Mass Effect BioWare Montreal's Mass Effect: Andromeda - where element zero meets trisomy 21

[J1M]

I made a mistake and checked out Andromeda for two or three hours yesterday. Putting aside all the animation nonsense, why are the characters trying to out-quip each other constantly? Bioware's been on a steady decline with writing, but this is seriously rock bottom. At this point they're better off just firing the entire writing team and going for a fresh start. So bad. Not a single goddamn situation so far has had any impact because it's all so over the place tonally.

I looked at their career pages after this fiasco started. No openings for writers. SJWs always double down.

 

[pippin]

I made a mistake and checked out Andromeda for two or three hours yesterday. Putting aside all the animation nonsense, why are the characters trying to out-quip each other constantly? Bioware's been on a steady decline with writing, but this is seriously rock bottom. At this point they're better off just firing the entire writing team and going for a fresh start. So bad. Not a single goddamn situation so far has had any impact because it's all so over the place tonally.

I looked at their career pages after this fiasco started. No openings for writers. SJWs always double down.

I guess if they want writers, they will just hire a smaller studio or just open said positions when the need arises. It's not like they are making another game right after this one, right?

 

[Rahdulan]

I made a mistake and checked out Andromeda for two or three hours yesterday. Putting aside all the animation nonsense, why are the characters trying to out-quip each other constantly? Bioware's been on a steady decline with writing, but this is seriously rock bottom. At this point they're better off just firing the entire writing team and going for a fresh start. So bad. Not a single goddamn situation so far has had any impact because it's all so over the place tonally.

I looked at their career pages after this fiasco started. No openings for writers. SJWs always double down.

It's just mind blowing how much the writing is getting a pass because all the more superficial elements are hogging the spotlight. There's some "historical revisionism" going on lately about how Bioware was never good, but their writing level was at least decent. Maybe because they played into D&D tropes and cliches more back in the day? Andromeda is just a straight up BADLY written game. Which just confirms the old saying that your average person can't tell the difference between good and bad writing. And this is in native English so they don't have the excuse of awkward script that games like first Witcher or Game of Thrones RPG had to a degree. Both of which decidedly surpassed this in the same department.

I don't think it really sunk with me even after Inquisition just how badly Bioware has devolved. Fucking up the main selling point of their game and everyone acting as if nothing happened infuriates me.

 

[Padzi]

The writers could have focused on Leviathans as main enemies after the end of ME3. Or Just make a prequel about first contact war. But of course they needed to get away from their own fuck up that was the ending of ME3 and fly as far as Andromeda.

BTW on second thought, almost all tattoos and blushes etc that you can slap on Ryder suspiciously don't look like tattoss at all. They all look like the post-shitesis ending marks that appear in ME3. Just color them green and you have the same effect.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

it's called "recycling assets".

 

[moon knight]

http://www.polygon.com/2017/4/18/15324366/mass-effect-andromeda-open-world-bioware

 

[donkeymong]

The writers could have focused on Leviathans as main enemies after the end of ME3. Or Just make a prequel about first contact war. But of course they needed to get away from their own fuck up that was the ending of ME3 and fly as far as Andromeda.

BTW on second thought, almost all tattoos and blushes etc that you can slap on Ryder suspiciously don't look like tattoss at all. They all look like the post-shitesis ending marks that appear in ME3. Just color them green and you have the same effect.

Another possibility would be a game exploring the Citadel as a member of the security there or a kind of Gta in Space on Omega, happening all before the Reaper invasion.

 

[cvv]

http://www.polygon.com/2017/4/18/15324366/mass-effect-andromeda-open-world-bioware

Much nostalgia. Replaying the original trilogy now the old structure feels decidedly gamey and obsolete.

When playing DAO and ME1 I thought they're surprisingly decent games for AAA but I so wished Bioware expands the world. The fact DAI and MEA is dogshit is not the reason to go back in time. They just have to get their shit together and start making open worlds that are not completely robotic and retarded. It's not like it's impossible to make a good open world game now is it?

 

[moon knight]

http://www.polygon.com/2017/4/18/15324366/mass-effect-andromeda-open-world-bioware

Much nostalgia. Replaying the original trilogy now the old structure feels decidedly gamey and obsolete.

