The Witcher 3 and Mass Effect Andromeda thread

Hahaha, you're serious aren't you? The writers have already moved on and are working on DLC/Other projects. 

Similar to the like/love thread, there is a skeptic thread. Maybe you should use that one if you are trying to reach people that have the same mindset as you about this game, or you know one of the bazillion TW3 vs Andromeda/Open world threads.

Take care.

As much as I'm sure you'd love to just put everything negative in one thread, a forum doesn't work that way. How would it be if in every positive post I decided it would be a good idea to pop on and suggest that said post be moved to the like/love thread?

And I think they probably could tweak a lot of the dialogue if they chose to do so - would be easier than tweaking facial animations I'd think.

Sigh, you're just a gift that keeps on giving.

A gloomy world Geralt can't change no matter how hard he squeezes his eyes.

One of the best review of TW3


vs.

An overwhelmingly forgiving review for MEA

So your plan is to post this anywhere, but The Witcher thread? Makes sense, Panzer.

Also you're following, Lore? Meh 

I doubt Bioware can change their story. That's asking them to remake the entire game. But I'm willing to accept patching animations, faces, CC, romance scenes, and so on as enough for this game. I may play it again after these patches are complete but I don't see myself revisiting the game afterwards.

I'm currently playing TW3's Blood and Wine dlc and it does make me shake my head at how diverse CDPR managed to make their landscapes feel while Bioware couldn't even make different planets feel different. There is a stark difference between places like Velen, Novigrad, and Skellige, and then Beauclaire feels like stepping into a totally new world.

In MEA, we have ice planet, desert planet, and Rocky planet. All with breathable air and only surface level issues. And every alien race we bring on the trip can live on these planets no problem. Are Turians able to find as much food as humans? Why are the exact same wildlife on every planet? What are the day/night cycle of each planet? It would have been nice to show some real variety of each planet and give us some deep seeded issues of aliens trying to cohabitant on one planet. At least the stupid weather machine vaults could've come with different choices on what to focus on when fixing the planet. One choice would benefit humans, another would benefit Salarians more, another for Turians and Quarians, or Agarans. And then face the aftermath of fixing up a planet for humans that is making Turians and Quarians sick, or facing uprooting the Agarans from a planet that should have been theirs. IDk. This is a sci fi. I wanted some sci fi here.

Instead the only sci fi I have is SAM, which is just a half-a**ed attempt at Synthesis.

Totally agree.  People deal with adversity in different ways. We've already had three games with Shepard: The stoic, grizzled, experienced, military minded soldier. Now we have Ryder, the not-so-stoic, military guy/girl. Ryder deals with things differently than Shepard. Where Shepard (and Geralt in this context) are mostly serious and boring, Ryder tries to throw some humor into situations (albeit not always good humor, but he tries lol).

Peoples' fear of change never fails to amaze me.

edit: Nevermind...I just realized the author of this thread.  His/her day wouldn't be complete without creating another ME:A hate thread.  And I'm not exaggerating either...this is what you'll find if you do a quick search of his/her started threads:

Honestly the reason i keep harping on the lack of philosophical depth in W3 is because i was essentially promised a deep story. Something like game of thrones or walking dead to an extent. Something where the darkness serves the plot and philosophy. Instead we got 'here there next darkness...ok moving on...here there be darkness' etc. Etc.

Granted MEA/the MET aren't very deep either. Both series are what i call popcorn games. Very fun. Engaging. Immersive. But not something id use for a philosophy class.

If you want deep games play the Dragon Age series or BioShock

100% agree on that, I am fine with a lighter mass effect, it can't always be ultra serious and dark. It needs some lighter moments, just as jim sterling explained it his previous video :





there needs to be a balance between light and darker moments, if not we risk to fail into darkness induced audience apathy : tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarknessInducedAudienceApathy


For the witcher exemple I would say it goes in an extreme and mass effect andromeda goes into the other extreme, and when its not balanced, I do not think its not a good thing.


I might be in the minority but I always had harsh time feeling something for the characters of the witcher universe, everything is dark, serious and even depressing, like way too much for me to actually care.

Every time I try to have hope for the witcher world, it always crushes my hope and destroys it. the first witcher whatever I choose to be neutral, scoiatel or flaming roses, it always ends in a blood bath for human or non human. I can either choose knight templar that are racist towards anything other than human, or a terrorist organisation that wants to wipe out human kind. I can be neutral but that will be worse because Ill have no ally and it will not prevent crimes to be commited and that is not going to save anyone.

