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

[Jaesun]

Mss Effect intellectual property should be purchased by Bethesda and revived ala Fallout. We know how much Todd creams at the thought of Skyrimz in Space.

I would, out of *sheer curiosity*, like to see the Bethesda Dev team do a Space Opera like game. Just to see what kind of setting and characters and world they could come up with.

Granted it would be fucking terrible, so they probably should just buy some previously owned property....

 

[buru5]

I would, out of *sheer curiosity*, like to see the Bethesda Dev team do a Space Opera like game. Just to see what kind of setting and characters and world they could come up with.

Granted it would be fucking terrible, so they probably should just buy some previously owned property....

STARFIELD is coming

 

[KyivAfter12am]

I would, out of *sheer curiosity*, like to see the Bethesda Dev team do a Space Opera like game. Just to see what kind of setting and characters and world they could come up with.

Your wish has been granted: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Mothership_Zeta_(add-on)

And yes, it wasn't good.

 

[Mynon]

Elder Scrolls already has spazzze stuff. They just never used it.

That aspect of the universe has been quietly swept under the rug from Oblivion onwards, together with other of Kirkbride's um... more creative... ideas about word's history and metaphysics. Not that it was ever anything other than fringe flavor.

 

[Vorark]

Ok, I actually played this thing. Won't spoiler tag because the story is fucking idiotic and is basically ME1 and ME2 mashed together. Here's what I can remember, anyway:

- If you keep the default name, it will be used during the game.

- Combat isn't good. I played the equivalent of a vanguard but it wasn't satisfying like in ME2/3. You have to spend a good amount of points on passive skills or your weapons and powers will be useless.

- Spongy enemies just shoot at you and you shoot or punch them back and that's it. No clever use of tech, biotics, grenades etc. Exception were the architects, only interesting encounters in the whole game.

- You can't command the squadmates to do anything useful. A couple times I just went solo because all of them are either rehashes or just annoying.

- The planets look like something you'd find on Earth. The zero gravity one was alright, even though it was basically like visiting the moon in ME1.

- SAM is basically Navi.

- Remnant = Protheans; Cauliflower people (forgot the name lel) = Collectors; Nexus = Citadel; Nomad = Mako.

- There are loyalty missions like in ME2 but I could only stand to do the krogan one because he's basically an ancient Wrex. Other companions are insufferable.

- In ME1 you had non-humanoid races, like the hanar and elcor. Here you get nothing. According to the game, they were in the quarian ark (which will now be turned into a book, lel.)

- Ryder is indeed a retard, no matter if you choose the professional/serious dialogue options, s/he will eventually blubber something "funny". Maybe the tumblrinas enjoy this type of "humor".

- I think people you aid along the way joins you on the final battle. However, it was more like cameos than anything else and they sure don't make a difference. In the end I had to kill everything by myself. Oh, you don't even get to fight the big boss Archon: he gets electrified and dies.

- The explanations for leaving the Milky Way are so contrived. The asari girl even told me that "Oh, the Milky Way was so been there, done that." Bitch, please. We barely explored it in the trilogy.

- You get a story hook which could've been interesting: a secret benefactor to the whole Andromeda Initiative, whose intentions were unknown. Even got the head honcho of the Initiative assassinated. What is that, an inkling of creativity in Andromeda? Well, SURPRISE, SURPRISE: turns out Andromeda was, in reality, a project to get away from the Reapers. You even get Garrus' dad talking to Ryder's dad about Shepard findings.

- The krogans miraculously managed to do something about the genophage while in their 600 years cryosleep. Also, why would you bring them along when barely see eye-to-eye with the other species?

- After people woke up in not-Citadel, there was infighting and those who were unsatisfied left; they were called the "exiles". How could they so easily leave and find a new cushy planet to colonize? Why is Ryder needed again?

MEA is all kinds of fucked up. I mean, even the budget Dragon Age II was somehow better. Bioware is finally, truly dead to me.

 

[Frozen]

I tried a couple of times and just cant do it.
Is there a cover in this? It looks more like shooting from ME3 multiplayer.
I keep on dying in tutorial mission (hardest difficulty) because I cant be glued to anything to duck and you cant see shit where rock people (whatever) are...they kind of bland in you have to look at red dots above screen.
Its not popamole anymore? Its more like whack a mole with guns, those rock people do duck but not quite, they just stand half covered waiting to be shoot at or stood up and shoot at you wtf LOL
Also consoletard auto save no quick save option? Or does it come later (after tutorial when I guess daddy dear kicks the bucket) ?
Can you fuck butch blonde lesbian as a woman or you have to go for tentacles/males/male Asari ?
So far only ok looking woman (even if in a pornographic way) is that Asian leader of the initiative and she's not even there I assume lmfao

 

[c2007]

Some people think it is a great game.

