What is the most important thing Andromeda needs to get right?

What is most important? That it is fun of course!

Well, since "We're really really sorry about Mass Effect 3" being in the opening credits of MEA is unlikely to happen....



What it really needs to get right is clearly the story. It needs to explain the how and why of the Andromeda Project in a way that it logically links up with the Mass Effect setting with minimal handwaving.

It also needs to create a better story (better than ME3 was, certainly) that is both immersive and reactive to the player.

And most of all, an ending that's not a total cop-out. Something the player feels like they've earned rather than had pushed on them.

Oh, dear.... I guess you never noticed that you don't need to do that?

It's a sick compulsion, in a way, I guess. I'm there anyway, for my dose of segregated RP. I know I can just go fetch the stuff and bring it directly to the loitering NPCs. Again, that's the main issue I was discussing, the RP point. The eaves-dropping fetch quest issue is a separate issue entirely.

Well, the only mission which actually cancels sidequests is Priority: The Citadel II, IIRC. But it's not great design to make a player scared of that.

From looking at the responses in this thread, I can see that I'm way in the minority.

For me, the one thing they have to get right is combat. I love a good story, but I love shooting things (or blowing them up) even more.

For as much as you can criticize DA2 it had Anders doing that... thing he does, it had Varric and how his relationships are affected by Red Lyrium which also affects the main threat in the game, you had Merrill who was an outcast who had to experience moving into one of the most oppressive cities in Ferelden, the game's setting, and you had Fenris being a slave from Tevinter in the midst of a trade into Kirkwall, all of it characterized the setting at the very least and reinforced the the laser-targeted focus of the game.

DA:I didn't really do that for me with most companions. DA:I mainly has The Inquisition, Orlais, Elves and Red Lyrium and Corybory as the focus, and they do cover Orlais and its focus with Vivienne and Josephine, Red Lyrium and Cory is tied to Varric because of Hawke and then there's Bull and Dorian who have something to do with Tevinter, foreshadowing where the plot is going next time, but I think it's the lack of drawn-out arcs for each companion and their lacklustre reasons or introductions to the Inquisition. It was so distracted because of the open-world elements like you say. That's also why I keep saying that I think ME:A has to prove BioWare can do companions as a focus in open world like ME:A becuase to me DA:I really didn't prove itself there.

Another reason why Witcher 3 is better despite not having companions, because that is in fact the thing it does so well. Geralt has friends that you meet as parts of the seperate subplots that are each tied to a particular region. You spend plenty of time with Yennefer, Triss, Zoltan, Dandelion and his new GF, the Skellige folks and that's a much better way of doing "companions" in open world than the way DA:I did it.

BioWare needs to figure out how to make the party-system work without turning it into aimless meandering, but I'm afraid they're getting complacent about it because Citadel DLC was a recipe for success. I think they must've been scratching their heads as to why Citadel DLC was so successful for almost every fan when DA:I wasn't despite focusing on companions in the same way.

I think the density of the world is my main worry, right now.

So far, from everything I've seen, I just disliked 2 things - RyDude's default face and Default control scheme - both of which can be changed. The rest is looking good; I'' just don't wanna end up in an empty sandbox, is all.

Multiplayer.

I honestly don't know how to answer this. On one hand, the bread and butter of Mass Effect is Story, so I would say it needs to have a fun and enjoyable story that gets people excited for the future of the series. But on the other hand, given the size of the game, I would also say it's Gameplay needs to be fun, and not get repetitive.

I really think this is a game that needs to succeed in all it's departments, it can't afford to have a weak link that's gonna drag the game down. Bioware's reputation has been really damaged these past few years, they need to knock this one out of the park. I'm not saying the game NEEDS to be fantastic or a 10/10, but it needs to be great. It doesn't have to revolutionize gaming, or set a new bar, it just needs to be a really fun game with an engaging story.

I don't expect this to be the "turnaround" people might have been waiting for since BioWare went downhill. I think this is another Mass Effect, hopefully a good one, but I'm putting my money on the new IP for the time being even if it's not RPG.

I have not played a BioWare game since ME2 where I felt everything was the way it should be. I didn't mind the streamlining of elements of ME1 and personally I think ME2's story is fine as a standalone and as a minor continuation of the main arc and the game was very, very impressive to me back in 2010, graphically, systematically and in terms of gameplay. What ME2 did in my eyes was take what was so intriguing about ME1 but incorporate those ideas with more trendy ideas that I personally loved, and it put the game on par with titles like InFamous and Uncharted that I didn't expect to be drawing comparisons to with an RPG and it was so impressive to see decent to fantastic animation and realistic-looking characters in a game that had more than twice the cinematic content of an Uncharted or another action game, and really ME2 felt like the peak of what the gaming industry could offer and where gaming was going back in 2010 IMHO.

I just don't think ME:A even has a chance of being that for 2017's AAA industry. I think it'll be a middling game but with elements you don't always see otherwise in most other AAA titles such as the extensive RPG-story mechanics coupled with action gameplay. Animation, graphics and gameplay-polish will not be impressive I don't think and sadly I think particularly the story will disappoint again. There's something about BioWare story-execution that has changed in the last 5 years I think and it only got worse between ME2, ME3 and DA:I.

ME3 did have some wonderful plot-moments though. It just didn't feel like a good story at the end because of the ending IMO. It was the point where everything should've come together but it just started falling apart right from the end of the Cerberus HQ mission and then further and then suddenly everything took an even further nosedive in the very final scene. For the game after that, Dragon Age Inquisition, I just found there were absolutely flat attempts at executing on the story left and right all throughout. It's left me with very little comfort in the thought of Andromeda delivering a good tale as a whole. DA:I was full of cop outs and skips and meandering, and the emphasis on story was sometimes superceded by the attempt at just designing a game that was reliant on the game-systems and story was just an offspring of the game design rather than the opposite. That philosophy also applied to ME3 with how often the story needs to find excuses to throw you into combat. Every mission began with "Commander, we can't land there directly, you need to move in on foot!" and then you had a combat level. In ME2 you usually started with some dialogue or simply landed in an uncontested area full of mercenaries or Geth because you were in the terminus systems.

I'll be somewhat impressed if ME:A at some point has one entire mission that is as long as the Halamshiral ball in DA:I where combat is 100% optional.

But I've sort of given up here. That's why, if BioWare really thinks their games should be about having great gameplay as a primary design principle, I want that to be as good as it can be or all you get is a completely middling, so-so game experience that doesn't master any of its respective qualities.