Wirdschowerdn
Ph.D. in World Saving
So they got Liam, another funny nigger and some mentally retarded Asari kid in it. I see Bioware is already off to a good start to restore it's reputation as a storyteller juggernaut. Lol.
22 Random Tidbits About Mass Effect Andromeda
Our month of Mass Effect Andromeda coverage isn’t over yet, but we’re in the home stretch. We’ve covered a lot of ground on various topics, but during our time visiting BioWare and talking to the team, we learned some interesting information that doesn’t fit neatly into our bigger features.
Because Mass Effect fans are hungry for any new knowledge about BioWare’s next installment, we didn’t want to leave this info on the cutting-room floor. Instead, we’ve collected this loosely organized assortment of quotes and facts that might shed some additional light on the aspects of Andromeda you’re most curious about.
1. Ryder is intentionally more of a blank slate than Shepard at the beginning of Andromeda. “Shepard came on the scene, and it felt like they’d already accomplished a lot and they’d done a lot and they’d seen a lot – but I hadn’t,” says creative director Mac Walters. “That whole universe was new to me, and so there was a bit of a disconnect between me and my player character right from the start. And so, with this, I’d really like us to close that gap as much as we can without going full amnesia.”
2. Your companion Liam has a British accent.
3. You find clues about what happened to the other arks. For instance, as you locate asari escape pods, you learn more about what happened to them and their ark, and that thread is eventually resolved in a mission.
4. Some quests take place on the planet where you discover them, and others point you toward new locations. “It’s about a 90-10 split,” says Walters. “Once you’re on a world, you should feel like you can spend your time there and complete the level. The rest are either resolved from somewhere else or send you somewhere else.”
5. Despite the series’ long history, the move to new hardware and adopting the Frostbite engine means BioWare built all systems, tools, and assets from scratch for Andromeda.
6. All of the systems (though not necessarily all of the content) are currently implemented in the game. Now it’s just a matter of “balance and tweaking,” according to Walters.
7. Enemies of the same class have different abilities based on their race.
8. Not all of the races from the original trilogy appear in Andromeda, but they may show up in future installments. “We’ve designed the IP in such a way that they can all show up,” Walters says. “For hopefully obvious reasons, they’re not all going to show up in the first game.”
9. The points you earn by gaining experience are applied to more than just your powers. It’s the same currency you use for other kinds of progression, like improving the hover time on your jetpack and increasing the Nomad’s speed.
10. The blistering heat of Elaaden is only one kind of environmental hazard. “Another planet you might have ice, or radiation, or another kind of hazard,” says producer Mike Gamble. “We’re trying to mix it up, and how you survive them will be different depending on the planet. Some might require a different Nomad upgrade, others will take shelter, and so forth.”
11. For players worried the scope expansion will dilute the experience: “The key for us has been ensuring that the content is rich and up to BioWare quality standards,” Walters says. “Believe it or not, as massive as this is, we’ve actually continued to restrain the scope as much as possible so we can bring quality to each of these areas and make each one memorable. That’s a term I use a lot – I want these places to be memorable. I don’t want it to be like, the white planet, the blue planet – I want to remember the names of the locations and the characters I meet.”
12. Think the default Scott Ryder looks a bit like original Mass Effect project director Casey Hudson? It’s not intentional, but the team thinks it’s a funny “ghost in the machine” moment.
13. Don’t expect the events or characters of the original trilogy to shape the state of the world in Andromeda. “We didn’t want to invalidate anything that people had done in the past, and we wanted to make sure everyone feels like they can be onboard, whether or not they have played before,” Walters says.
14. Before assuming the role of Pathfinder, Ryder’s title is “recon specialist.”
15. As you leave the Ark for the first time, your dad wants you to rub a good-luck rock on the way out.
16. About 20,000 humans are still asleep on the Hyperion when Ryder wakes up at the beginning of the game.
17. During sequences that might have just been non-interactive cinematics before, players now have a degree of control – like steering a character falling through the sky, or examining objects in a shuttle as a conversation is going on.
18. “Armor is split into sub-categories, and you can mix and match pieces,” Gamble says. “Helmet, shoulders, chest, legs. You can have different pieces from different sets.”
19. On the graphical front, the CG trailers for the original trilogy are what the team uses as a reference for what it is trying to accomplish now in real-time.
20. You pick up additional Tempest crew members on your journey.
21. While the game isn’t zany, the tone is lighter compared to Mass Effect 3. “I think there’s a bit more humor,” says producer Fabrice Condominas. “I think everybody takes it a bit less seriously in the tone of the dialogue. The characters are different – they’re younger, and you feel that in the tone.”
22. You don’t have to start New Game+ after finishing the game. You can just keep exploring once the final mission is complete.
