Mass Effect General Discussion (spoilers)

Player saving is only disabled on main missions... and the first planet is one long main mission. So yeah, not the best choice there.

Most of the planets are pretty easy to get around. The first planet is a bit more dense, with caves and such. Still shouldn't be too hard, though. Is your problem that you're dying too much and reloading in areas you don't recognize? That threw me for a while.

There's four wasteland planets, but if you go to Havarl and then Kadara as soon as you get the chance, you'll get at least a little more variety. The ruins and linear story/loyalty missions are generally pretty good.

Everyone who's played it knows how ridiculous this sounds, but also that it's true: the game gets better after the first 10 hours or so. Once you get past what amounts to the game's second tutorial on Eos, it does open up a lot more, and some of the more frustrating elements either improve a little or become less prominent..

There's some of the dying disorienting bit, that combined with the auto saves being unreliable keeps giving me the feeling of "Did I do that already or....?"

Also all the areas feel and look pretty samey and are connected by samey corridors so I can't get a grasp of "If I go that way, I end up there". The whole thing feels like a set of confusingly connected clearings. The map is of no singular help either, it might as well not have the graphics of the map, just a blank space with markers for directions for all the help it is.

Dunno, might be that I'm letting the small annoyances pile up a bit too much. Will give up on it for now and maybe check back in tomorrow.

edited 9th Dec '17 3:57:03 PM by GabrieltheThird

I still haven't beat the game, but honestly the opening was probably the worst part for me. The actual open-world bits are better because they're really designed to be, you know, open-world bits: you can save, it's fairly clear that one bit leads to a certain sidequest, sometimes you're in a car. Meanwhile the plot really just didn't grab at me. Your dad's sacrifice feels so obvious and obligatory that I really couldn't take it seriously. Meanwhile the whole "Pathfinder" feels so... wrong. It's like this weird unholy mix of weird, unearned self-congratulatory Chosen One stuff, but pointedly part of this large, very structured bureaucracy who'd have to all be mental to deliberately place almost all their hopes on one guy per giant starship.

What ruined it for me was when my teammates started talking about Peebee and Drack — when I hadn't met them yet. They also talked about The Architect when it was never named yet.

Whats even better is Peebee and Drack being themselves in Conversations on the Tempest before you meet them.

I continued Andromeda. It does pass the time, but I'm not in love with it. I wonder if it was just due to the previous investment that allowed me to get so immersed with ME 2 and 3, even if those had their own faults, but I find myself not caring about the story or the characters.

ME 1 took a while to draw me in too, but once that happened it was quite strong. It also had the whole new experience aspect to help it too, though. So I'm hesitant to say that me not caring is due to poor writing, but, well, the writing hasn't been great thus far either.

This whole thing just feels like such a massive waste of potential. A new ME game, in a new galaxy, even. But it feels like it's skipping over all the interesting stuff. Hardships of living with alien environments? Apparently every planet comes with a preinstalled terraforming app.

New races to interact? They're all humanoids with hats who can understand you when the plot needs them to and it's not even really handwaved away. Frankly, meeting the Angra was a massive disappointment. From their look to how the whole thing was handled. It's just so damn lazy.

First meeting with their leader? You get to ask nothing from him and you learn nothing of them. Walk out of the meeting? Talk to the first guy you see and get offered a busywork mission.

Apparently they use the same name for Kett than what the Milky Wayans came up with? Even their tech level is equivalent to yours.

I just... ugh.

edited 11th Dec '17 9:43:26 AM by GabrieltheThird

Both the Initiative and the angara learned the kett name from the kett. Tech level, I'll give you. No explanation for that, other than the part about the cluster having been knocked back by the Scourge (which still begs the question of how they managed to climb back to your exact tech level by the time you arrive). Angara being humanoid is indirectly explained, and might have gotten a real justification in later games. The kett being humanoid is explained.

Yeah I'm not saying that there can't be explanations for all that stuff. You can explain away most things in fiction. It's a damn waste of potential though. You could have made things all sorts of interesting by breaking the norms.

Also are you sure on the kett name being from the kett? You could very well be right, but I could swear I heard a line in the way of "We call them kett because..." though I forgot the reason. The Angara do call the Remnant the Remnant too.

Still, you can explain that all away with the whole translator translating the names. But it works against them feeling alien, for them to be using the same words.

edited 11th Dec '17 10:30:10 AM by GabrieltheThird

a bunch: cutscene supports that Sovereign needs a geth fleet to be able to divert enough fire from him so that he can reach the docking station. His ability to ram his way through a cruiser is not an evidence of his ability to tank the entirety of fire from the Citadel fleet.

