[Ace]

Reapers are a logical and responsible (but incredibly violent) solution to the problem of hegemonic civilizations taking over the galaxy and erasing all the possible things that might yet be. They're the Krogan to our Rachni, the genophage to our Krogan. They preserve what they reap as new Reapers. We would never have existed without them. They're an alternate end stage to the life cycle of civilizations.

Crucible is a mass effect weapon that will peel apart every star in the galaxy using the dark energy foreshadowing from ME2. It's a gun to our own foreheads: leave us be or we'll force your ultimate fail state.

Considering ME1's early early previews hinting about "something has to make way for new species" it was likely that was the original plan. The Crucible being a weapon like that and TIM working out a control signal to broadcast (with the risk being who was actually in control and can you trust it?) would have worked well for the two endings.

But then they decided to go with "you dawg, I heard you don't like getting killed by robots so let me kill you with robots to keep you from being killed by robots."

Anyway I'm cautiously optimistic about Andromeda.

[Snarks]

I'm really hoping they manage to portray the Milky Way species as an invading force. Not only would this be a different experience it would be a nice little mirror to hold up to the Reaper conflict. I don't have a good feeling they'll do this because Mass Effect is too much like Star Wars now and has too much money involved to do something so risky (though I seriously hope I'm wrong). If they even did something as simple as aping the general feeling of the Europeans coming the the Americas that could prove interesting. If the Khet are designed to be more alien than anything else we've seen that would make their (perceived) hostility really easy to swallow since communication would be difficult.

As far as the black holes go, I know they wouldn't use the premise of The Forever War by Joe Haldeman since they aren't going for anything that realistic, but something involving time dilation could open the door for some great stories surrounding the risk and human cost of exploring more than a tiny local cluster. If your end game prediction is right, then the collapsar jump style travel could lead to some wonderful "future shock" or otherwise great drama associated with being "out of time."

Bioware seems hesitant to explore morally ambiguous options. Take for instance, the concept of Spectres. It is explicit in the lore that Spectres can legally execute most civilians. We know Spectres have done morally questionable things in the past from the codex, from sabotage to possibly warcrimes, breaking all kinds of treaties and rules. Obviously they don't do it willy nilly because the Council can revoke their status if it isn't justified, but you as the player get into so many situations where you can and should be able to use that clause to good effect.

Or take the idea of Cerberus in ME2. It turns out the Cerberus cell you work with are just filled with well intended people while all the other cells are populated by the racist, xenophobic members. You don't feel any sympathy for Cerberus because all the good people in Cerberus just wake up and join Shepard's clarion call of moral righteousness. I had really hoped (although I wasn't surprised when it didn't happen) that Mass Effect 3 would let you choose between doing it the orderly way with the establishment, i.e. the Alliance, the Council races, or doing it in a more chaotic, ends justifies the means method with Cerberus or Spectres.

The Mass Effect universe has a lot of room for interesting themes, but the main narrative never gives them more than a footnote's worth of attention. It's like they lay out this really fascinating universe, much of it through the codex, but then revert to some rather standard and safe treatment of morality in the game. Be nice to people. Find the solution that makes everyone happy. Never mind the crisis situations. There's always a "good" way apparently.

[Phantom Hoover]

Bioware seems hesitant to explore morally ambiguous options. Take for instance, the concept of Spectres. It is explicit in the lore that Spectres can legally execute most civilians. We know Spectres have done morally questionable things in the past from the codex, from sabotage to possibly warcrimes, breaking all kinds of treaties and rules. Obviously they don't do it willy nilly because the Council can revoke their status if it isn't justified, but you as the player get into so many situations where you can and should be able to use that clause to good effect.

The Mass Effect games were almost entirely written by people who never read the ME1 codex, and were worse writers than the people who wrote the codex.

[Firesteel]

As Shamus Young's treatise points out, ME2 was written by people who didn't care about ME1 and ME3 was written by people who actively disliked ME1. The Mass Effect world is a mess thanks to basically nuking ME1 immediately and discarding everything related to it that wasn't super fan servicey (Wrex, Tali, Garrus).

[Luis Dias]

Has anyone heard anything about system requirements yet?  Been googling like crazy.

