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Mass Effect: Andromeda Pre-Release Thread

Kuattro

Augur
Joined
Jun 4, 2015
Messages
401
Location
La Font del Gat
Sounds like a Macam...from Sunderland or around there, not technically a Jock, but subhuman nonetheless, it's like the difference between a big dirty brown rat and vole, not something that that you would think about too much before stomping on it to death, anyway here's Sunderland if you're curious...

sunderland-fans-2014-newcastle-united-nufc-650x400.jpg

Now I know where Bioware took their inspiration for the ME:A characters.

Either that or your meme magic is getting to new levels, because unless you were actually looking nobody could see that you had copypasted one of them in that image. Not even the pixels are visible.
 

Juggie

Augur
Joined
Sep 22, 2010
Messages
105
Found the Biodware apologist.
:timetoburn:
Yea I'm fucking sorry for not jumping on the bandwagon ITT instead of making my own opinion by actually playing the fucking trial. It's so much more reasonable to just repost the same old fucking gifs over and over instead of having, say, a constructively critical discussion.

So let me try to repent:
LOL BIOWARE BAD, EA BAD, SJW DETECTED
1mCAycv.gif

Better?
 

Shackleton

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
Messages
1,301
Location
Knackers Yard
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture


So the antagonists are teletubbies? First class design, Bioderp, first class. The more I see of this turd the more I am reminded of this old video about EA:


I like the way he wears a cape. Can't be a head baddie without a cape or cloak. That's where Mugabe and Assad are going wrong, need to wear a cape to be a proper overlord. Just a bit of a shame he doesn't have mustachios to twirl, Bio must have found it too difficult to animate mustachios.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2007
Messages
3,181
I want Republican Space Rangers the Game! would be so awesome. Kill all aliens! Would be vastly superior to commie-marxist bs what Bioware pushes! Yee-haw!

Fuck you. A true commie-marxist space mission would be tasked with educating your nationalist ass in why proletarians must forcefully remove the ruling capitalist elite.
...and install the ruling commie-marxist elite. Yee-haw!
 

deranged

Cipher
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
Messages
513
Location
Governed by clowns
I want Republican Space Rangers the Game! would be so awesome. Kill all aliens! Would be vastly superior to commie-marxist bs what Bioware pushes! Yee-haw!

Fuck you. A true commie-marxist space mission would be tasked with educating your nationalist ass in why proletarians must forcefully remove the ruling capitalist elite.
...and install the ruling commie-marxist elite. Yee-haw!

Only or a limited transitional period, before full blown communism is possible. But that is beside the point.
 

ED-209

Educated
Joined
May 9, 2014
Messages
62
Yea I'm fucking sorry for not jumping on the bandwagon ITT instead of making my own opinion by actually playing the fucking trial. It's so much more reasonable to just repost the same old fucking gifs over and over instead of having, say, a constructively critical discussion.

So let me try to repent:
LOL BIOWARE BAD, EA BAD, SJW DETECTED
1mCAycv.gif

Better?

The RPGKKKodex is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but it's the only place on the interwebs to get decent opinions on games. Roll with the punches and laugh at yourself.

Besides, Bioware and EA do suck; that's just science.
 

Zetor

Arcane
Joined
Jan 9, 2003
Messages
1,706
Location
Budapest, Hungary
The line between satire and incompetence is vanishingly tiny. Witness how The Room became a cult classic of "so bad it's good" cinema, when that film was an honest attempt to make a serious flick.

If it gets mocked enough, just wait couple/some years for the devs to retcon ME:A like The Room's director did, "We intentionally made it as a satire!".
Yep. To extend on this, once an author is aware of his creation being shit, he'll probably put in a bunch of 'clever' self-deprecating ironic jabs that just kill the magic.

cf. the brilliant terribleness of Birdemic (earnest 'romantic thriller' with a serious-business message... on a $10k budget) vs the self-aware moneygrab (lol) Birdemic 2 that spends most of its time poking fun at the original... zzz.
 

Juggie

Augur
Joined
Sep 22, 2010
Messages
105
The RPGKKKodex is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but it's the only place on the interwebs to get decent opinions on games. Roll with the punches and laugh at yourself.

Besides, Bioware and EA do suck; that's just science.
There are more productive threads in retardo. This is just a circlejerk between a couple of Kodex Kool Kids showing their disdain for the latest action-adventure-piece-labelled-RPG to show how prestigious they are. This is not a decent opinion on games. This is mob mentality and trying to fit in.

