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

[dbx]

The problem with biowhore aliens is that not only they are physically humanoid, but that they're also human in spirit.
There's nothing really alien in them, their culture/phylosophy/whatever is "alien" as much as maori culture is alien with respect to kwanza culture.
It's still too fucking human in every aspect.

Even the old fucking greys are more alien than any species in mass effect.

 

[Jarmaro]

Entire topic gets even worse when you realize in ME1 they tried to make races diffrent from human. Elkors, Hanars, they were so far from being human that they were interesting.
Of course Quarians, Asari and Turians were simply diffrent looking humans. Salarians were somewhere in between. And in Andromeda? Only two new races, Ket are "evil" and those second are "good". Not even mentioning that they are more human in appearance and acting than Milk Way races. This game is so bad in concept It's terrifying someone decided to let them do it.

 

[dbx]

We can't pretend much from the people who thought it was cool to have a scene with your crew watching a movie together like fucking overgrown children.

 

[Liz]

I think for most Biodrones (and reviewers) that is really the worst aspect of Andromeda, it's an entire new galaxy and we still have bipedal, humanoid looking aliens (and we can even communicate with them, no big deal)

That and the fact only two new races were introduced, with really nothing to set them apart. The Kett at least have a somewhat "oh, so that's how it is" plot twist later in the game, but the other race is so bland, so human-like and not to mention so derivative art design-wise.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Biodrones

 

[Jarmaro]

We can't pretend much from the people who thought it was cool to have a scene with your crew watching a movie together like fucking overgrown children.

It's actually kinda symblistic. In ME3 your crew and friends are having parties and drinking. In Andromeda they are watching movies.
That's diffrence between teenagers and adult people.

 

[Jarmaro]

Even the old fucking greys

Who?

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

How to actually enjoy Mass Effect: Andromeda

Looks like that shipment of Doritos finally arrived at Eurogamer HQ.

It's really weird isn't it that a magazine which thinks the game's shit, publishes a guide on how to tolerate a game, with the main point being don't play half of it and finish the story missions as quickly as possible. Gamers are so fucking dense and masochistic they will play something just because of a name even if they are told it is shit and can see the evidence from all the videos, they still say well I'm a Mass Effect fan so I'll buy it and play it myself. But I guess that's fanboys for you, the same would happen with a new Star Wars, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones or any of that garbage. I learned my lesson after watching Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which was so bad it ruined the previous three films for me, now I can't watch them anymore and just watch Romancing the Stone instead

Anyway a few more reviews I've heard of...

Jim Sterling, or Stelling or whatever, made a short video with his first impressions (I won't link the video because he talks like a cunt) anyway the nub of it is he'll review it when he's played it fully but unless something seriously improves it's not going to get any more than 6/10

Giant Bomb sounds like they hated it (I believe they use a five point system) so they'll give it 2/5 or 3/5. If you've seen their round table discussion you'll see that they can't possibly rate it any higher.

Guardian just gave it 3/5...In the comments so far about seven out of the ten people who said they would be buying the game, are now not going to.

It's a fucking good job that EA gave some dodgy Spanish bloggers a goody bag and early release copies to give the game 90%plus reviews, to artificially inflate the score and then paid of Metacritic for allowing such amateur reviews to be counted, to maximise their day one sales. As it seems now the reviews from all the sites you've heard of, even shill sites, would put the average score ten points down, to mid to late 60's.

I might also have mentioned before a magazine shilling an EA press release from a few months ago that said they expected this game to sell 3million copies in it's first week, now I've seen a few more magazines that were shilling that line at the time.

To put this into perspective Dragon Age Inquisition sold about 1.2million, Mass Effect 2 about 1.2million give or take a few (I've only seen the sales figures for XBOX PS3 which is 900kplus) and I just read that ME3 sold 1.8, (originally I heard a figure of 3.5 but that must have been the first month)

So EA actually went out and stated that they thought this game would sell 2-3 times the amount of copies as more heavily promoted, far better reviewed and recieved games and in the case of the 2 ME games it continued the story of Shepherd an iconic character, which players were invested in. Does anyone actually believe this game will get anywhere near those number of sales? As I've stated before on here that the game needs to shift 600-700k on day one and a million plus in the first week to stay viable, because the drop off on people buying it will be just as bad as DA2, such is it's bad reputation.

Now from what I've seen in people comments to reviews is half or thereabouts of people who were enthusiastic for the game won't buy it, the ones that will are luke warm in there response, if you compare that to "wow awesome," "can't wait to finish my Sheperds story," "Can't wait to romance the bull." Comments that accomapanied the other games I mentioned it looks like this game will perform worse than even I expected and it would be lucky to get even half the week one sales of ME3.

So how the hell will EA explain to it's shareholders that the game sold less than 1million copies in it's first week, when it was bragging about selling 3 times that number? And expecting lifetime sales of 6-9million? When it'd be damn lucky to sell 2-3million even with large discounts?

Anyway enough jabber... Who thought this would be a funny idea?....