When playing DAO and ME1 I thought they're surprisingly decent games for AAA but I so wished Bioware expands the world. The fact DAI and MEA is dogshit is not the reason to go back in time. They just have to get their shit together and start making open worlds that are not completely robotic and retarded. It's not like it's impossible to make a good open world game now is it?

Meh, there's nothing wrong with a linear HUB based game, in which you have different zones, each one featuring an HUB, that you unlock in a linear way passing through a "bridge quest" (like The Witcher 2).
We don't need more open world games if they are done like Bethesda or Inquisition/Andromeda. The only AAA RPG Open World game to be inspired to Gothic have been New Vegas and The Witcher 3.

2 games in...15 years ?

 

[Kem0sabe]

That article is just masquerading as a critique, it's just a huge blowjob on Bioware in front of the whole Internet, or at least the degenerates who read polygon.

 

[gestalt11]

I made a mistake and checked out Andromeda for two or three hours yesterday. Putting aside all the animation nonsense, why are the characters trying to out-quip each other constantly? Bioware's been on a steady decline with writing, but this is seriously rock bottom. At this point they're better off just firing the entire writing team and going for a fresh start. So bad. Not a single goddamn situation so far has had any impact because it's all so over the place tonally.

Like someone else said this is basically a bad Joss Whedon/Buffy the Vampire slayer fanfic. They just copy-pasta the quippy dialog, ???, profit.

 

[Padzi]

The writers could have focused on Leviathans as main enemies after the end of ME3. Or Just make a prequel about first contact war. But of course they needed to get away from their own fuck up that was the ending of ME3 and fly as far as Andromeda.

BTW on second thought, almost all tattoos and blushes etc that you can slap on Ryder suspiciously don't look like tattoss at all. They all look like the post-shitesis ending marks that appear in ME3. Just color them green and you have the same effect.

Another possibility would be a game exploring the Citadel as a member of the security there or a kind of Gta in Space on Omega, happening all before the Reaper invasion.

In-universe Codex for the game said the only 1% of the Milky Way was mapped by Citadel races, so here another idea. Let's explore that 99% of the galaxy. We travel to never before seen part of space and you can even call it Mass Effect Uncharted Worlds.

 

[Spectacle]

The writers could have focused on Leviathans as main enemies after the end of ME3. Or Just make a prequel about first contact war. But of course they needed to get away from their own fuck up that was the ending of ME3 and fly as far as Andromeda.

BTW on second thought, almost all tattoos and blushes etc that you can slap on Ryder suspiciously don't look like tattoss at all. They all look like the post-shitesis ending marks that appear in ME3. Just color them green and you have the same effect.

Another possibility would be a game exploring the Citadel as a member of the security there or a kind of Gta in Space on Omega, happening all before the Reaper invasion.

In-universe Codex for the game said the only 1% of the Milky Way was mapped by Citadel races, so here another idea. Let's explore that 99% of the galaxy. We travel to never before seen part of space and you can even call it Mass Effect Uncharted Worlds.

Nowhere in the milky way galaxy is far enough away from the retardedness of the ME3 ending..

 

[Jick Magger]

Imagine abandoning everything you knew to go on a 600-year voyage to a totally uncharted area of space to discover brave new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldy go where no-one has gone before, and when you arrive all you find are more rubber-forehead aliens that all speak your language and share your same customs and norms.

 

[Modron]

Don't forget that they also share your pronouns.

 

[DeepOcean]

It's not like it's impossible to make a good open world game now is it?

I know bioware was specially incompetent on this game but there are very real problems and limitations with AAA open world design even if Bioware was "good" with it. You have a limited budget to produce content, the more content you put in, less time you can waste with each piece of it and less time means cutting corners.

Cutting corners means rotten, repetitive and underdeveloped content, the bigger the open world is the worse this gets. After all, if you are doing a linear corridor shooter, you have 50 combat encounters to deal on the whole game, now you have 2000 combat encounters. It is obvious the quality will go down. Another big problem is that making a game limited on size has the advantage of allowing you to add more variety because you can have the player going alot of different places without bothering to create entire planets on each of them. I just wonder why, very conveniently, all Mass Effect Prospermeda planets were barren pieces of rock? Because barren planets are full of empty spaces and empty spaces is what makes most open world games.

Because you need to create so much content, it is hard to make a coherent whole in terms of story too. Even games people mention as good examples of open world games like twitcher 3 are unfocused messes of you doing hundreds of little quests for forgettable NPCs that are meaningless on the greater whole. Witcher 3 was at its best when it tried being a linear game and at its worst when it remembered it was an open world game too.