Witcher 2 is no better because in the first act, If I want to helps the elves, I need to support vernon roche who hates them and If I choose Iorverth, to get rid of the corrupt captain that opress non human, I need to let innocent non human burn. the second act with vernon roche is no better because I try to help kaedwen soldier all of the act, just to have king henselt betray me and Ill have to kill the many soldier I just tried to help for the past hours.

Witcher 3 also made that with a quest of skellige, where I went into a tavern and 2 biggots try to intimidate my geralt because they don't like foreigner. One of the natives actually helps me and offer me beer, he seemed like a nice guy AT FIRST then the quest ended (it was something like a lighthouse for ship) and he was killed by the two biggots. it was a bit sad UNTIL I learned in his dying moments that this guy participated in many pillage. Which means that this guy willfully killed innocent people, rape, burn villages and probably enslaved some of them. You see, at that moment I could not give a single fuck about him because I knew what he did before and NO, defending me against biggots and offering me beer does not make up for all the crimes of before.

And yes I know that was the viking way of life, nor do I care one bit because it just makes me feel the experience from the outside. I do not identify with the characters or feel engaged by a world where I am supposed sorry for a rapist and slavers just because he helped me before.

By wanting the characters to be morally grey at best, I myself stopped caring about the world in the witcher, the people living there, I stopped caring about wanting to save them because the sympathetic character are very so few. there is triss, ciri, zoltan, cerys an craite, vess. There maybe few others but for the most part that's it. Which means that when someone died in the witcher trilogy, it happened so many times that the game wanted to crush my hopes I stopped hoping for something better, and my response to an innocent character dying was just apathy.

The opposite is just as bad, we need some sad moments to apreciate the happy ones, without them it just become the norm and we are not that much engaged because it seems to be always the status quo. IF Everyone is just happy all the time, then there will be no reasons for us to cheer when it happens because they did not had harsh experience, being happy is something they always are. I think varric said once in DAI that when you love fictionnal characters, you make them suffer.

Well that is exactly one problem of mass effect andromeda, as much as I love the game, I would say that its way too light hearted. There needs to be at least some kind of drama to happens, how about learning what happened to kesh parents and its super tragic. Like drack previosuly disowned his sons for being horrible to his newborn daughter kesh and then deciding to raise her for her own good,maybe we could even fight drack's son in MEA as an arc villain which would explore the drama of drack's characters.

Here in MEA, the only moments something really sad happens is when Alec ryder dies, and even then its not that hearbreaking because we barely knew him before he died, his memory on the other hand felt sad for what he lived throught, but it was one of the rare time it happens in MEA. to appreciate the joy and the happiness, we needs some kind of drama. There is maybe also some scenes with jaal like the scene where he learns about the origin of the ketts, or his species being made up by the jaardan, and during his loyalty mission where his sister loses control and shoot one of her brother. But for the most I do not consider there is not that much tearjerker moments in MEA, its a bit limited.

I get that mass effect andromeda could not give us the feeling of ME 3, because ME 3 had three games to build characters. When kaidan died in the first mass effect, it was sad but not hearthbreaking, tali dying in ME 3 on the other hand, when she had 3 games to be developed and had so much tragedy to her character, that can makes me cry. So I get that MEA cannot give me that immediatly, because it needs to establish the universe and the characters before killing them or making them suffer enough, but I would say that there needs some kind of tragedy to make us feel the danger of the andromeda galaxy. This can be something else than a companion death but there needs to be some kind of tragedy to happen.

The first witcher game was just an emo kid cutting himself for attention while he talked about boobs to an adult. It was not mature because it was obnoxiously grim and dark for darkness sake and far from being mature.

Witcher 2 did it a lot better, introduced more nuanced factional issues but carried a lot of baggage and focused heavily on the world being too callous to care. Witcher 3 was more of the same except Geralt was more of a gary stu throughout the entire adventure.

It is a bit foolish to think maturity is a tonal issue of how the world is presented. Witcher as a series is designed to be "dark and dreary" because the world is. They found a balance to it over time that made it more interesting but not exactly a standout to anything. It is generic Medieval Fantasy with an Eastern European flair for fatalistic depression.

Andromeda's biggest problem is people presume a more positive tone = poorly written. It doesn't; it just makes it a positive tone. It's the same thing that plagued Star Wars: The Force Awakens; the tone was brighter, the story played it safe, some of the dialogue was a bit silly...but when put on the whole it's still solid.

We got a similar issue here essentially. Compounded by technical issues.

By Grabthar's hammer.......

......

what a thread.