The criticism regarding MEA Squadmates vs Trilogy squadmates is questionable
Mar 22, 2017 1:47:40 GMT
Post by Link"Guess"ski on Mar 22, 2017 1:47:40 GMT
Almost every review I found compared the squad of this game to "the trilogy" which is something I find strangely misleading and it surprises me those reviewers don't seem to realize why that is too much to ask for.
If you're comparing them to the trilogy you're talking about 3 games where ME1 set up the characters, ME2 expanded some of them and ME3 took them all further. Now granted, I don't think Cora holds a candle to my Ashley and particularly Drack and Vetra I find to be rather unoriginal at times, and maybe PeeBee is hit or miss... whatever, this is a game with a different tone, a new flavor, it runs across the board and whether they hold up to that quality is debatable, but if you wanna compare these guys to anything it should be to the companions of ME1 by exclusion and no cheating by adding in how much you liked Garrus by ME3 after he had developed a lot.
Everything is slightly more generic becuase it's the beginning. Some of it is also because the MEA writing team is not as efficient as the guys that wrote ME1 (quite a lot in fact) and personally I can really feel the skimping on lore where you can sorta excuse it on the fact that "it's only Heleus" or that there's no lore because we have to discover it first, and while I'm skeptical I lean towards the latter idea which also goes hand in hand with the fact that we play as Ryder who is the ultimate youngster.
In many ways I find this game to be like The Force Awakens. It's like this teenage reboot of Mass Effect for better or for worse but the far most fascinating aspect of it is how Ryder can be compared to Shepard and by that comparison you know that by a potential Andromeda 2 or 3 he will face his version of the "Akuze" mission which leaves him forever changes somehow. The same goes for the squad. They can feel unimportant and too fast and loose because most of them are young and inexperienced and unabashed. In this sense it cannot even be compared to ME1 but people are too quick to have expectations of how emotional they felt about the series after 1 and 2 leading up to 3 and compare MEA to that; an impossible goal.
I'm curious about whether you guys find MEA's squad more or less interesting than the team of Inquisition though, which was almost the same thing (however we had Varric and Cassandra from DA2... and Hawke, and the setting). I personally believe the reviewer complaints in this regard are a load of horseshit unless it somehow ties into what the ending is. I posted it here because some are not playing the game until 23rd and I wanna talk about this in general terms and not "well, PeeBee does this and that which means her motivation blablabla". Keep it top-down perspective and think about the concept and do or don't bring your general impressions from playing it but keep out specific spoilers.
If you're comparing them to the trilogy you're talking about 3 games where ME1 set up the characters, ME2 expanded some of them and ME3 took them all further. Now granted, I don't think Cora holds a candle to my Ashley and particularly Drack and Vetra I find to be rather unoriginal at times, and maybe PeeBee is hit or miss... whatever, this is a game with a different tone, a new flavor, it runs across the board and whether they hold up to that quality is debatable, but if you wanna compare these guys to anything it should be to the companions of ME1 by exclusion and no cheating by adding in how much you liked Garrus by ME3 after he had developed a lot.
Everything is slightly more generic becuase it's the beginning. Some of it is also because the MEA writing team is not as efficient as the guys that wrote ME1 (quite a lot in fact) and personally I can really feel the skimping on lore where you can sorta excuse it on the fact that "it's only Heleus" or that there's no lore because we have to discover it first, and while I'm skeptical I lean towards the latter idea which also goes hand in hand with the fact that we play as Ryder who is the ultimate youngster.
In many ways I find this game to be like The Force Awakens. It's like this teenage reboot of Mass Effect for better or for worse but the far most fascinating aspect of it is how Ryder can be compared to Shepard and by that comparison you know that by a potential Andromeda 2 or 3 he will face his version of the "Akuze" mission which leaves him forever changes somehow. The same goes for the squad. They can feel unimportant and too fast and loose because most of them are young and inexperienced and unabashed. In this sense it cannot even be compared to ME1 but people are too quick to have expectations of how emotional they felt about the series after 1 and 2 leading up to 3 and compare MEA to that; an impossible goal.
I'm curious about whether you guys find MEA's squad more or less interesting than the team of Inquisition though, which was almost the same thing (however we had Varric and Cassandra from DA2... and Hawke, and the setting). I personally believe the reviewer complaints in this regard are a load of horseshit unless it somehow ties into what the ending is. I posted it here because some are not playing the game until 23rd and I wanna talk about this in general terms and not "well, PeeBee does this and that which means her motivation blablabla". Keep it top-down perspective and think about the concept and do or don't bring your general impressions from playing it but keep out specific spoilers.