 

[Liz]

Even the old fucking greys

Who?

The original alien 'design' associated with the Barney and Betty Hill abduction claim which took place in 1961. They're kind of trope-ish to the point designers will deliberately try to move away from that design.

 

[Salvo]

What I don't understand is why a Trans character has been shoehorned in this game after being put in DA:I. Dragon Age I may understand, but the Mass Effect saga was initially designed as "realistic", yet social minorities such as trans, lesbians and gays are being portrayed in great numbers.

While having nothing against them they are not nearly as common as these games make them out to be. I know hundreds of people and out of all of them, two gays and one lesbian.




That being said, this game looks really bad.

 

[pippin]

We can't pretend much from the people who thought it was cool to have a scene with your crew watching a movie together like fucking overgrown children.

It's actually kinda symblistic. In ME3 your crew and friends are having parties and drinking. In Andromeda they are watching movies.
That's diffrence between teenagers and adult people.

There's no symbolism on it. Citadel DLC was made to provide a more satisfying ending for the fans, and was mostly intended as a comedic episode. So it's more like your average fanfic turn into a reality.
And it has Tali singing (iirc it was here).

 

[warpig]

It's ersatz social life for Biodrone turbodweebs. That's also why these characters behave like quirky, urbanite, millenial dipshits - they are supposed to be your imaginary friends.

 

[santino27]

What I don't understand is why a Trans character has been shoehorned in this game after being put in DA:I. Dragon Age I may understand, but the Mass Effect saga was initially designed as "realistic", yet social minorities such as trans, lesbians and gays are being portrayed in great numbers.

While having nothing against them they are not nearly as common as these games make them out to be. I know hundreds of people and out of all of them, two gays and one lesbian.

That being said, this game looks really bad.

I'm not defending the game (that'd be impossible), but no modern game pretends to be a population simulation, with correct demographic proportions. Bioware's included trans or gay characters because there are trans or gay players who will shell out money to play a game where they feel represented. That's all it is.

(Also, anecdotal evidence is purely anecdotal. I know hundreds of people and at least 20+ of them are gay (including 90% of the devs and ux designers at one company I worked at). Where you live probably has a lot to do with it.)

 

[Salvo]

What I don't understand is why a Trans character has been shoehorned in this game after being put in DA:I. Dragon Age I may understand, but the Mass Effect saga was initially designed as "realistic", yet social minorities such as trans, lesbians and gays are being portrayed in great numbers.

While having nothing against them they are not nearly as common as these games make them out to be. I know hundreds of people and out of all of them, two gays and one lesbian.

That being said, this game looks really bad.

I'm not defending the game (that'd be impossible), but no modern game pretends to be a population simulation, with correct demographic proportions. Bioware's included trans or gay characters because there are trans or gay players who will shell out money to play a game where they feel represented. That's all it is.

(Also, anecdotal evidence is purely anecdotal. I know hundreds of people and at least 20+ of them are gay (including 90% of the devs and ux designers at one company I worked at). Where you live probably has a lot to do with it.)

I hadn't thought about that. Fair point, my friend!

 

[Liz]

What I don't understand is why a Trans character has been shoehorned in this game after being put in DA:I. Dragon Age I may understand, but the Mass Effect saga was initially designed as "realistic", yet social minorities such as trans, lesbians and gays are being portrayed in great numbers.

While having nothing against them they are not nearly as common as these games make them out to be. I know hundreds of people and out of all of them, two gays and one lesbian.

That being said, this game looks really bad.

I'm not defending the game (that'd be impossible), but no modern game pretends to be a population simulation, with correct demographic proportions. Bioware's included trans or gay characters because there are trans or gay players who will shell out money to play a game where they feel represented. That's all it is.

(Also, anecdotal evidence is purely anecdotal. I know hundreds of people and at least 20+ of them are gay (including 90% of the devs and ux designers at one company I worked at). Where you live probably has a lot to do with it.)

Still, how yhey're represented in Bioware games leaves a lot to be desired. Heck, Even Breath of the Wild had a more interesting trans character.

 

[deranged]

Jim Sterling, or Stelling or whatever, made a short video with his first impressions (I won't link the video because he talks like a cunt)

Bollocks, jim sterling is a fine geek. Here's the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b98XmQOpmtI

 

[Jarmaro]

Still, how yhey're represented in Bioware games leaves a lot to be desired. Heck, Even Breath of the Wild had a more interesting trans character.

Beceause Bioware makes bad games. It isn't as if they didn't want to make this good, they are simply too incompetend to do it.

 

[Reinhardt]

The problem with biowhore aliens is that not only they are physically humanoid, but that they're also human in spirit.

You don't like poetry?

 

[DragoFireheart]

I remember adding some fiber to my glass of water but I added too much. Made me slightly gassy for the rest of that evening.

I also remember when I took a shit it slid out diarrhea style. That experience is still superior to ME:A.