Even if Prospermeda was done by a competent team, I'm very skeptical of AAA open world games escaping their blandness.

Some developers are smarter and can disguise rotten, repetitive and underdeveloped content with good storytelling so the player is rewarded with something for their wasted time, this just begs the quest of why to waste the player time to start with? The cynical side on me just says that companies like money and most people don't value their time enough, this makes no sense design wise but it never meant to.

Solomon Island on The Secret World MMO is a great example of good storytelling disguising ultra bad gameplay, it is the best designed open world of those modern popamole games I've seen, at least on storytelling because in terms of gameplay is awful MMO waste of time. Solomon Island is a great example because it allowed you to go talking with the characters but each character was a piece of a storytelling puzzle that you found that would make sense when the characters, the little quest, the lore, the conflicts are all tied together in the end of the area.

You can use good storytelling to make the repetitive grind more tolerable, this is what I got most people on the internet are complaining about Prospermeda, they dont complain of the grind and bad gameplay just that the story reasons justifying it are shit.

 

[cvv]

I know bioware was specially incompetent on this game but there are very real problems and limitations with AAA open world design even if Bioware was "good" with it.

You can always list a million potential problems with anything in life, including open-world RPG. But then you look at Gothic 1-3, Risen 1, New Vegas, Dragon's Dogma, Witcher 3 and hell even TES games and you see that every problem can be overcome with some modicum of talent. There isn't a trace of any MMO grind and collectibles mentality in those games.

How is Gothic 2 world so fantastic without the "collect 10 herbs" quests? And if you say Gothic 2 is heavily gated, fair enough, but what about Gothic 3? From the very beginning you can go absolutely anywhere in the world and PB still somehow managed to do without collectible dumbfuckery and other busywork.

So all your problems apply to other games who managed to solve them. There's only one unique challenge for Mass Effect - you travel the worlds in a fast car instead of walking. That means it has to be massive. Eos is bigger than the entire DAI put together. That presents a real problem for the designers. The content must be logically MUCH sparser or the game would be in development longer than Grimoire. And that means ME open-worlds will always feel emptier and duller than fantasy worlds, except "walking" worlds like Havarl, which is unsurprisingly the most popular MEA location.

But despite all this even the sparse content in Mass Effect open world can and must be interesting and engaging, instead of randomly dispersed bandit camps that you shoot out and your reward is a small piece of boring lore.

Finally I don't buy the argument Bioware simply isn't good at making open-world games and should go back to their thing. There is no going back. Being bad at open world games means being bad at games full stop. I'm absolutely certain if the MEA team made a traditional corridor ME sequel it'd be just as terrible.

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

So Mass Defect Androgynous has now in it's forth week dropped off the top ten of the UK sales charts...

1 TOM CLANCY'S GHOST RECON: WILDLANDS UBISOFT (FRANCE) UBISOFT UBISOFT
3

2 LEGO WORLDS TRAVELLER'S TALES WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE
4

3 GRAND THEFT AUTO V ROCKSTAR NORTH ROCKSTAR TAKE 2
10

4 OVERWATCH BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT BLIZZARD ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
6

5 FIFA 17 EA CANADA EA SPORTS ELECTRONIC ARTS
-

6 YOOKA-LAYLEE PLAYTONIC GAMES TEAM 17 TEAM 17
9

7 CALL OF DUTY: INFINITE WARFARE INFINITY WARD ACTIVISION ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
11

8 ROCKET LEAGUE PSYONIX 505 GAMES 505 GAMES
7

9 THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD NINTENDO NINTENDO NINTENDO
8

10 LEGO CITY UNDERCOVER TRAVELLER'S TALES WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE
12

11 HORIZON ZERO DAWN GUERRILLA GAMES SONY COMPUTER ENT. SONY COMPUTER ENT.
5

12 MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA BIOWARE EA GAMES ELECTRONIC ARTS
13

13 WWE 2K17 YUKE'S/VISUAL CONCEPTS 2K TAKE 2
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14 BATTLEFIELD 1 DIGITAL ILLUSIONS EA GAMES ELECTRONIC ARTS
15

