Zelda's reviews impacting ME:A?

If Mass Effect Andromeda is crazy awesome it might get a few less 10s thrown at it because people will feel like they shouldn't give them out too regularly.

But that'd be a really good problem to have.  I don't see there being much effect otherwise

It's crazy how we're living in a time now, where we're worried about the reviews a Bioware game will get. Until this year, the biggest concerns Bioware fans would have, is who they can romance.

I get it though. EA/Bioware have done a truly terrible job marketing this game.

Both of them are tackling more open world RPG elements with exploration, side quests, crafting, freedom to play how you want doing missions when you want.  Even though Zelda and Horizon have again set the bars pretty high, I don't think that just immediately raises expectations for Mass Effect.  Expectations were already raised considering this is a new console generation for Mass Effect allowing the devs to go above and beyond what they accomplished with the original trilogy.  If it's the same old Mass Effect where the added features aren't impacting, innovative, or just well executed, then no, it won't do great (maybe good) with reviews.  People expect fresh, expansive, innovative experiences considering the more powerful technology and high quality game releases over the past few years.  

ME:A doesn't need to copy the Witcher 3 or Zelda or Dragon Age to be great, but it can't feel like the old games.

Games should be compared against one another, it's the only way they improve. And I'm glad HZD and Zelda are doing well, Bioware needs a kick to the arse to perform. For now it looks like they still haven't learnt even after TW3 handed DAI it's ass on a platter.

OP might actually be right. Zelda BotW is such a polished game it's crazy. So going from a beautifully polished game, to one that has jank facial animations and buggy gameplay, then yea that's probably going to get on some reviewers nerves.

Are we next going to make a thread about "Angry Bird's reviews impacting MEA" or "Candy Crush reviews impacting MEA"? Come on man... You're killing me here!!!

Let me put this into perspective for you... Nintendo is shipping with two million Nintendo Switch units in the US, alone. Barely anyone has a Wii U. It doesn't matter what kind of reviews Breath of the Wild receives because NO ONE HAS IT. MEA, on the other hand, is on X1, PS4, and PC. It's going to sell millions more copies than Breath of the Wild ever could, regardless of the reviews!

Get on your feet and dance to the beat, OP!!!

MEA did have development issues last year, which is why it was delayed... To be perfectly honest, what major AAA studio doesn't have development issues making an incredibly ambitious game? The answer is "none." Rockstar San Diego struggled to get Red Dead Redemption to even run without it crashing for years, and it became GotY in 2010. Bethesda Game Studios has had development issues with all of its games, and every single one has won GotY awards. Every single Legend of Zelda game has had development issues and delays due to problems, yet they generally are always good and polished experiences.

In other words, this is to be expected with a game this large and this ambitious. BioWare has never done anything like MEA before. Not to mention, it's BioWare Montreal, and not BioWare Edmonton, that's the principal developer. We also have to consider the fact that the team had to build Mass Effect from scratch on an entirely new engine and create tools for the sole purpose of the game. This has been a long, grueling, and tiring process. Does that mean the game is going to bomb? Absolutely not. Am I disappointed the MP Tech Test was cancelled? You better believe I am. Does that mean I'm any less excited to play this game in two weeks? Definitely not!!!

I'd say "bad animations are all over the place" is a bit of a stretch. Besides facial animations, the rest of the animations in the game are top notch. It's normal for a game at this point before release to still have bugs, especially when it's this large. What the gaming media also forgot to say is that they were playing MEA at 4K with GPUs that can't maintain a solid 60 fps, so many of the performance issues won't be a factor for most gamers. We won't know whether the game is a disaster at launch until we play it. I'll be one of the first so I'll certainly let you know if the sky is falling!

Who cares? If MEA's metacritic goes down a few points because people are comparing it to Zelda, it doesn't really matter.

And I personally don't even blame Bioware in this instance because some people can't follow an agreement 

Hopefully it does. At this point in time a lot of the old staff have left Bioware. If Andromeda comes out and it's pretty average, then that doesn't spell out a bright future for Bioware.

I wouldn't say it really makes them foolish because some people still need to realize that everything before the game goes gold has a chance to be changed or taken out. Along with the fact the reason that was taken out possibly had to do with the fact that it couldn't work on the PS3 and 360