Waifu Effect is on hold, as she has been turned off enough by Miranda from the first couple of scenes to not want to play it. Possibly in a few months or so. She in fact regrets picking nice conversation options with Miranda the first couple of times. I suspect we might get this hiatus again with Jack and Legion. We're not particularly fond of..."unconventional attractiveness" in female characters, and she also doesn't like EDI (she finds EDI to be an unwelcome addition to the ship, and I don't think she's going to buy the whole "synthetic life is life too" schtick that 2 and 3 try to ram down your throat).

So we're picking up Jade Empire again, right before the Thorian encounter I mean the Mother encounter. Am rather curious as to what she picks for the final choice in that game.

I think the problem was that there weren't enough new races. You need humanoid enemies for this type of game, but you don't need just humanoid enemies. Most of the Milky Way races are humanoid, but they have some weird ones in there like the hanar and elcor, and even among the humanoids the races are unique, like the asari being all female and the krogan being walking tanks. The angara do have something interesting in that they have the innate ability to manipulate their own bio-electricity (distinct from biotics), but it doesn't get any focus. The point is, even if you count the Remnant as a race—which personally I wouldn't—the game doesn't feel like a whole new galaxy so much as some minor corner of the existing universe.

So... I guess I agree with you. It's not unique enough. Still worth playing through, though.

Uh oh...not giving Synthetic life a chance makes 3 seriously ugly. As for attractiveness...Bioware seems to go out of its way to give characters ugly looking models. The only conventionally attractive character models actually seem to be Jack and EDI-the rest appear to have been made deliberately weird, like Miranda's sorta flattened face that is too symmetrical.

edited 11th Dec '17 4:36:43 PM by ViperMagnum357

The other thing... Aliens Speaking English.

I was fine with it in the trilogy, because it was the Milky Way Galaxy and Translation Convention. Got it.

But ... I dunno. I liked it better when the Kett Big Bad didn't speak, and just acted... alien at first. it was creepy and mysterious.

Then he's speaking English and acts like a typical Dastardly Whiplash with basic motives. Ditto the Angara being yet another Hidden Elf Village.

They didn't feel like characters from another galaxy. They didn't feel alien enough. Maybe not speak English at all, and have the characters try to communicate. Not exactly like Darmok episode, but more like Arrival. I didn't want to know Angara = good guys, Kett = bad guys because they announce their motivations to everyone in a common language. I don't want to completely trust the Angara. I don't want to completely distrust the Kett.

But no. It was completely unimaginative and the game boiled down to "get planets to X% to claim them". Feh.

It's the uncanny valley effect in motion. Miranda's face is basically Yvonne Strahovski's (her voice actress's) face with a slightly squarer jawline, right down to the slight gap between her teeth. But Miranda's paleness, the lighting, and the somewhat limited animations in 2 make her look stranger than if she were less realistic in other ways. But yes, Bioware has a thing for characters with a lot of...character in their faces.

Andromeda's pretty much Wasted Potential: The Game. It never really gets as good as 2, and they managed to lose a lot of what made the combat in 3 so solid. I thought it had potential, and room to improve. Not so much now that the DLC's been cancelled, though. The loyalty missions are still pretty good, and I've paid more for games I played less, but there are much better open-world RP Gs out there. Even Inquisition's maps are at least have more variety, puzzles, and side areas.

Andromeda's problems are mostly rooted in being made by a new studio with an unsuitable engine on a time crunch. Lots of little mistakes, both actual glitches and "if you had thought about this more you would have chosen to do it differently." They could definitely have improved in subsequent games. But EA is terrible and there was a flood of negative memes in the early days, so they killed it.

I believe Tobias was the one who said it feels like someone in charge hates Mass Effect. Seems like they've won, at least for now.

Someone in charge hates any game which can't be sold on a yearly basis which doesn't constantly bring in new players, like FIFA or Modern Warfare. That person doesn't take into account the way people will actually still keep buying an RPG and its DLC for years after its release, but they probably don't even play the games in the first place.

Not sure how worth it developing a RPG is when you can get a shitton of money by doing the exact same FPS again WITH LOOTBOXES. Also, EA has all the sports games people buy year in year out even though they are the same than before - imagine that for the 1000 hours I spent in Skyrim in over six years, I only spent about 100 bucks (with the DLC). If someone bought a new FIFA every year, the company would have cashed in about $400 before microtransactions.

It's no surprise TES VI is turning into a vaporware. Being loved by the community is one thing, but at some point a company has to eat, and Bethesda is likely focusing on projects that will become a continuous source of cash.

EA didn't care about a new Mass Effect because it's not a financially interesting project. As such they did not put the team in a favorable situation to work, and closed everything when they didn't manage to create a masterpiece despite all that. Honestly the best hope now is to hope for enough backlash on projects such as Battlefront or the like so that EA has to eventually resort to try and regain a degree of good press by going back to licences people still like.

I still don't understand why they bought the licenses in the first place. Story-driven single-player games are outside their wheelhouse and they know it. It feels like they just want a monopoly on AAA games for the sake of a monopoly, all logic be damned.

