Rock, Paper, Shotgun critical Preview and Skill Up response

My one response to the rock, paper, shotgun article is they must of also hated the first several hours of Witcher 3 as well. Games of this size, especially when you are trying to introduce new people into the franchise, need to start out a slower pace. It doesn't need to be for tutorial reasons but more for lore building reasons.

I loved Witcher 3's slow beginning hours, and besides the human facial animations, I've loved watching the beginning 4 or 5 hours of Mass Effect: Andromeda so far on twitch.

But I understand that's not for everyone. I still know people who bought the Witcher 3 and didn't like the first 10 hours because they were so slow causing them to stop playing the game entirely.

I think that guy was a hater.

Update: concerned about no bad guy Ryder though. I think that should at least be an option. 

I'm not concerned on this front. If this is really the "spiritual successor" to ME1 that Bioware and some previewers have described it as, of course it will be slower at the start. The first 10-15 minutes of ME1 are talking on the Normandy. That's followed by a brief combat mission with arguably more talking than fighting, followed by more talking on the Normandy, followed by (if you're like me) ten hours of talking on the Citadel, with some (usually optional) gunplay thrown in every once and a while. I think people have fresher memories of ME2 and 3 which just jump head-first into the action and plot. I prefer slow builds myself. And the first few hours of a game that likely spans 60+ hours for many players is not enough time to give a full and complete critique of characterization, good or bad.

I read that rps guys review, yeah, theres a lot of bs there, i just cant take that guy seriously anymore. That game he describes, its not the game i watched 4 hours of footage off.

Except Skill Up never said the story wasn't good, just that the moment to moment dialogue has never been BioWare's strongest suit, where characters are what they do best.  He also praises the voice acting and writing in turn, but says he also preferred the old renegade/paragon bi-tone response system, something that's going to be somewhat divisive I reckon going forward.

I think it has to be said that Mass Effect is just as much about the combat now as the rest of the adventure: they have put a lot of effort into making it one of the best third person shooters alongside an amazing space RPG, I think it's time we acknowledge that Mass Effect is now combat 'heavy', especially with the added effort being put into the multiplayer suite (which is the reason many are keen on ME:A).

Recognising the strengths of the franchise going forward, not what it's not, is the key to Mass Effect: Andromeda's success IMO.

Brilliant combat, awesome adventures in space with camaraderie up the wazoo: sign me up Alec, sign. me. up.

I can recognize a shift in priorities without being chuffed about it tho.

For the second half of your sentence, it feels weird to me that I, as a consumer, should be morphing my expectations to better fit the product they're selling me for the sake of their  success. Instead of them making a product I might actually, yah know, want. Now if you'd said "Well maybe you're not the target market anymore and adapt or die" that would have been much more palatable.

The Kotaku reviewer seems to love every single aspect of it. So you guys are trashing the negative review because it didn't list any positive features, but when somebody sounds like they're writing an ad then it's better? That's some serious bias as well.
Kotaku says the character creator got improved! LMAO. I'm sorry... Did you hear that the CC won't allow you to customize facial features?!? Just hair and scars and weird face paint. So this is proven bullshit right there. The presets all look awful. Like ME1 level inbred neanderthals. And that's not a good thing ten years later... I've never seen a CC this bad in many years. My fellow Bioware fan colleagues were in shock today when we watched the CC video together. "This is a joke, right?" No, it's not a joke.

If your impression of the game aligns with Kotaku, that's fine. Mine seems to match the other one. So why would I not trust the review that backs up my impression? It's not confirmation bias. I REALLY thought the game could not possibly be worse than DAI. And I LIKED DAI. So DAI in space while slightly disappointing a notion wasn't that bad a thing to me as it was for others. I thought it was reasonable to expect improvements in the areas of the game that got a lot of flak. Like the MMO fetch quests. I'm not a DAI hater at all. I was super happy still with Bioware until very recently.

I wanted to like this game so badly. I really did. I wanted to buy it without reading/watching any spoilers. But after hearing a friend go on and on about how bad it looks, I caved in last week and took a look at gameplay footage myself. And I sadly have to agree. It breaks my heart. I wish I felt differently about what is being shown. But every new video just makes it worse.

Just because I don't share the positive vibe here on this forum, doesn't mean you're not allowed to be excited. I envy you. I just REALLY can't understand how this looks good to you guys. You can't understand why I'm so disappointed. That is the nature of subjectivity. Apologies if I come off as rude sometimes. I'm just really really sad right now about what Mass Effect has become. I never thought I'd be saying I'm glad they changed the setting. The further away this game is from the trilogy and Shepard, the better. This way I can pretend it doesn't exist. Like season 9 of Scrubs and Final Fantasy X-2....

You should probably give Geralt another shot. Slow start also means with geralt as a character. Witcher 3 was my first Witcher game and I wasn't a fan of him at first either. Once I really got to know the guy, he's one of my favorite video game protagonists. There's a lot more to the bland, gravely voice mutant who likes to poke things

I looked at it completely different. You are abruptly thrown in to the role clearly unqualified. Everything goes to shit quickly to set up all these questions. The slowness comes from opening sequence and then everything in the nexus. I guess we'll see after we play all the way through. I think things left unclear or that seemed jarring in terms of story will resurface later.

Yeah but 7/10 for Breath of the Wild is kind of ridiculous when you sit down and play it.

The only real failing is how compartmentalized dungeons have become, but for an on the go experience it's perfect length. They played it to the Nintendo Switch's strengths in that instance, I feel.