Some people like to huff shit.

Coincidence?

 

[Iznaliu]

The asari girl even told me that "Oh, the Milky Way was so been there, done that." Bitch, please. We barely explored it in the trilogy.

This sounds like a parody.

 

[gestalt11]

The asari girl even told me that "Oh, the Milky Way was so been there, done that." Bitch, please. We barely explored it in the trilogy.

This sounds like a parody.

It's self-parody. It's like totally meta.

 

[fantadomat]

The asari girl even told me that "Oh, the Milky Way was so been there, done that." Bitch, please. We barely explored it in the trilogy.

This sounds like a parody.

It's self-parody. It's like totally meta.

More like written by people that have never played the trilogy.

 

[J1M]

How is it a requirement? The only thing it changed was one scene in one of the endings. Not to mention that Anthem is a multiplayer game, you can't play it solo, at least not in the way you can the MEs or DAs.

I haven't played the game on release till the end but AFAIK you're told you have to raise galactic readiness and you can't get it high without multiplayer - at least till they patched it so that you can easily get maximum level. Dedicated fans would not know endings are similar or would want to get best ending anyway.

Next time just stop at the point where you realize that you have no idea what you are talking about. Anything after that is just you repeating the dumb opinions of dumb game journalists.

 

[c2007]

I am actually playing the trial, out of a mix of morbid curiosity and boredom.

It is bad. Worse than I imagined in a lot of ways. The combat control feels good, that's about it.

 

[Iznaliu]

It is bad. Worse than I imagined in a lot of ways. The combat control feels good, that's about it.

More detail would be nice.

 

[c2007]

Ok.

No dialog choices that reflect, whatsoever, how I would actually respond to the situations that I have found worthy of a confrontational moment.

Despite all their patches, the facial animations are a step backwards, maybe a leap. The eye movement in particular is unnerving or just so uncanny I want to laugh. Instead....

- this is the future of gaming. Read muh stories, watch movie, click stuff occasionally, awesome.

What is decent is the shoot game. You aim at stuff, it reliably hits the target. The jump pack is ok...

The game still fails on the same levels that DAI did, but worse. Far worse.

You are wearing a jetpack, and yet there are unreachable areas in the "open world".

When in street clothes, you can only vault some boxes.

These arbitrary invisible barriers are acceptable in a corridor shooter... The open world is an overplayed joke.

Immense loading times, graphics that are just plain overrated.

I will somehow continue... The last hour of my 3 hour investigation was brutal.

 

[Beastro]

- The explanations for leaving the Milky Way are so contrived. The asari girl even told me that "Oh, the Milky Way was so been there, done that." Bitch, please. We barely explored it in the trilogy.

I'm sick of this kind of overblown scope in Sci-Fi where so many involve an entire galaxy instead of restraining things to a handful of systems, or even with just one or two.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Figuring Out How Poorly Mass Effect: Andromeda Sold
Posted on September 16, 2017, 1:05 am By Billy D


(Last Updated On: September 16, 2017)
The top 10 best-selling games of 2017 isn’t looking too hot. We’re past the midway point of the year prepping for the sales rush of the holiday season and what we’re looking at here in the latest NPD chart is not impressive at all. Nevertheless, the figures do give us an opportunity to round off figures and finally figure out exactly how poorly a game like Mass Effect: Andromeda may have sold, especially given how reticent EA has been about the game’s sales figures.

Spoiler

Venture Beat rolled out the top 10 best-selling when it comes to physical game sales, and the list starts with Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands and ends with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. You can check out the list below.

1. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands
2. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*
3. Grand Theft Auto V
4. For Honor
5. Horizon Zero Dawn
6. Injustice 2
7. Mass Effect: Andromeda
8. Madden NFL 18
9. NBA 2K17
10. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

To get a gauge on the lowest end and highest end of the sales spectrum of the list it’s best to figure out what the game on the bottom part of the chart sold and what the game at the top end of the chart sold.

So we know that Resident Evil 7: Biohazard only moved 3.7 million copies from January up through the summer, and that includes both digital and physical sales. We also know that the game moved nearly 1.6 million digital units on Steam alone according to Steam Spy, and so we know that at the very least Resident Evil 7 moved 2.1 million on the Xbox One and PS4. What share of that is digital remains to be seen, but Capcom noted that digital sales contributed to a “certain extent” in the quarterly report.

For a little perspective, Crystal Dynamics’ 2013 Tomb Raider reboot managed to sell 3.4 million under four weeks on the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC, according to Eurogamer. So there’s definitely a downward trend in sales, at least as far as name-brands are concerned.