Coz Disney only cared about return on investment for said licencing, not the type of games being made.

Disney has a long history not caring about the games made from their products

EA doesn't care about their personal press. They care about their property's press.

EA winning multiple time "Worst Company in America" hasn't impacted their sales. and they know this. All they care is if a brand becomes damaged because of controversy (Mass Effect, likely Battlefront).

edited 12th Dec '17 7:43:32 AM by Ghilz

Because they're a publicly floated business and those firms are measured (From shareholder perspectives) by growth - easiest way to grow - buy assets. Not just profiting, but showing exponential growth AND profit. So, buy a company, squeeze out enough product from it, then cut back and downsize, keeping the name and IP - shareholders see acquisition of assets which are saleable if necessary, see market share increase and profitability go up (As you have downsized)

It's why a lot of firms shed weight after shipping - part of that is the usual contractor slippage as their engagement runs out, but also it shows you're being lean during the quiet periods while you ramp up the next project - you're reucing salary overhead, healthcare costs etc.

They bought Bioware post Mass Effect with the intend of franchising it. But EA can't quite get the Ubisoft level (They've only managed it with their sports titles) - arguably you could, actually, do something like that with Mass Effect - just keep bolting on new campaigns and missions using the same engine, assets and so forth, with a few tweaks. Basically, a Sci Fi sandbox. But the problem you have is those devs making RP Gs always want to distribute EPIC STORIES. which is always tricky to pull off.

edited 12th Dec '17 8:11:01 AM by JerekLaz

...Disney?

EA's been running creative companies into the dirt like this for years before Disney. I mean, Disney doesn't actually own EA, they just partnered with them on Star Wars. And it's perhaps even vaugely possible they're actually the ones who pressured EA into fixing Battlefield's loot system, because I suppose they actually think negative PR is bad.

edited 12th Dec '17 7:45:24 AM by Unsung

Disney chose who got the Licence, not EA.

So Why did Disney give it to a company with no intention to make interesting single player game? coz EA promised them they would make them money. Disney didn't care about who might have "the most interesting vision for Star Wars' gaming future". They cared about who'd give them the most $$$ for it.

EA wanted the license coz the Star Wars name was guaranteed sales.

edited 12th Dec '17 7:47:38 AM by Ghilz

I think maybe I thought you were responding to something else.

That's a problem I feel that a lot of disjointed spinoff "sequels" encounter: fans don't fall in love with a setting. They like the setting, sure, and they'll dive into the setting and pick it apart because it's fun to do. But, and I cannot stress this enough: they are here for the characters.

A lot of franchises ultimately find themselves in this position. "Let's make a new X, but throw out all of the cast and introduce a brand new cast from scratch." That's always going to be an uphill battle, because you're throwing out the main thing your audience is invested in, without taking the time to build their investment in the new characters you're introducing first.

Andromeda goes on better and adds a brand new premise and a brand new setting on top of brand new characters, which means that literally the only thing it has in common with Mass Effect is a handful of concepts. As a result, it's easy to see it not as a new Mass Effect but as a brand new IP that was too lazy to design its own aliens.

Regarding disparate tech levels

That absolutely should have been a thing. If they were willing to acknowledge the Reapers as more than a brief Continuity Nod here or there, they even could have brought that up in explaining the differing levels. It honestly works either direction.

1. We have better tech than they do because we reaped the benefit of the Citadel advancing our civilization and they didn't.
2. We have shittier tech than they do because our civilizations got culled every fifty thousand years, resetting our advancement, and theirs didn't.

It actually makes it cleaner. The only drawback to the Destroy option is that the Reapers will take the geth and EDI with them. If you sided with quarians and wound up wiping out the geth rather than brokering peace, then it's really just EDI who gets f*cked by it. Under those circumstances, the Destroy option is the objectively correct choice with almost no negative consequences whatsoever.

Of course, if you didn't commit synthetic genocide, then Destroy becomes a much more morally-complex choice. After all the work you put into brokering a peaceful coexistence with them, the Destroy option is a total stab in the back. But then again, a broken machine can just be repaired so....

edited 12th Dec '17 8:09:43 AM by TobiasDrake

and add into it the fact that the geth were sentient before that stupid Reaper pinocchio moment. That felt shoehorned as all hell. Basically, it wasn't Reaper code - the reaper was basically just allowing them to use it for quantum computing so they could process data much faster. That makes more sense than.... the geth were magically stronger because REAPER CODE.

And yeah, they assumed the license was enough - not the pull of the relationships, or the connections. There was a reason why Citadel brought in a lot of credit for Bioware after the ending. It showed they did "get it" as it were. Andromeda, if it had had more time to breath and hadn't tried to hit every trope note for MOTIVATION, could've built us a nice ensemble. However I do think they had miscast a few of the V As - Peebee and Wannabe-Asari being the key ones. Though Peebee grew on me.