Open World Discussion: MEA vs the Rest

1.
It's decent enough, but more variety in the worlds, maybe at the cost of sheer size would have helped. We have 2 out of 5 as deserts. DAI got me spoiled, Haakon, Emerald Graves, Storm Coast. . . all different and colorful. Not ginormous, but fairly large anyway.

2. I loved W3, Horizon and Skyrim because I can roam, get totally immersed in a detailed area. Skyrim is moddable, so infinitely re playable (for me). Horizon had a stunning amount packed into their world. Witcher 3 was just plain gorgeous, Skellige being one of my favorite worlds period

3. I loved the idea of bringing this type of gameplay into ME, but for what it's worth if they can't integrate day/night cycles, the huge deserts in particular feel exhausting and samey after a while. I definitely want to see more of this concept in future Mass Effect games, but refined with details like Horizon and change up the atmosphere with weather, time of day, that sort of thing so it won't get stale. Also smaller but more variation -  think of the weird environments we could see . . .

Personally, I would have traded in the ability to drive the Nomad for 30 minutes across Elaaden in order to have more Havarl type/sized areas. Maybe instead of 5 huge empty spaces, 8 or 9 medium size like in DAI. Just an opinion though.

You are comparing tasks in Andromeda to the question marks on the map you can do in TW3. Sure neither are massively meaningful though I do feel like I got a lot more actually useful stuff and was more challenged by those quests in TW3 than I was by the Andromeda ones, on the other hand tasks in Andromeda sometimes have party dialogue or end with some kind of meaningful resolution. 

The actual side quests though, like the ones with actual writing and npc's you can talk to ect, The Witcher 3 just has far more and they are far more detailed. Andromeda has a few interesting side plots, like it totally beats Inquisition for side quests but it doesn't come close to The Witcher 3. The main story in the Witcher 3 is also not sacrificed in any way for the open world. 

I like open world games that nail the world building and lore, really get the side missions to be meaty and involved, rich with npc interaction/well written dialogue/dialogue choices, really get the side missions to help build the world and make it fully realised & feel lived in dripping in atmosphere & meaningful details etc... and tbh OP the only game outta your list there that does that and that Mass Effect could learn from is The Witcher 3(for the Mass Effect series itself, ME2 also does this very well). All the other open worlds games you listed OP there fail at that imo(though Horizon & Zelda are still very well realised worlds just not very interesting worlds imo. GTA:V, RDR, Assassins Creed, Fallout 4, Skyrim etc etc... forget about it, not even close. All varying levels of crap. None of those games have anything that Mass Effect could learn from). I dislike ME:A because it too fails at what i mentioned. Plus its large, lifeless, barron MMO style maps where the encounters all play the same. Where there's nothing to actually see or do or to find to make exploration worthwhile etc.. it all just feels rather pointless & bland. Open world for the sake it because thats what is popular right now.

Well ME:A, like many have said, is not true open world. On top of that our environs that we get to play in are very static. Each planet that we get to drive on should have a weather system and day/night cycle. Planets like Eos and Voled should have severe weather that ties into the hazard system. Having NPCs accordingly react to day/night and weather would help significantly with the open world feel.

My point is that open world is about the map or content but about how npcs react in said environs. Open world for me will always be about getting immersed in the world, not the story. I don't think any game that has multiple zones can ever fully achieve the open world feel. TW3 did a good job but I never went aimlessly exploring in it. Skyrim on the other hand manage to make me do that.

sorry if this post dosent make much sense I'm high on pain meds

No, I don't.

Like most of the rest of the game I found the open world areas just "meh". The idea is good the execution just needs work. Maybe too many fetch quests? I wouldn't be sad to see less of them but they are just kinda things to do on the way to other stuff. I do them or ignore as I please.

I think a major part of the problem is, how many flat barren worlds do we need? Eos, Voeld, and Elladen are all basically different colors of the same thing (gee why does that sound familiar?). Kadara was just different enough to not include, but its close. The only one that really stands out is Havarl.

If Bioware can make their open world areas more diverse and more interesting with less blank space to cover I think it would have been fine.

Hate to break reality to you... but I didn't say anything about TW3's quests in general.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Once again...

Context mate. But then when you yell strawman thinking you won the argument, I shouldn't expect better.

Open_world is just a feature... a mean to an end.

In the case of MEA, as stated by BW, the end was "exploration".

Overall I would have been happy with a more linear story oriented game, because they can control the pacing and, simply put, that's what they have been doing for a long time now and there was little chance of any bad surprise.

But the idea of exploration is a good one, very fit for the new game in many ways : as the start of a new franchise to make us discover the new settings (andromeda in this case), as a space opera trope (ala star trek "go where no one has gone before"), as a way to discover the game differently each time we start a new game...

That said, I was first surprised we didn't go where we want on the galaxy map from the start. We are the pathfinder, we should go exploring and start by the planet we wish, it would have made the exploration on the galaxy map more exiting as we would never know, maybe the planet we are going to scan is settlable/landable?? (randomize their position to prevent the player to know where they are after the first walkthrough). On this note, twice as many planets, even if much smaller, would have done wonder for that.

Now the issue I have with BW take on exploration really starts once on planet. We end up not exploring, but running errands, with combat most of the time, sure, but errands none the less. What I mean is that we follow waypoints, we don't drive randomly hoping to find something interresting. Clearly BW has created open-world environments, but unfortunately has decided to make filler content for it (yup MMO style). Even then it wouldn't have been TOO bad if they had respected a better ratio between premium content and filler in the game, but unfortunately, the premium content is both diluted and fragmented in the middle of the filler, breaking the immersion in them as soon as we start getting interrested by what's going on.

The feeling of exploration would have appeared if we stumbled "by accident" on quests while driving through the map.

I see two ways to achieve that, either by strong visual clues (would have requiered from BW a lot of handcrafting work on said maps so we could see from a good distance places interresting to investigate), or with a minimap on the nomad and fog of war (interesting spots being detected by some sort of short range radar).

Rewards for the visit of said sites could have been multiple : some interresting loot, the ability to use a cryo pod to have a few scientists work on the site, or soldiers garding it, or workers mining it (shouldn't be to hard to spawn a few npcs who do the job on site next time you come by), or clues to another site (for a "treasure chest" quest chain).

As I said in a previous post, to me the kind of open-world they were trying to achieve, "exploration focused" should have been similar to what bethesda has been doing for years, best example being morrowind (or the more recent skyrim).



EDIT : I realize I was a bit short when it came to examples. so... for example... it would have loved it much more if we had stumbled by accident on a subterrean lake on eladeen, increasing viability, or on Eos, a low radiation low thriving with life, or on Kadara, a water processor which we could reactivate etc... increasing viability. Instead of that, either we are pushed there by waypoints, either we activate monoliths... BW Montreal really has some weird fetish with the number 3 btw... all MEA we have to activate 3 monoliths, destroy 3 generators etc... even for the end mission....

Yes, that's a cool idea. I would love to find hidden gems in the huge spaces, totally different environments that would hint at the original, and possible future state of the planet. Say, for example on Voeld, an underground city, deep beneath ice after hundred of years. Or little oasis of green here and there on Elaaden. Just to take the blandness out a little.

Also, is it just me or is Voeld still a hazard zone even after fixing the environment? I still have to rush in and out of the Nomad, and can't really explore without putting on a trainer for gods sake. 100 percent viability -  a bug maybe?

Quest with the pan is better than 9 out of 10 Andromeda quests.  How'd the Thunder do last night?