Is it really that bad?

I'm talking about the game. You'd think Ryder could emote a little after what happened in the first mission eh? Despite Geralt being a Witcher he does more of that than what we've seen so far from Ryder.

I would agree based on Youtube video snippets.Which is not the best basis I know, but... either every conversation I've seen is somehow one of the few really terrible examples in an otherwise excellent narrative or the writing really is embarrassingly bad.

I wonder if it's an age thing. I wonder how old all the people are who like me don't like what they're seeing. I'm 32 years old and to me the game feels like it was made by and for 12-year old kids. If "young people" enjoy the writing and that is Bioware's target audience, then this very unfortunate for me but cannot be helped. I enjoyed every Bioware game I played. I was never a hater. I never held a grudge because of ME3. I LOVED that game, still do. I enjoyed DAI at the time (would probably enjoy it a lot less now after Witcher 3). I was super hyped until two weeks ago when I caved in and watched gameplay. What a shock that was...

I feel like MEA has turned me into one of those old grumpy gamers complaining about kids these days having no standards at all. It's a disturbing development. How did I turn into an old lady  kids roll their eyes at the same way I rolled my eyes at my own parents? GODDAMN...

Seriously though. MEA looks like the polar opposite of the nerdy Mass Effect I fell in love with. It's not even DAI in space. It's The Sims in space to me. The flat ugly lighting, cartoon faces and cringy dialogue. What a welcome change from the teen JRPGs of my youth the mature story of ME1 was. No teenage heroes. Regular believable adult people. It was marvelous. Ten years later suddenly Bioware is making me feel too old for games again...

If only I actually liked old school top down RPGs like Pillars of Eternity. But I don't. I don't like many games anymore in general. I don't want to give up on Bioware, but if this is the new Bioware, I'm out.

That said, I still want to play and see for myself. I WANT this game to be better than these early impressions. I know DAI got a lot better after arriving at Skyhold, and that took a while. And the Mythal quest very late in the game has some of the best scenes in any game to me. But I'm not holding my breath it will be a similar experience.

/ramblings of an aging gamer

I peeped that, I'm currently ignoring a hand full of users who clearly have some kinda agenda against the game.


I've seen an hour of the game played, a walkthrough and it honestly looks amazing.
Flaws: CC, faces

I mean there's no excuse for this, BIOWARE put that on themselves.

However, the character personalities, story and environments look good.

I don't think we will know if this is "Dragon Age Inquisition in space" until the full game comes out. The exploration in the trial is restricted but we will apparently be able to explore a lot more later in the game on that planet and others, plus i've read that other planets are far more interesting. The side quests I can already tell will be more interesting than Inquisition, but the ones I played still seemed quite bare bones. Bioware needs to think about what made their side quests in the past better than what was in Inquisition. The actual quests themselves were often simple as hell but you would meet interesting characters, learn more about the world and the various different cultures, factions ect. Can't do that when you are wondering around a planet with nobody on it. Still there are a few quests that were kind of interesting and hopefully there will be more/better ones later.

The problem with Inquisition was not that there were huge areas, it was that it seemed to be there at the expense of side quests. Even the main quest was quite short. So we ended up with massive beautiful areas full of nothing and only a handful of the side quests were at all memorable.

Do you have any idea how Sapkowski defines Geralt and the inconsistency between TW3 and the ending of Lady of Lake? Please don't make yourself more laughable.

Everyone knows how mature Mass Effect is.

I think it's fair to criticize the writing of Andromeda if you don't like it, no matter the reason. I do think though that people are forgetting how stupid dialogues were sometimes/often in the trilogy...and how certain characters in the first weren't really characters, but walking codexes.

There's nothing wrong with deserts per se, but they're way overdone in sci-fi. It will be nice to move on to other planets that aren't deserts. I'd also like to see more wildlife that we can interact with that doesn't want to kill us and is furry for a change.

I honestly don't get the claims at bad writing. There are only so many ways one can deliver exposition. As someone who plays lots of RPGs I thought it is all very par for the course. Maybe it is just that there is a lot of overlap lore form the trilogy? I mean yes it was kinda annoying to have a conversation about the genophage yet again. But for someone who did not play the trilogy that will be important information for later.

I think the better question is why would a relatively tiny patch of a planet you're allowed to explore have more than one climate? 

I agree in principle.

But what I disagree with is people writing off the writing of the entire game as being atrocious for that very reason.

Stupid dialogues and deliveries exist in every Mass Effect game...

I don't. To be fair it does depend on what people are expecting. I expected something between a 'movie dialog' and something that could be taken for a real conversation half of the time - with enough fumbling and sort of spontaneous, sometimes awkward moments to be taken as believable.

I can't say I was disappointed. They've projected the tone that was set for the game - of hopeful young immigrants to another galaxy that were immediately dashed into rocks as they approached shore and desperately scramble to make sense of situation they're in.

I don't necessarily think that what I've seen is absolute best thing ever, but the worst dialogue experienced in games, overall? Nah, not even close.