 

[norolim]

I think for most Biodrones (and reviewers) that is really the worst aspect of Andromeda, it's an entire new galaxy and we still have bipedal, humanoid looking aliens.

The only immediate problem with it is that it doesn't fit your expectations. There are as many theories supporting the claim that technologically advanced intelligent aliens would be bipedal and upright as there are to the contrary. And the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of bipedal intelligent primates: we know it happened at least once.

In all scientifically plausible theories, the way intelligent life looks depends on the conditions it evolved in. You could argue, for example, that intelligent life that evolved on a planet with much higher gravity and much thicker atmosphere in comparison to Earth, would indeed look nothing like humans. Those creatures would probably be horizontal in posture and would possibly move on more than two legs (or have a strong tail).

If, however, life evolved on a planet, that more or less resembles our globe, it is quite likely they wouldn't be that much different. They would probably need to move, so we can assume symmetry (most likely bilateral, if they evolved on land). They would need to have sensory organs on the front of their body, because that's the side that meets the environment first, when they move. This means, they would probably undergo cephalization and develop a head. Since they evolved in a thin atmosphere, they'd probably be vertical creatures and with that posture two legs are much more efficient than four or more. They would also need a way to manipulate the environment - upper extremities. Most probably 2, because that's quite enough to do most tasks. One could argue, that a creature could do more tasks simultaneously, if it had more sets of hands, but that would require more sets of "eyes" or the ability to concentrate on many objects at the same time. This, however, would mean a bigger brain -> bigger head -> higher mass -> more energy requirements and so on. As a result, 4 arms could turn out to be less efficient.

So there you have it - a bipedal, upright alien with two legs and two hands is not a huge stretch, although I'm pretty sure there are many home-grown scientists on the Codex, that have their own ideas on the subject.

 

[Athos]

You've seen Cora and Vetra sex scenes, now share my pain and look at this weird shit. Looks like a discounted Avarar sex scene. But this time instead of space cats they are having sex with pink space rabbits:

It's funny that they imagined these alien like something evolved from a squid, judging by that skin and head tentacles, but they still have a bone structure almost identical to the human one. They even have the squared jawline. An unsettling merge between Davy Jones and a male fashion model. When I see these scenes I always wonder who the fuck can stomach "romancing" aliens. Even Asari in the original trilogy were unsettling but this takes zoophilia to a whole new level.

 

[mastroego]

It has nothing to do with science for Bioware "artists" anyway.
Aliens are just symbolic replacements for minorities and SJWs.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

So...the man-faced assari is named Peebee? For real?

I know this is old, but...I thought that was just a meme.

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

I also have my doubt's about that $40million development cost, it seems the average salary for a Bioware designer/animator/artist/whatever is about $60'000 us dollars.

Now Bioware claims it took hundreds of people 5 years to develop the game.

60'000 x 100 x 5 = 30million.

Now you can dispute that figure by saying they all weren't working on it at the same time, which is fair, or they also had some, judging by the quality of the work, interns working on it, which is also fair. But then again they also had people working overtime during the crunch period and I just looked at an article that said Ubisoft had 90 people working on Watch Dogs at one time, from just one division, which represented only a third of their current staff on the project. So there could have been 200-300 hundred people working on the ME3 during some periods. Also I haven't factored in company benifits and pension payments. Also the largest salaries to the CEO and large one off payments to voice actors, composers and others.

The staffing costs alone may have exceeded $40million, before all the other development costs, licenses, office costs, Making a Transexual Bathroom in the office, Paying skippy the Janitor, Clevland the security guard and Janice the dinner lady.

By way of comparison Watch Dogs took the same amount of time to develop and was also made in Canada and cost $68millionUS...Now you could say here Andromeda was developed on the cheap to that and I'd agree, it certainly looks that way. But it appears EA didn't think that, because their preditions to the games success are inline with the sales of Watch Dogs so I'm assuming they thought they were getting a similar product for roughly the same investment.

Another comparison is CD Project in Potatoland Witcher 3 cost $46million to make, took a year and a half less in time to make and they were paying out in potatoes, here's a conversion of a yearly salary into USD...

Artist $15'000

CDPR Enviromental artist $18'000 (Bioware salary $65'000)

CDPR Senior Engineer/Programmer $45'000 (Bioware basic software engineer salary $80'000)

So CDPR were paying out much less than half of Bioware in Salaries across the board, their operating costs were much less, they would have been matched in government subsidies and breaks by Potato government as much as the Candian government helped out Bioware, it took them a year less to make the game and they don't need to pay out for a dental plan as Poles have no teeth, nor for maternity leave as Poles know better than to employ irrational women as anything other than cleaner, cook or office prostitute.

And EA/ Bioware expect us to believe that their game cost $40million and Witcher 3 $46million, even though it took them much longer to make and they were paying at least double the salaries?

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

It has nothing to do with science for Bioware "artists" anyway.
Aliens are just symbolic replacements for minorities and SJWs.

Deformed creatures with minds incomprehensible by all but few who dare plunge into the depth of insanity? Actually yeah, sound about right.