Still not released.

[Grizzly]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/02/23/mass-effect-andromeda-is-looking-good/

[Col.Hornet]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/02/23/mass-effect-andromeda-is-looking-good/

Twin's, Cora's and Liam's faces are looking faaaar better now, that's for sure. Combat looks even better:

[StarSlayer]

Has anyone heard anything about system requirements yet?  Been googling like crazy.

Still not released.

[Colonol Dekker]

Refreshingly my laptop is over spec for most of that. Graphics is breaking even with a GTX 680m. 
I'll upgrade it once I figure out how.

[Phantom Hoover]

For a laptop? Buy a new laptop, basically. They're not built to be upgraded.

[Colonol Dekker]

It's alienware.    I'll wait for the gtx 970m to drop to less than 900 quid.
Esit- the included docs tell me how to do it, I could go the inevitable psi route though.

[Col.Hornet]

Finally a proper piece of gameplay. Our Asari's loyalty mission. Or... a part of it.

[Phantom Hoover]

peebee

[AdmiralRalwood]

I wonder what percentage of players will name their characters "Jay" just for the puns

[Luis Dias]

That dialogue is too on the nose, and potentially quite cringeworthy. It depends very much on the actual context.

"Sweet! Let's do that!" .... sigh.

"Nice to have you on the team!"

Something tells me I'm not gonna like this game.

[Torchwood]

I think it was meant to be a derivation of Phoebe.

[General Battuta]

Nah it's her initials.

That dialogue, christ

[Luis Dias]

Her real name is Pelessaria B'Sayle.

The whole game is starting to feel like a soft reboot Star Trek style to me. Fast, stoopid, on the nose, action-y, toddler-ish, catered to "Whom am I banging this playthrough with" crowd - which is pathetically bigger than zero - and, worst of all, I'm betting there are no consistent meta-narratives or world building material within this story at all (which is a thought that has provoked me into not writing that much about what I'm guessing).

Because the Fermi Paradox question within Andromeda was possibly the one thing in it that fascinated me from the get go. And the Remnant's existence hints at good odds of there *being* a competent answer to these questions. But I don't know. I'm losing my hype here. Fast.

[Scotty]

I'm metering my expectations and hype by just knowing that I'm going to get the game pretty much regardless, because I like the game mechanics a lot.  As long as it is fun to play, I'll enjoy it.

I'll enjoy it more if the story is worth looking twice at, but I don't think I ever expected this to break new ground in storytelling.

[Col.Hornet]

peebee

The Space Shrek:
 

Her real name is Pelessaria B'Sayle.

The whole game is starting to feel like a soft reboot Star Trek style to me. Fast, stoopid, on the nose, action-y, toddler-ish, catered to "Whom am I banging this playthrough with" crowd - which is pathetically bigger than zero - and, worst of all, I'm betting there are no consistent meta-narratives or world building material within this story at all (which is a thought that has provoked me into not writing that much about what I'm guessing).

Because the Fermi Paradox question within Andromeda was possibly the one thing in it that fascinated me from the get go. And the Remnant's existence hints at good odds of there *being* a competent answer to these questions. But I don't know. I'm losing my hype here. Fast.

Truth is, these dialogues we've heard were really, really awful. Especially when they've been cut to avoid spoilers and we lack the context. But so far I'm not buying PeeBee at all.

As for the rest... It makes me a little sad but I start to understand why the developers took such course for Andromeda in terms of character development and world building. When I look at the Polish fandom facebook groups and forums, most of the discussions are more or less like this:

"-Owwww look at him/her. That's my space boyfriend/girlfriend. We'll bang, ok? Hihihihi"

Especially the female audience. Throw a pic of Miranda's butt or Alenko's chest, you'll get a spam cyclone. Try to initiate discussion about world building, technology... it's a brick wall or a few posts and usually 2 or 3 people worthy of conversation. I bet that foreign and international forums are no different. Show people some alien boobs and they will turn a blind eye on other imperfections.

From the materials I've seen so far it seems that they are simply trying to please this part of audience first. I would like to be wrong here (these gravitational anomalies we saw are my best hope here). Time will tell, shortly.