Sure there's lot to criticize. Character proportions are off, animations (especially facial ones) are meh or terrible, dialogs are very weird, voices and voice acting is mediocre to bad. All this has been pointed out over the last how many pages? Has to be around 100 now. I completely agree with this critique after playing the trial.

But when somebody brings up comparison to previous titles in level design and tries to bash Andromeda it's just pretentious. Hell, ME series has probably the worst level design I've seen in games.

So no, I'm not defending Bioware or Andromeda, but pointing out that they shat out turds of games before this one.

Maybe people who praise the old Mass Effect games while bashing MEA should put down their nostalgia glasses and go have a reality check by replaying them.
 

Parabalus

Arcane
Joined
Mar 23, 2015
Messages
17,432
There are more productive threads in retardo. This is just a circlejerk between a couple of Kodex Kool Kids showing their disdain for the latest action-adventure-piece-labelled-RPG to show how prestigious they are. This is not a decent opinion on games. This is mob mentality and trying to fit in.

Sure there's lot to criticize. Character proportions are off, animations (especially facial ones) are meh or terrible, dialogs are very weird, voices and voice acting is mediocre to bad. All this has been pointed out over the last how many pages? Has to be around 100 now. I completely agree with this critique after playing the trial.

But when somebody brings up comparison to previous titles in level design and tries to bash Andromeda it's just pretentious. Hell, ME series has probably the worst level design I've seen in games.

So no, I'm not defending Bioware or Andromeda, but pointing out that they shat out turds of games before this one.

Maybe people who praise the old Mass Effect games while bashing MEA should put down their nostalgia glasses and go have a reality check by replaying them.

Don't bother, once the circle jerk gets rolling nothing can stop it, least of all facts.
 
Joined
Dec 28, 2012
Messages
6,657
Location
Rape
I want Republican Space Rangers the Game! would be so awesome. Kill all aliens! Would be vastly superior to commie-marxist bs what Bioware pushes! Yee-haw!

Fuck you. A true commie-marxist space mission would be tasked with educating your nationalist ass in why proletarians must forcefully remove the ruling capitalist elite.

77C9238B3D7FC73AB64938865850E954DE10D058


Μια στυγνη, μαυρη δικτατορια ειναι ακριβως αυτο που χρειαζεται η Ελλαδα. Φασιστικη η Μπολσεβιστικη. Οι αστοι απ'την Σμυρνη, Κυπρο και Επτανησα που θεριζουν την Ελλαδα εδω και 100 χρονια θα σταλθουν σε γκουλαγκ και οι εβραιοι οπως π.χ. ο Βενιζελος θα πανε απευθειας σε θαλαμους αεριων.
 

tormund

Arcane
Joined
Aug 15, 2015
Messages
2,282
Location
Penetrating the underrail
Sure thing, newfag scum.
It will be discovered by the Kodex that it hides hidden complexities and a great deal of reactivity as well as many a possibility of "emergent gameplay". Also, it angered SJWs due to featuring a straight blonde party member.

Animals, my dear, are ever predictable, even the rabid ones.
 

Mark Richard

Arcane
Joined
Mar 14, 2016
Messages
1,192
"Why I'm giving 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' a hard pass: It's more of the same colonialism"

By Dia Lacina
March 17, 2017
GET MIC DAILY:
Mass Effect: Andromeda, the player character Ryder awakens from cryogenic stasis after 634 years and is greeted by two shipmates. The first explains that you're a member of the Pathfinder team (an elite group chosen to find a new home for the 20,000 colonists on board). The second cracks a joke with clear colonialist undertones: "Could you make it someplace tropical?"

That's exactly when I decided, unequivocally, I'm not touching this game.

And it sucks. I've been a longtime BioWare fan. I enjoyed the first three Mass Effects despite their gameplay flaws and sometimes questionable narrative and thematic decisions. Knights of the Old Republic renewed what I thought was a dead interest in Star Wars. Dragon Age 2 brought me more joy than I thought possible. But BioWare, despite having queer characters and people of color in its games, seems to have just stopped caring.

Andromeda is the newest release in a much-loved franchise about smooching aliens and touring the galaxy while armed to the teeth. The heroes are the apex of human exceptionalism. I'm just so done with this kind of crap in video games.

