AngryJoe's review on MEA

That's still valuable. He's the everyman Mass Effect fan, not the hardcore fan like we are. You need to provide a satisfying comprehensive experience to both audiences and I too feel Joe's pain since I wasn't completely in Mass Effect Mode when I began this game, and there are so many times when you can tell BioWare mistakenly targeted just the fans with the way this game is delivered.

Aliens are foreign? Well, sometimes they aren't but we're not gonna explain that, because FANS know from the codex why the translation will work automatically!
Big plot reveal about the Quarians and Drell etc.? FANS are gonna LOVE This!
Look at the new companions, you're gonna love this!

But they make so many missteps here in terms of informing a newcomer or even fans like me why I should care. I think the crew got better after the Loyalty missions for sure, but as Joe says, before those their introductions were terrible, and that's this game in a nutshell - it has an awfully unconvincing introduction that does not draw you in, neither to the plot, the setting and premise nor the companions and given BioWare's focus it's especially the companions that are a problem here. You cannot just show a scene of a Turian guiding us to a Ship after we randomly become the new leader-figure and don't care about our dad's death (which should be big stakes) and then without further notice presume we wanna care about Vetra. You cannot just show a random cool scene with a random Krogan with a semi-unique design and then assume we want him as our next tagalong. Gil is BORING but at least the incentive to talk to him makes sense because he's a mechanic dude on the ship we just got.

PeeBee is better for example. We're trying to figure out what happened to the ecosystems on planets and we're looking into these Remnant structures. Boom, PeeBee the self-proclaimed archeologist of the Remnant shows up and informs us of what we're doing and what her relevance to it is.  Cora and Liam make sense. They're just our buddies, however, the intro mission does nothing special to make either of them memorable and personally speaking I think Liam's Loyalty mission was some of the worst Guardians of the Galaxy tryhard BS that didn't fit with the tone of anything else in the game.

Mac said that for this game's conception they started with characters. They just threw ideas around and thought "what sort of characters would player like to see after MET?" but because of this backwards planning they couldn't find a reasonable spot to place Vetra or Drack into and some of the rest also just feel very tacked on unless you really force yourself to invest in them. Then, it also doesn't help how extremely limited companion customization is because it removes "character focus" from the game-design and in its turn, with Ryder being an all-in-one powerhouse, it feels like this game is laser-targeted on Ryder being in the middle of everything. Shepard was always handled more moderately because the companions were so strong and bringing them along was good because they'd all have at least one ability you didn't (in ME2 at least).

I did like the return to exclusively cutscene conversations on the ship though. I hope BioWare never moves away from this again.

What, like the human reaper?

Anyway, agree about the introduction of vetra being awful. She just sort of turns up.

^

Very true. I'm a massive fan of the game and was looking forward to the release more than I have been looking forward to a game since, well, ME3. There's no way in hell I'd give this game anything above a 6/10. Which positively pains me to say.

I honestly can't understand people who say the writing in MEA is good, or fine. Do you watch Cartoon Network all day? Is Ratchet and Clank your favorite series? Are you at the mental age of 12? If so, I can see where you're coming from. But for us adults, who can't gloss over cartoony representation of serious issues, or characters who are supposedly among the best, brightest, toughest and most capable of their species, acting like teenagers (and that's an insult to the many level-headed teenagers out there), the writing is honestly insultingly juvenile 95% of the time.

The only companions that SORT OF didn't get on my nerves all the time are Vetra and Jaal - and even they have their cringe moments or overused banter ("What would Sid say if she saw this mountain/cave/sunrise?"). Drack is mostly boring and sounds like a cliche Krogan, not to mention the voice actor sounds completely disconnected from his lines, like hes just reading things in a "Krogan voice". And I fucking LOVE Krogans.

On top of that, you have almost 0 opportunity to roleplay. Almost all dialogue options lead exactly to the same place. In OT we had 2 options generally speaking, with mostly different results, in general conversations. Now we have 1 option in 95% of the conversations, but we can say it like a douchie man/woman-child or like a boring, by-the-book, jesus figure.

