"ME Andromeda is not an open world game"

You misunderstood it. ME:A is the exact same type of "Open world" as DA:I, which wasn't a traditional open-world game either.

It's not open-world by the book and it's not sandbox.

It's open-zoned like Inquisition though. You'll most likely have a handful of planets that are completely handcrafted and open-ended but only a third of the size of Skyrim or something. It's still big and more varied. I don't think people should read this as "there's no open-endedness". It's just not a de facto "open-world" game where you have one big map but only one, and that map has all the quests and main missions within it.

ME:A has exploration zones and then main mission levels just like DA:I.

As long as they fill these open'ish worlds with interesting characters, stories, and plenty of challenging encounters there will not be any problem.

All good points.  We were pretty limited in exploration in ME1-ME3 so this new freedom will be a bit of a shock, from a series perspective.


Can I ask what you thought about DA:I? I mentioned kind of what I thought already - felt like quantity vs quality.  It came at the time of competing with Witcher 3 which I thought did a much better job in general.  W3 is more like an "open world" game I guess.  DA:I It was definitely better than DA2, but, not as immersive/interesting as Witcher.

bsn.boards.net/post/276581

I'll highlight the relevant details:


I don't think its going to be a concern for either camps of "yay, open world" and "I hate open world" Ofc it takes faith to believe that BW can pull it off, but I think they can.

so much this^

and while I don't need every conversation to have a cut scene, I would definitely like more of them than what we got in DA:I
It was so disappointing and impersonal. Especially since the graphics have improved so much over previous games, but instead of getting to enjoy the character's pretty faces we got to hover 10 feet above little action figure versions of them while they droned on about their people or their country or their childhood...

So, I don't know if Mac Walters actually played DA:I himself, but what he says about that point in particular worries me because that description about planets each having their own stories and "big choices" is nothing new from DA:I. Each zone had its own main quest in that game too and each of those questlines had major choices in them, yet that wasn't exactly that engaging most of the time.

Hinterlands had the mages vs templars and refugees. You had to complete quests to resolve that local war and in the aftermath help the refugees after which the main commander on the site would join your organization and aid you in the way you'd like him to aid or you could send him elsewhere.

Crestwood had the whole "dark past" about the Mayor and the area itself that had some intrigue but that was quickly over with and never emotionally engaging to me. It ends with you judging the Mayor in the throne-room I think.

Emprise Du Lion had a quest about overtaking a big fort with the resistance and making a patct with a demon or kill it and sacrifice something either way. Nothing engaging on an emotional level, no special story and still no cutscenes but it was mild fun.

Western Approach had some Venatori fort and a leader you had to capture. That was it.

The Exalted Plains was about the dalish elves, some temple and capturing forts from demons.

I imagine Andromeda is exactly like this but only, if we're to take them on their word, with more in-depth quest lines.

I have my reservations about what it implies when BioWare claims to have learned from feedback. They've shown me what that means a couple of times, even with Inquisition, and there's usually a catch; some newfound issue as a biproduct they don't realize.

I'm not holding my breath but I'll gladly welcome it if it turns out they've found a good solution.

But I should be more grateful. With DA2 I had the slight feeling that Dragon Age would slowly disappear from my interest and as much as I didn't like DA:I it kinda filled me with a sense of optimism (if that doesn't sound totally contradictory to what I usually say!) for future games because it had crafting, freedom of main quest order, lots of customization and a lot of things that left me hopeful that BioWare didn't end up sticking by the things that didn't work about DA2. Similarly I hope that "bummer" feeling i have when I think about ME3 and how depressing it can be in some areas will fade away after playing ME:A, that it'll somehow be diminished because ME:A is a more feel-good game that I want to replay just because the characters are full of optimistic themes and just playing the game from moment to moment is filled with player agency.

It's not a viscious cycle because fans won't stop to find something to complain about no matter what. It's a viscious cycle because BioWare keeps trying to address everything that gets thrown at them.

As much as I hate to say it, they should just stick to their "artistic integrity" already and not as a response to me saying this, but as a favor to themselves.

I firmly believe ME2 (as much as I actually love it) was a biproduct of fanresponse to ME1.

"THE MAKO IS TERRIBLE!"
"I wanna romance Garrus!"
"The inventory system is bad"
"Anderson and Shepard sound like conspiracy-theorists! Why does anyone believe what they say?"
"I wanna romance Tali!"
"Cerberus was so cool! I have a theory that they're behind X, Y and Z. Man I hope we meet them again in ME2!"

And you're starting to see the foundation of ME2 in that. (most of those responses I've actually seen when I browsed the old BSN)

ME2 had a barebones focus on plot so ME3 had a much bigger focus on plot, people didn't like going with Cerberus so now they're evil again, some complained about the Renegade options being nonsensical for Shepard's role so we got a dryer and more stuck up Renegade Shepard in ME3, people complained Shepard was a blank slate in ME2 and some also complained the dialogue system was too intrusive to the flow of the narrative so they made autodialogue to address both, and that created new problems because BioWare was starting to make a movie and a defined character instead of letting players do that.

So really, they create as many problems as they solve and because of fan responses in many ways we ended up getting a trilogy that was less like ME1 throughout because BioWare has that policy of having a great community with their fans and always being social about designing a game with the fans except when the creative director actually decides his vision has to come first and you get moments of frustration like Kai Leng beating you in cutscenes and an ending that ruins the fiction.

It's hit and miss. I really like the amount of customization in DA:I but I definitely like DA:O the most because it was 100% designed by game designers and ignorant of fandom and their sometimes irrational criticisms and similarly I like ME1 the most as a Mass Effect game because it makes special use of a special setting even though ME2 caters more to me and how much I care about XYZ about story/gameplay/setting.

So dunno, I think ME:A at this point is better off by incorporating fan feedback but I still wish sometimes BioWare could've just kept designing their games in the same vacuum that ME1 and DA:O were designed in just so their professional ideas always come before fan-input. For one, Tali wasn't meant to come back with Shepard in ME3 because it didn't make sense in terms of lore. The designer said she had to stay with her people but it was Patrick Weekes who begged them to let her become a party member and personally that makes me happy but I can't deny it's fanfic-thinking.

It's funny you said this because so many other games including the new Horizon game copied this aspect of standing in place and moving one or both arms repeatedly.  

I thought I read/heard from somewhere that certain planets would be open world (akin to those in ME1 just far more detailed and interesting), but that those containing story arc missions would be more linear. I'd love for BioWare to take a page out of CDPR's playbook and create planets that aren't so much open world, but region selectable. Perhaps we'd start in one region and have to unlock others after certain criteria are met. With that said i'm not really worried about the storytelling regardless of a given planets traversability. I've got a feeling BioWare went above and beyond with the story so that they could cleanse themselves of that star kid fiasco.

This is interesting news to me. What do you mean by "eroded employee benefits"?