Andromeda is the newest release in a much-loved franchise about smooching aliens and touring the galaxy while armed to the teeth. The heroes are the apex of human exceptionalism.
NzY0ZDIzMGE5YSMvV0ZXRmZySVVuOVNxcFZuYXlnNndIdHh6Nm5BPS8xOXgzMDoxMDA1eDczNy82MjF4NDQ1L2ZpbHRlcnM6cXVhbGl0eSg3MCkvaHR0cDovL3MzLmFtYXpvbmF3cy5jb20vcG9saWN5bWljLWltYWdlcy9obXdid3A2ZmU3Nncxb3d3YWF5ZzJycHlob3FzY200eHVqY3l2dTdmemFqNTQ0dWl1aG16enJobWNpbnFzZTVuLmpwZw.jpg

Rugged, masculine, white — Shepard is the "all-American hero" and the Milky Way is his playground.
Source: BioWare/PlayStation
Christopher Columbus was a "pathfinder" too
Like Ryder, Christopher Columbus was literally a pathfinder. While he failed at delivering Spain a new trade route to India, he brought them a tropical island. Whether the opening to Mass Effect: Andromeda is aware of this or not, I can't say. It seems too obvious to be unintentional, but the sequence is not critical or transparent enough to hold up as criticism. Either way, the parallels between Ryder and Columbus are hard to dismiss.

Exploration is anything but an inherent moral good.
Modern society still lauds exploration, enshrining it as a virtue with holidays like Columbus Day. We act as though exploration is pure and admirable, and that the sacrifices made only impact the explorer. Exploration is anything but an inherent moral good. European exploration of the Americas during a period known as the Columbian Exchange brought with it scores of invasive flora, fauna and horrific disease that ravaged the indigenous populations. Then, as exploration turned to settlement, the settlers turned to genocide.

MGYxZGM4MjdjMCMvSGVGUHJOWC02a0xXMjBPdlRsVzNRaHdHLUFvPS8weDQyOjgwNng0NDkvODA2eDQwNy9maWx0ZXJzOnF1YWxpdHkoNzApL2h0dHA6Ly9zMy5hbWF6b25hd3MuY29tL3BvbGljeW1pYy1pbWFnZXMvaXBiaHpjZTBvb2l6MW4yeWVlZnBheXdjaWpnc3BqbGxmeDNydWZxa3hpZzd1Z3ZyNXJlenlpeGRldDlzZ3hjMi5qcGc.jpg

16th century woodcut by Theodor De Bry based on Bartolomé de las Casas' writings depicting Spanish treament of the Arawak
Source: Theodor De Bry/Carriacou
Colonialism is never about sharing resources or space. The entire concept exists because the imperial need for resources and space is ever expanding. Colonialism is a machine whose only real function is to consume and grow.

"Fight for a new home"
The most recent Mass Effect: Andromeda trailer asks players to "Fight for a new home," which is the tip of the sword named colonialism. Fighting for a new home is the story U.S. history books use to describe the settlement of America: intrepid explorers, peaceful pilgrims and enterprising merchants who just wanted to peacefully coexist with the "noble savages" who occupied North America and whose "barbarism" forced those settlers to take up guns and pacify the indigenous inhabitants.

One of Ryder's shipmates also refers to the Pathfinder crew as "visitors," but home is not a place where you visit. It's where you've decided to stay — even if it means you're going to slaughter everyone who was there before you showed up. This is the colonialist legacy. Having a non-playable Pathfinder character frame their mission in this light could speak to the self-deception colonizers willingly do to justify their violent entitlement, or it could just be sloppy writing used to set up an excuse for the player to slaughter the enemy other.

Source: Mass Effect/YouTube
Colonialism and video games are directly linked
I have zero faith that Mass Effect: Andromeda will manage to be a nuanced or critical look at colonialism. Maybe I'm wrong. I could very well be, and I'd be overjoyed if I were.

Big-budget "AAA" games will never offer a critical lens to explore the real consequences of colonialism. It actually shows up more often in video games than you might think. Most often it's represented in systems that demand binary conflict: player vs. baddies. Games are quick to establish an "other" that must be defeated or subjugated, along with material resources that must be acquired, expended and reacquired.