Not gonna expand on poorly presented/uninspired/unoriginal concepts like the joke that was "first contact", ancient alien tech/species hidden in ruins, creature reskins like dogs or Fiends on different planets being essentially the same. This is a new galaxy, I get that you want the humanoid race, that's a genre trope, fine. But with creatures you can go fucking insane! It's a new galaxy! Where's your imagination?? I'm thinking about movies like Arrival which present aliens as truly, well, ALIEN. You can do things with changing size or form (think puffer fish concept applied in different ways), simbiotic creatures, morphing colors, fucking anything that isn't dude-with-gun, dog, or brute. Ascendants fit the bill - they're the only ones I can think of.

To all the people who loved the writing, have you read any books besides young adult fiction? Do you consider Guardians of the Galaxy the best movie of the last 10 years and anything with Marvel in it a masterpiece? If you answered no to the first and yes to the last, I can at least understand where you're coming from.

If you read this entire rant, "Thank you Pathfinder". *shoots self in the face*.

Quick quick, call his credibility into account because I don't like what he said about my game.

Nice insult

It's easier for you to say which character turned out terrible, since you started it.

Nah, there isn't a bigger cringe than the one I got with the infamous "We dismissed that claim." ME2 can be a cringe fest, starting with Shepard's death. Yup.

So, Peter Parker isn't relatable because he has super powers and fights super villains? Even if his creation followed the principle of making teens and children relate to him? Do you realize how much stupid your point is?

I dunno about you, but I'm living my twenties and I had to be part of a diplomatic mission an year after I left college, no real experience. So, hell fuckin' yes, I can put myself in Ryder's shoes.

And, for real, in the words of Dutch, stop being a cuck and refrain yourself from throwing "fanboy" into every argument you feel insecure about it.

And that's all you get from that?  "I'm insulted"?

Hooooooooollllllllllllly shit.

And now, "I'm insulted because you called me out for being insulted"?  

Holy fuck man, it'd be funny if it weren't just so damned sad.

I'm glad that you speak for all fans of Mass Effect. It must be a heavy burden to bear, truly. 

Do YOU realize how stupid YOUR point about Peter Parker in context of our discussion? No one would complain about Peter Parker because as you said it yourself - he was designed to appeal to children and teens. The problem with Andromeda is that Ryder=Peter Parker, except that Mass Effect was never a sci-fi teen drama. So naturally fans of original trilogy were expecting story and character writing at the very least on the level of original trilogy - imagine the outrage if CDPRed would release Witcher 3 except make Geralt and everyone around him talk and behave like 16 year olds with a comparative story to boot. If BW were intending to make a game for younger audience, then they should have made it clear and not tried to cash in on Mass Effect fanbase. And I am not talking about tone of the game - I am perfectly fine with tone in Andromeda being lighter and more adventurous compared to more grim tone of OT, but that does not mean that lead character cast and story should be on a teen fanfic level of writing. Again, Spiderman is perfectly fine because the way it does things perfectly corresponds with the way it was intended to do thing, but Andromeda with Mass Effect title infront doesn't - that series were never presented as a teen and socalled young adults centric.  Right now, at least from mature point of view, it feels that Andromeda Initiative are not the milky way's fines and brightest, but most moronic, immature, queer and mentally challenged collection of loosers that were sent to Andromeda with a sole purpose of getting rid of them. 

I am living my 30's, and when I was Ryder age, I already had 3 marks from gunshot wounds on my body, just to put things into perspective, yet all that was happening did not made me into goofy moron because "it is Ryder way of coping with harsh reality" thing, but neither it made me into grumpy grognard for that matter. Its just that when things get serious, so does a person, especially when one has a lot of responsibility for others, but Ryder seems to be not even half-aware of what is going on around.

As for throwing "fanboy" around - sorry, but that's not an insult but a description of exact impression that ppl, who claim to be adult but advocate this game protagonist and character writing, leave. Sorry if you got insulted, triggered or whatever - "I can be insensitive"(c)Ryder (Right BW, as if there is no other option in existence to politely agree to disagree than to just keel over. No bias and propaganda at all...)