So.... I got Andromeda Early... [NO SPOILERS]

Gonna drop by Ottawa any time soon? *grin*

Nah, congrats on the game. I'm surprised you can play so early.. I'm pretty sure if they had a physical disk for PC and I installed it, Origin would prevent me from playing. One up for the consoles I guess!

By the way, people have been complaining about the writing quality as well, in general conversations. I know this is subjective, but did you think it was on par with past games?

(Note I said on par, making no claim that past writing was stellar )

And did you experience any strange slowdowns, like everything started moving in slow motion? I'm wondering if that problem exists only on PC.

Haha, if only. 

I suppose I could ship out to Ottawa, but I've never done anything like that before. Perhaps it's something I'd consider? 

On the point of conversations - the one major change I've noticed is that the conversations seem a lot more streamlined. Unlike Mass Effect 2 or 3, where sometimes you had to listen to an entire speech from a character before having the chance to speak, in Andromeda, it seems, at most, that characters deliver two or three "blobs" of conversation before you have the chance to interject. 

I don't know whether I would say it's a step back. Personally I loved the world building that those long convos provided in ME1 and ME2 (long talks with Wrex about the Genophage, or with Tali about her people and the Pilgrimage). But they don't really feel necessary here, given that everything is so new and mysterious. 

What I will say - *****SLIGHT SPOILER WARNING****

At the end of each major Priority Operation, you get to debrief your team on the Tempest - those conversations are my favorite, because they feel organic, natural, and as well written as any that we experienced in the previous ME games. 

I know that's quite non-committal to your question, but just my thoughts on the conversation writing at this point. 

You can PM me and we can further discuss. 

And yes, I know what you mean. Not that world building doesn't occur here, it's just not done in great big exposition dumps like before. 

The other thing I forgot to mention about conversations - the banter between your Ryder and your crew borders between ridiculous and cringeworthy, to genuinely funny. 

Shepherd had a handful of quirky moments that people loved, but this is much lighter in tone, and you can be quite playful and sarcastic as Ryder, which I'm really enjoying. Helps establish a much lighter tone. 

If you played a male Ryder , did you see romance lines available with Jaal per chance?
Lots of people would really like to know.

Forgot to address this earlier- major performance issues. 

Slow downs, hitching, frame rate drops, game failing to recognize controller inputs if streaming off Xbox One, and 2 full game crashes so far. 

It's not a PC specific thing

I'll have a proper answer later today, as I've only been focusing on the priority operation planets so far. 

It seems to me as though most of the planets are just scannable planets, rather than free open planets to land on. 

But I'll verify and get back to you. 

Oh wow I am insanely jealous right now, I have the misfortune of living in the UK and our release date of the 23rd feels like 60000 years away right now!

A question if you get chance - you mention missions being broken and preventing progress - are any of them related to achievements? (Therefore making some achievements currently unable to be unlocked) or to your knowledge are all achievements ok and working? Thank you very much.

Ah that's a relief! Cheers mate. All my 100+ games on my GT are 100% complete so it was stressing me out thinking it might have achievement issues!

Here's a couple more of me just being nosey -
What is your favourite team mate combo so far? Have you stuck to one class or just got your favourite abilities regardless of class? Would you say this is your favourite Mass Effect game?

Are there other examples of squadmate abilities differing from what Ryder gets besides

So, the main story planets are the ones that you can land on. 

They are massive in scope and size, and take several hours to clear the entire map and collect everything / do most missions. 

All the other planets in this galaxy are simply scannable planets, with a handful of them containing anomalies of things you want to collect. 

In many ways, it's more like ME3's planetary exploration, rather than ME1's. 

Hope that helps