Polygon's open-letter to BioWare regarding their open-world-like games.

If you go into MEA hoping for Skyrim, then yeah you're probably going to be pleased.  If you go into MEA hoping for lessons learned from ME3, then not so much.

Also bugs bugs and more bugs.

i went into MEA expecting lessons learned from TW 3 and DA I. It pretty much delivered.

Only game breaking bugs I've ever experienced in a game were in Skyrim and DA O. And there was a quest breaking one in witcher. Hasn't happened in ME A.

Is this guy a game designer or a journalist? It's one thing to say you didn't enjoy something as a user. Diagnosing the cause of the problem and giving solutions is something else.

I haven't seen many reviews saying that what makes Andromeda not great is the exploration. By far, the biggest complaints are technical issues (animations, CC). After that, people criticized the plot and the characters. Not the exploration. Angry Joe for example, the exploration is the only thing he did like.

The funny thing is Bioware hasn't made an open world game yet. It's the same old formula only the levels are much larger. But they're still isolate. Take a hub like Illium. Make it 50x bigger. Well done, you made the Hinterlands.

As hubs go, I remember the imperial city from Jade Empire as one of the most entertaining. The quests are very varied and original. Expose a kung fu master who died but still wants to run the school; exorcise a ghost who isn't dead (but you can make him dead!); take part in a theatrical play and receive the applause or boos of the audience; compete in the arena championship and discover your companion's backstory; engage in a debate about culture with a foreign explorer. The stuff to do was imaginative and just fun.

You have been very lucky.  I had to restart my first play through because of one and currently I have 4 quest I can not finish, thank goodness they are not main story line bugs.  Don't want to take my word for it?  Go to the EA answers/bug forum and look through the 110+ pages of bug reports.  Find it here: answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/bd-p/mass-effect-andromeda-bug-reports-en

I didn't even count the non-critical bugs I've encountered.  Yeah I have about 5 side-quests I'll never be able to finish because their crap just doesn't spawn or is no longer there, or won't mark itself as complete.

Edit:  Looking over that list of bugs, I think I've had about 2/3s of the first page happen to me.

The other thing about Skyrim is the fact that if the devs don't fix it, modders probably can.  That's not an option with Mass Effect.

I remember my first play of Witcher 3 and that just took me right back to that feeling. It's such a powerful and emotional game that it's hard to not want more games to engage us like this.

Thank you for the reminder of why buddy.

Jokers

It's something you have to play to understand. I don't think anyone can show you enough. The experience of it yourself would show a different view for you.

I didn't get it right away and it wasn't until a friend gave me his copy and told me i have to see it myself.

Ended up taking a week off work and just praised the game. Bought the full game myself after for the DLCs and another play right after.

I cannot play the Witcher series. Doesn't matter how much people praise it. No CC. I don't like the combat even after I looked into it. Playing as an old looking man in our standards even though he is still young as a witcher, and having bows be only good for birds really disinterests me. If it had skyrims level of combat in picking how you play, then maybe.

Well, the animation of Leliana's song was terrible, but The Dawn Will Come was great.

i was fuckin ballin man.