For a gauge on what the other games have sold like, the top end of the chart sees Tom Clancy’s: Ghost Recon Wildlands taking the number one spot so far. Unfortunately the game has a giant mystery box by its sales figures.

Critical Hit Gaming only reports that the game helped push Ubisoft’s quarterly figures past expectations, but we have no clue what the actual sales figures are.

We can glean estimates from sites like Steam Spy, which puts the total owners at around 550,000 on PC. And during its first week it moved 1.62 million copies according to Game Tunnel; but figures since then have been absent from the news wire.

While VG Chartz is considered unreliable, they estimate retail to be around 3.23 million physical SKUs sold between the Xbox One and PS4, which would mean that from those estimates it’s moved around 3.78 million units between physical sales and Steam sales. We know that’s not the final figure because it’s outsold The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which moved 3.92 million digital and physical units. So obviously, that would mean the digital sales for Ghost Recon: Wildlands would have pushed it over the 4 million mark and possibly close to 5 million.

Either way, the game hasn’t sold so much that Ubisoft has been confident enough in any way to actually reveal the hard numbers.

We do know for a fact that it’s under Madden NFL 17 on the top 10 chart for collected sales data for the last 12 months, as listed in the chart below from the NPD.

1. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
2. Battlefield 1
3. NBA 2K17
4. Grand Theft Auto V
5. Madden NFL 17
6. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands
7. FIFA 17
8. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*
9. Final Fantasy XV
10. For Honor

According to Fox Business, analysts projected Madden NFL 17 to move about 5.5 million units; it managed to do a million SKUs out of the gate during launch week last year.

So to help put this into perspective, the top selling multiplatform AAA game across home consoles and PC has moved somewhere south of 5 through 6 million units. To put that another way, the top-selling AAA game on the market has done maybe just over half of what Bluehole Studios managed to accomplish with Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds on PC, which moved more than 11 million copies this year, according to Steam Spy.

Even worse yet is that games like Mass Effect: Andromeda did so bad that EA and BioWare have been too ashamed to even reveal what the total sales figures are, whether that be physical, digital or a combination of both.

For a little extra perspective, Mass Effect: Andromeda sold less than Injustice 2 when it comes to physical sales, and we know it obviously has sold less than the games at the top end of the chart, so it’s obviously done less than 4 million.

We do know that Injustice 2 moved 500,000 digital copies on PS4 and Xbox One back in May, according to Superdata Research. And since Injustice 2 is lower on the board than Horizon: Zero Dawn, which has moved 3.4 million units – 915,000 of which were digital according to PlayStation LifeStyle. This means that Injustice 2 has moved around 2 – 3 million units since Horizon has moved approximately 2.4 million physical SKUs. We know that it’s just above 2 million for Injustice 2 because it’s still tracking above Tekken 7, which has already moved 1.66 million units across PS4, Xbox One and PC, according to MS Power User.

Now according to the NPD chart for the best-selling games of 2017, they counted the last week of August’s sales for Madden NFL 18, which tracked just above 1.7 million SKUs during its first week of sales, according to CNN. So that means that Mass Effect: Andromeda has sold just under 2.4 million but above 1.7 million when it comes to physical units.

For a little bit of extra perspective, Mass Effect 3 sold 3.5 million copies during its launch quarter as reported by DualShockers, and peaked at 6 million copies sold over the course of its lifetime on the market. Mass Effect: Andromeda managed to sell less than 2.4 million copies over the course of two quarters, or at worse, just barely above 1.7 million physical copies over the last two quarters.

[src]

 

[RepHope]

- The explanations for leaving the Milky Way are so contrived. The asari girl even told me that "Oh, the Milky Way was so been there, done that." Bitch, please. We barely explored it in the trilogy.

I'm sick of this kind of overblown scope in Sci-Fi where so many involve an entire galaxy instead of restraining things to a handful of systems, or even with just one or two.

Andromeda, ironically enough, does this. It's restricted only to the Heleus System, you're not exploring the whole Andromeda Galaxy due to there being no relays.

 

[Paul_cz]

Possible account suicide:

I am enjoying this. Playing PC version 1.10. Didn't finish it yet but am around 80% in (70 hours).

