Author Topic: Mass Effect: Andromeda  (Read 60391 times)

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Offline Luis Dias

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Re: Mass Effect: Andromeda
You cannot be serious here. I've never seen so much bad dialogue from Bioware before. I've never had to shut my ears and overall brain so much in all conversations as I do with this game. I have to suffer the conversations because I fear I might lose some important information, but the price is to actually be there and listen to pure painful written **** that some human actually thought passed as "actual conversations".

Mass Effect 1 had very bland characters, but they never felt wrong. Their tone was right, their dialogue was adult. I remember being very curious about all the characters despite their somewhat blandness. I would look forward to know them and what made them tick, what world was this that was being shown to me. In ME:A I just look forward to any random convo to end and lemme tell you how I long for the "kill banter talk" button to arrive to the game in some patch. ****ing hell.

 

Offline The E

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Re: Mass Effect: Andromeda
:shrug:

I am actually serious. I like the new crew, and I think Bioware was successful in what they were going for with them.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline Luis Dias

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Re: Mass Effect: Andromeda
The only guy who I thought was taking his role seriously was Ryderfather. Almost everyone else, especially your crew, sound exactly like the Teen Titans that my kids sometimes force me to listen in the background while I play the game. The only tell they are from different shows is the language bit.

 

Offline MP-Ryan

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Re: Mass Effect: Andromeda
I've only played SP a far as the Nexus and found some of the dialogue good, most medicore, and some truly awful.

That said, after the patches the MP is now a [balanced!] absolute blast, and the game is worth it (on sale) for that alone if you like CoOp.  HLP_MP-Ryan on Origin.
"In the beginning, the Universe was created.  This made a lot of people very angry and has widely been regarded as a bad move."  [Douglas Adams]

 

Offline CP5670

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:bump:

I've been playing this game for the last few weeks and am about halfway through the SP. Some thoughts:

The open world gameplay works well and is reminiscent of the Bethesda games, and the combat is more fun and less cover-oriented than the old ME games. The game becomes tedious outside combat though, especially with the lack of a speedup command that the Unreal engine had. The large number of "find 20 of this" side quests also contribute to this, although I have been ignoring many of them. You can't control the squadmate powers anymore, so they fade into the background during fights and I stopped caring much about up-skilling them. All the good equipment can only be obtained by crafting with augmentations, but it's difficult to figure out where to get certain materials and enough of all three types of research points. The game gives you a lot of room to experiment with crafting and it's easy to build overpowered items.

There are some mods people have made that are almost essential (Shut Up Sam, Shorter Landing Animations and a few others). Unfortunately there is no way to improve the horrible save system. Quicksave has been removed and Bioware arbitrarily decides you are not allowed to save in certain missions or areas, which is atrocious in an open world game like this. I like keeping savegames at key moments over the course of a game, and am copying the autosave files manually to do it. I didn't notice any obvious problems with the faces or animations, but I heard that was fixed in a patch.

I like the whole "exploring the unknown" instead of "saving the galaxy" vibe of the story, but the main quest moves slowly and has never really picked up my interest. The dialogue is just...boring. It's not exactly bad but very generic, and it's rare to hear anyone say something that you would remember a minute later, particularly from Ryder. Nobody seems to have a personality except for a few of your squadmates. This is a big step down from the old games, when I would often reload savegames to see what the other conversation choices were. I prefer the new logical/emotional/etc. options though instead of paragon/renegade, which often became binary and artificial. The Milky Way races seem watered down and are basically just humans, more so than in the old games. The krogans, salarians, etc. don't really behave in character, and I think they could have replaced them all with humans and the story would be identical. The new angara feel more like the old races did in the previous games, and have a well developed backstory. The kett are less interesting and have weak motivations, and their leader is like a comic book villain.

On the whole I still like it so far, despite all the issues. I'm finding that just exploring the environments and universe (like datapads and emails) is more interesting than the dialogue and many of the actual quests.

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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and their leader is like a comic book villain.

That's because he is Julius Caesar ;)

Spoiler:
Seriously some of the Kett codex entries read like they are barely re-tooled accounts of roman historians, esspecially those close to the Principate ... There is even one which is basically the official Julian-Claudian narrative for the why Caesar started the his civil war against Rome...



... and of course depending on your choices there is a "Et tu, Brute?"-moment - because they weren't using Shakespare enought already
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

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"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."