15 FORZA HORIZON 3 PLAYGROUND GAMES MICROSOFT MICROSOFT
27

16 SNIPER ELITE 4 REBELLION SOLD OUT SALES & MARKETING SOLD OUT SALES & MARKETING
17

17 FOR HONOR UBISOFT (MONTREAL) UBISOFT UBISOFT
22

18 MINECRAFT: XBOX EDITION 4J STUDIOS MICROSOFT MICROSOFT
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19 1-2 SWITCH NINTENDO NINTENDO NINTENDO
20

20 WATCH DOGS 2

 

[Tytus]

Finally I don't buy the argument Bioware simply isn't good at making open-world games and should go back to their thing. There is no going back. Being bad at open world games means being bad at games full stop. I'm absolutely certain if the MEA team made a traditional corridor ME sequel it'd be just as terrible.

Have you played Omega DLC for ME3. It was done by the same team that made Andromeda and it was the worst piece of DLC (maybe except Pinncale Station) in the series history.
The shooting sections were dull, side quests consisted of finding some unimportant crap and weren't even actual side quests.
And the story was terribly written. It had this Andromeda vibe - like Aria being an actual superhero and tearing a force field with her hands.
Not to mention the final boss fight was very similar to the final boss fight of Andromeda. Survive waves of enemies and deactivate some reactors.
And your squad mates Aria and That Turian Girl (basically proto-Vetra) were boring as fuck.

Omega DLC was an indication that Andromeda will be an utter piece of shit.
Bioware Montreal can't produce a good game weather it is open world or corridor shooter to save their lives/

 

[Padzi]

Imagine abandoning everything you knew to go on a 600-year voyage to a totally uncharted area of space to discover brave new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldy go where no-one has gone before, and when you arrive all you find are more rubber-forehead aliens that all speak your language and share your same customs and norms.

Imagine abandoning everything you knew to go on a 600-year voyage to a totally uncharted area of space to discover brave new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldy go where no-one has gone before.

You do this to escape from two races, one that wants to collect your species turn you into abominations and use your genes against you, the other a race of ancient murder-bots.

Only to find in Andromeda a race that wants to collect you, turn you into abominations and use your genes against you. Oh, and there are also ancient murder-bots all around.

Such variety, such novelty, such originality.

 

[pippin]

Imagine abandoning everything you knew to go on a 600-year voyage to a totally uncharted area of space to discover brave new worlds where cis white men don't exist

 

[Padzi]

Imagine abandoning everything you knew to go on a 600-year voyage to a totally uncharted area of space to discover brave new worlds where cis white men don't exist

Hey, when you signed up for initiative you had a paragraph B in section 3 that you need to a perverted sick dumbfuck to go.
This was the secret plan to cleanse the Milky Way of the worst element. Don't you remember?

 

[Tick Tock Crocodile]

Imagine abandoning everything you knew to go on a 600-year voyage to a totally uncharted area of space to discover brave new worlds where cis whites men don't exist

 

[cvv]

Finally I don't buy the argument Bioware simply isn't good at making open-world games and should go back to their thing. There is no going back. Being bad at open world games means being bad at games full stop. I'm absolutely certain if the MEA team made a traditional corridor ME sequel it'd be just as terrible.

Have you played Omega DLC for ME3.

Nope, it's the only DLC in the franchise I didn't buy, due to terrible reviews. Didn't know it was made by Montreal. Right again.

 

[Santander02]

The writers could have focused on Leviathans as main enemies after the end of ME3. Or Just make a prequel about first contact war. But of course they needed to get away from their own fuck up that was the ending of ME3 and fly as far as Andromeda.

BTW on second thought, almost all tattoos and blushes etc that you can slap on Ryder suspiciously don't look like tattoss at all. They all look like the post-shitesis ending marks that appear in ME3. Just color them green and you have the same effect.

Another possibility would be a game exploring the Citadel as a member of the security there or a kind of Gta in Space on Omega, happening all before the Reaper invasion.

In-universe Codex for the game said the only 1% of the Milky Way was mapped by Citadel races, so here another idea. Let's explore that 99% of the galaxy. We travel to never before seen part of space and you can even call it Mass Effect Uncharted Worlds.

I say, take any and all references to the "Andromeda Galaxy" from MEA and say that the game is instead taking place in some part of that 99% unexplored Milky Way, and it wouldn't make a cocking difference to the game's plot. That's how stupidly underutilized this "A whole new galaxy!!" premise is.