While the game isn’t zany, the tone is lighter compared to Mass Effect 3. “I think there’s a bit more humor,” says producer Fabrice Condominas. “I think everybody takes it a bit less seriously in the tone of the dialogue. The characters are different – they’re younger, and you feel that in the tone.”
10. The blistering heat of Elaaden is only one kind of environmental hazard. “Another planet you might have ice, or radiation, or another kind of hazard,” says producer Mike Gamble. “We’re trying to mix it up, and how you survive them will be different depending on the planet. Some might require a different Nomad upgrade, others will take shelter, and so forth.”
13. Don’t expect the events or characters of the original trilogy to shape the state of the world in Andromeda. “We didn’t want to invalidate anything that people had done in the past, and we wanted to make sure everyone feels like they can be onboard, whether or not they have played before,” Walters says.
While the game isn’t zany, the tone is lighter compared to Mass Effect 3. “I think there’s a bit more humor,” says producer Fabrice Condominas. “I think everybody takes it a bit less seriously in the tone of the dialogue. The characters are different – they’re younger, and you feel that in the tone.”
This is gonna be great.
The controversy was artificial. It was one woman who were trying to get additional sales for her book who raised the issue in some US talk show. She later admitted that she never even played ME.FFS, an excuse for you to see sex scenes before the final showdown in a dumb Hollywood fashion is now being praised as a must-have element of RPG and an inspiration for real life relationships....
This got me thinking. When the ME1 debate happened, I thought you were going to be banging women all over the place, but when I actually played it I was a little disappointed, since everything you got was a plain human girl and a plain blue girl. However, the detail that stuck with me is that, as you said, the sex happened just before the last stages of the game. That means someone had to play it (or at least waste more than 20 hours of his life watching a LP) just to reach that scene and create a controversy.
Compare this to Rome: Total War 2's leaked steam cheevos that proved most if not all reviewers only played the game for one (1) hour and some of them even used the automatic battle option. Really makes you think.
Am I the only one who started chuckling while reading that?http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featu...ndom-tidbits-about-mass-effect-andromeda.aspx
11. For players worried the scope expansion will dilute the experience: “The key for us has been ensuring that the content is rich and up to BioWare quality standards,” Walters says. “Believe it or not, as massive as this is, we’ve actually continued to restrain the scope as much as possible so we can bring quality to each of these areas and make each one memorable. That’s a term I use a lot – I want these places to be memorable. I don’t want it to be like, the white planet, the blue planet – I want to remember the names of the locations and the characters I meet.”
How was Ashley even racist? I heard this since Mass Effect came out and I still don't fucking get it.Goddamn euroThinking back to the original trilogy immediately makes me think of ... how quickly I left behind space-racist Ashley.s. ME1's Ashley was the only semi-relatable quasi-human being of the whole misfit menagerie.
She was essentially a Trump supporter because she put "Humans first" over the alien scum in everything pertaining to mankind's struggle. Game journos and cucks took this all very very seriously.
That Asari is fucked up, even objectively: hairy eyebrows. WTF?!
Asari didn't have eyebrows (or any hair at all). Liara was the only Asari that had the semblance of eyebrows, but those were clearly painted on fake make-up thingies. It also doesn't make sense to retcon that shit, biologically speaking, based on the rest of established Asari anatomy/skin.
That PeeBeetch's design is horrible on every level. Face, clothing (lack of space armor, but that ship sailed with fucking ME2), biology retcon, probably even the quirky personality.
Will Jane Austen be part of the crew?
That girl from the first Mass Effect never striked me to be a racist at any point and to be honest, I never looked at these games from some kind of social commentary perspective. It was a shallow, fun story ride (until the derp third game*), but that's it. Reading bits about Ashley being racist made me think - and to search the Web and steam forums.It was never really "human first" by some divine intrinsic rights (even though she is a Christian), it was "us first", and she believes that other aliens would do just the same.
The funny thing is she was right in ME3...all the other council members in the Citadel explicitly stated they will not save the besieged Earth and their priority was to defend their own planets.
That girl from the first Mass Effect never striked me to be a racist at any point and to be honest, I never looked at these games from some kind of social commentary perspective. It was a shallow, fun story ride (until the derp third game*), but that's it. Reading bits about Ashley being racist made me think - and to search the Web and steam forums.It was never really "human first" by some divine intrinsic rights (even though she is a Christian), it was "us first", and she believes that other aliens would do just the same.
The funny thing is she was right in ME3...all the other council members in the Citadel explicitly stated they will not save the besieged Earth and their priority was to defend their own planets.
Holy shit. This is actually the thing among ME fanbase. They're unironically discussing it for hundreds of pages. I thought it was just the tumblr thing.
*I enjoyed the third game the most, though. Whack a mole gameplay was much better then the previous games'. But again, I don't expect Andromeda to be any kind of value.