AAA games will never offer a critical lens to explore the real consequences of colonialism.
Then there's the 4X genre of games, which literally stands for explore, expand, exploit and exterminate. In these video games, nations explore beyond their boundaries and expand into those newly "discovered" territories. In the Civilization series, for example, players actively exploit resources and natives while exterminating any opposition to their hegemony.

Games often play at narratives involving colonialist concepts or colonialism and its aftershocks — Nathan Drake and Lara Croft explore, pillage and destroy relentlessly in their respective Uncharted and Tomb Raider series.

To its credit, Far Cry 2 takes a conflicted look at fictionalized post-colonial Africa, and Metal Gear Solid 5's most cogent politics are anti-colonial. But examples like these are few and far between.

BioWare has always had a problem with colonialism
When I first heard that the new Mass Effect would deal with colonialism, I was worried. The first three games didn't exactly give me hope, and other BioWare titles weren't any better. Dragon Age's depiction of elves as a less-than-nuanced mashup of mostly Native American and Roma cultures was indelicate. One reveal in Inquisition even blames the subaltern Elves for their own oppression.

Then came the marketing blitz for Andromeda.

"We're explorers, not an army," we learn in a scene from the second cinematic Andromeda trailer. This is followed by a montage of Ryder's crew gearing up to presumably battle the Archon — presented in an earlier scene as yet another grotesque and violent alien other commanding a vast military force.

Source: Mass Effect/YouTube
Human exceptionalism is a driver of the original Mass Effect trilogy, which can be traced back to BioWare's initial white, male and all-American protagonist, Shepard. Our hero is given carte blanche to traverse, exploit and annihilate across the Milky Way in service of pursuing a rogue agent and destroying the Geth — a violent, savage and mysterious extraterrestrial other. It's difficult to divorce this human exceptionalism from the history of American imperialism.

BioWare also has a history of setting up the enemy other as an instigator, diminishing any moral or ethical considerations in its main narratives. The Geth massacre the colony on Eden Prime in Mass Effect and the game sets up the player to use this as justification for any reprisal.

Andromeda appears to do much the same in its first hour. Ryder's team falls under immediate attack despite attempts at peaceful communication on their part and all hell breaks loose. The humans are just fighting back.

The game's creators may try to frame Andromeda as the story of refugees searching for a new home, but it reads a lot more like Manifest Destiny in space. And we all know how that turned out.

YTllOTc2MTVhNSMvWDVwSW93b2p6QVk3TXFBdkczTUtKSzk0c040PS82eDk6OTk0eDU1NC84MDZ4NDQ1L2ZpbHRlcnM6cXVhbGl0eSg3MCkvaHR0cDovL3MzLmFtYXpvbmF3cy5jb20vcG9saWN5bWljLWltYWdlcy9xeXo4b3B1cnZobnNmanVld2R2amh3bXo3ZGZoZnV6MXp5ZjNnbzF3eGJubG90Zzd5ZjFiYzQyc29rZjhueW12LmpwZw.jpg

Colonialism at work?
Source: Mass Effect
Given BioWare's history, Andromeda will likely conclude with a bland critique about how both sides are wrong. At most, I expect the game will systemically encourage players to colonize at will, only to offer brief chastisement for engaging in those systems. However, it could also just as easily high-five you for every outpost you construct, feed you dopamine as you extract resources and give you a ridiculous sex scene with an alien whose entire species you might soon wipe out.

I don't know what BioWare will bring with the conclusion of this game, but with everything they've given me so far, I just don't trust them enough to care anymore.

Merry Christmas.
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
Holy shit, have you seen it? French version of the game has diffrent default Sara Ryder. It actaully looks better... but why do it in secret?
I wonder if this's some new patch, or maybe they just used other appearance in diffrent country... but why?



And there's youtube record, he clearly picks Sara Ryder: Quick start



Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/6010ab/no_spoilers_sara_ryder_corrected_face_leaked/

Freaking reddit.

I don't know why (assuming this isn't bs) the french version would be different, but that looks even less like the real model, so why do they call it "corrected" (or "leaked", if it's in the french version, then it can hardly be a leak)?

asAoThp.png
 

Jarmaro

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 31, 2016
Messages
1,466
Location
Lair of Despair
Not really about the game, but this is something that's too extreme even for me. Even funnier are attempts of other users to explain why Asari can't be transgender beceause they have no gender to trans.

EXa72BT.jpg
 

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