First, the flaws:

- at times, cringey writing. At other times, bad writing. Occasionally, some good writing too.
- really bad facial animations, still. Especially those eyes. Lot of dialogues don't have camera setup and just do lazy zoom-in - this is embarrasing two years after Witcher 3.
- abundance of shitty low-effort fetch quests (scan 10 plants. scan 10 rocks. scan 10 dead bodies). Whoever thought these should be in the game deserves firing. Even if they relegated them to "task" section of journal.
- Liam. This cannot be overstated enough. Liam is the single worst NPC I have ever met in an RPG. Such cringey motherfucker. I never take him with me on missions, ever.
- secondary NPCs have terrible character models like something from Oblivion 2006.
- dumbass open world barriers
- lacking music. Original Trilogy had great soundtracks, all three games. Andromeda is mostly just quiet and when something plays, it is not memorable.
- there are still some bugs and glitches here and there, although (so far) nothing gamebreaking
- only two new alien races, both humanoid and somewhat generic

Now, why am I enjoying it ?

- I still like the Mass Effect-ish atmosphere - I am a scifi/space opera whore and exploring planets is inherently enjoyable for me
- planetary design is quite beautiful and in fact atmospheric, I liked Kadara, Elaaden and Havarl the most
- driving Nomad is ok, better than Mako at least
- combat is genuinely great. It is better third person shooter than lot of dedicated third person shooters - I like the various abilities and already respecced few times to try lot of them out. Jetpack and dodge are great addition.
- loyalty missions and main quests are pretty fun (if the at times cringey writing can be overlooked), some named (nontask) quests are good
- I like Drack, Vetra and Jaal
- graphics (of environments) is beautiful and game is well optimized (60fps maxed without drops)

Overall, it is noticeably worse than original trilogy, but I still like it more than dislike it. I hated Dragon Age Inquisition and left it after 5 hours or so, but after the dodgy beginning here, I managed to enjoy lot of it.

 

[Iznaliu]

I am enjoying this. Playing PC version 1.10. Didn't finish it yet but am around 80% in (70 hours).

This man is the face of decline.

 

[JarlFrank]

- The explanations for leaving the Milky Way are so contrived. The asari girl even told me that "Oh, the Milky Way was so been there, done that." Bitch, please. We barely explored it in the trilogy.

I'm sick of this kind of overblown scope in Sci-Fi where so many involve an entire galaxy instead of restraining things to a handful of systems, or even with just one or two.

Star Trek Voyager: "A wormhole transported us to the other end of the galaxy... getting back home will take us... holy shit several decades! We will be old men when we reach our homes again!"

Ass Effect: "The Milky Way is soooo boring let's explore another galaxy. This one is soooo small, haha!"

 

[Beastro]

- The explanations for leaving the Milky Way are so contrived. The asari girl even told me that "Oh, the Milky Way was so been there, done that." Bitch, please. We barely explored it in the trilogy.

I'm sick of this kind of overblown scope in Sci-Fi where so many involve an entire galaxy instead of restraining things to a handful of systems, or even with just one or two.

Star Trek Voyager: "A wormhole transported us to the other end of the galaxy... getting back home will take us... holy shit several decades! We will be old men when we reach our homes again!"

Ass Effect: "The Milky Way is soooo boring let's explore another galaxy. This one is soooo small, haha!"

Even Voyager tried its best to avoid the grimdark by having things easy on the crew right down to an unending supply of shuttles to crash.

The BSG remake was enjoyable to begin with because of the emphasis on survival. The episode where they're hunted without able to sleep needing o jump over and over and the one where they lose their water supply due to hull damage and have to find more should have been what the series was about.

 

[JarlFrank]

Battlestar Galactica seasons 1 and 2 were great. I enjoyed the entire series but it became obvious towards the end that the writers hadn't fully planned out the story arc and were just pulling shit from their ass.

Voyager was a decent show too, but hey, it's Star Trek, Star Trek rarely goes full grimdark.

Still, I'd take a proper Star Trek RPG over Mass Effect any day. And while we're talking scifi RPGs... why is there no proper RPG with space combat? It would be so cool to buy a ship or shuttle and equip it with better weapons and shields and duke it out with other vessels, while also having proper ground combat and shit. Kinda like a better done Planet's Edge.

 

[Latelistener]

Possible account suicide

I wouldn't worry about that.
If you have nothing better to do, other than playing this, than you may be close to suicide IRL.

 

[Krivol]

why is there no proper RPG with space combat? It would be so cool to buy a ship or shuttle and equip it with better weapons and shields and duke it out with other vessels, while also having proper ground combat and shit. Kinda like a better done Planet's Edge.

I've never tried it, but all vatniks here will tell you to try star wolves or something like this.

 

[Paul_cz]

Possible account suicide

I wouldn't worry about that.
If you have nothing better to do, other than playing this, than you may be close to suicide IRL.

Made me laugh. The problem is, it's not like we are spoilt for choice in the AAA scifi space opera arena. I love this type of game and there is nothing else. I am not gonna play fucking Destiny ffs.