonists anyway, you just use grenades instead and those conversations that could lead to 1 vs squad fight were just replaced by interrupts.
Still, if we get more missions in vein of Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts it would be appreciated, I always loved infiltration missions, other examples that spring to mind are Stealing Memory (ME2) or Lady Boyle's Last Party (Dishonored...I know, stealth game, but it was different kind of stealth )

The Witcher 3 did a great job at it oh yeah and Yennifer would pimp slap Ashley from ME 1 any day

uh he spelled yennifer and ashely right so what are you talking about

If you were to use all past BioWare games or other RPGs as a point of reference and then point to where you hope ME:A will strike its balance, then I'd appreciate it.

I think a trend with BioWare releases in a couple of year now has been to market it on everything but its dialogue. I'm kinda thankful they did show a little segment in Andromeda at TGA, acknowledging they are proud of what they're doing with the interface for interactive storytelling still, but think back to DA:I and ME3 at their respective E3s and it's almost as if BioWare is all hush-hush about showing anything with dialogue. Thankfully, DA:I was chock-full of dialogue options so it's not that I'm worried about that in particular... but I'm still skeptical as to what the balance of dialogue vs combat is. As it was with DA:I it felt segregated and the same for ME3.

It's as if the game is built around having levels that are mainly filled with combat scenarios and then once you back on the base you'll have a ton of dialogue with companions but it used to be so where most encounters actually start with dialogue and even break up the middle of a "level" with a dialogue confrontation or something of the sort and then lets you resolve a confrontation through cunning and diplomacy rather than brawns. I'm very worried about new BioWare games being made because I feel they've shifted their focus so heavily towards "immediate fun-factor", and I could live with it in ME2 and DA2 because they kept a lot of moments where diplomacy was an option still but they've really been excluding the dialogue's importance lately.

You had those three advisors in DA:I who stood for various non-hostile tasks, save cullen sometimes, but you never ever get to see them shine in missions and while it's nothing to do with you or your dialogue options, it's the fact that there's such a decreased emphasis on anything that ISN'T combat that is so disheartening to me. At its peak it was the In Wicked Hearts and Wicked Eyes or whatever it was called where you're at a ball with people all wearing masks both figuratively and literally and there's plans for an assasination, so the whole point of the level was to blend in as a guest while investigating and preventing any violence from occurring, but as expected it ended in bloodshed and a bossfight no matter how it was played. I thought that was really lame. You had this one, awesome opportunity to solely drive a mission exclusively via emotional tension and political intrigue, and you shit all over it with an, excuse the term, "video-gamey" bossfight.

To me combat and immediate gameplay was never really the draw for BioWare games. They're trying to make it so but I don't understand why because their games sold really well even back with ME1 and ME2 when it was just as much the dialogue that was considered "gameplay", at least to me, but they just insist on throwing you into one combat scenario after another.

Looking at the Andromeda TGA trailer you get circa three sneak peaks at loyalty missions if you look to the right side of the screen where it states which objectives are active, and in all 3 they showed you using all sorts of sick combat abilities and lots of "bro" moments and headshots... and i'm just worried it's always, always combat and dialogue is just some bonus that you do in between but it never matters.

I just hope they are aware of how much a huge chunk of their fanbases play these games for the social aspect of the game's universe which is the dialogue. They know we love the characters but they've begun almost only focusing on that for using the dialogue wheel or interactive cinematics. I want the whole game and the whole story to respect the dialogue wheel as a driving force of the GAMEPLAY and not just combat.

Before you come in and say I have rose-tinted glasses because "ME2 was just as bad" or whatever fanbase cliche you want, consider Thane's or Samara's loyalty missions for a moment. Those were fully fledged segments and not just one or two cutscenes like Dorian or Vivienne in DA:I, that required you to use other systems than action or combat to get through them, and they were awesome for it every bit as much as the missions that had you shoot through a corridor.

Sadly, I don't think they understand or care about the importance of dialogue or role-play in Mass Effect.  If you look at the evolution of the series, only ME1 was really touted as such.  ME2 & ME3 were shooters first, RPGS second.  And while yes, ME2 had a couple of non-combat missions, by FAR the more common missions were full of corridors of chest-high bulletproof barriers with waves of faceless enemies to shoot.

And even ME3 where they boasted of how many lines of dialogue there were, we, the player actually had very little say in what was said, even by our own character.

At the time of ME2, I was convinced that shooter and RPG mechanics could be merged into a true hybrid game.  Now, I'm not so sure.  I'm not sure the shooter crowd wants what the RPG crowd wants, and vice-versa.  And as such, I think Bioware is going to cater to the larger (shooter) crowd more and more.  


And you can't shoot anyone with the dialogue wheel.  Well, not unless one of the options is [Attack]