MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA (Here be Spoilers)

[RIPPA]

Or what stout said

Dan says he has heard rumblings that folks thinks this might mean no DLC

[jstout]

I was looking for that in the article. I dunno about you longtime ME nerds, but I really liked the single player. Did it have flaws and bugs? Sure, they all do.

But I reslly loved the storyline and relationships, and there were just so msny loose ends that need to be tied together that the (possible) thought of no sequel at all leaves me as displeased as when I watched the last "Deadwood."

[RIPPA]

In what I read around is a lot of the "bad" press was from the whole AWKWARD ANIMATIONS~! nonsense

So it was the usual - players think a game should be perfect out of the box and if it isn't it is a crime against humanity

[Eivion]

I'm going to be pissed if that Kotaku article is true. Andromeda wasn't a game w/o flaws, but most of them were technical so I was looking forward to both DLC and a sequel direct or otherwise.

[RIPPA]

Well we should know in a week or two because there is some sort of EA event and everyone expected the DLC to be announced then

[AxB]

I would imagine that the first DLC was probably close to ready before the game was even finished. Most likely, they're moving development guys over to 'Dylan' so that that's more ready for the big unveiling as to what it actually is, and anything to do with Andromeda 2... well you need to write the story before you start doing any sort of technical development, right? Hopefully? So for a few months it should just be planning of what's actually going to happen, and scripting and that.

EDIT: Got the Engineer to level 20. Now every character I ever have will have their powers recharge 1% faster. One whole entire percent!

[RIPPA]

My dream of 100% on this playthrough is dead

Either I missed them or they didn't register (I think its a combo of both) but there aren't enough remnant cores left for me to get 9 of them

[J.T.]

I'm pretty happy with the update.  The new equipment boosters are pretty nice and we'll see about this Turian Agent.

The Store did not rotate stock today, so hopefully some of the new mods will be on sale tomorrow.

I finally hit the right Kett camps to get the waypoint for the Kett Listening Station for the wrap-up for the Watchers additional task.  The conclusion is the same as the hack challenge in multiplayer. 

After you find and destroy two listening sensors located at random Kett camps, SAM provides you with a waypoint to the Kett recon outpost.

You and your team hit the base and after you kill all of the Kett, you have to have jump to the roof and defend the location of the sensor console for two minutes while SAM uploads a virus into their network to screw up their network.  After that, you simply destroy the console with regular gunfire and collect your XP.

Eos is now 100% Viable in my game now.

I've got one remaining additional task similar to the Watchers dealie called Data Trail to do (I have to find one more Remnant data center in a random Kett camp and then I'll get the waypoint for the final location) and then I will try to do the Make An Impression task one more time and try to kill this Remnant Architect again. 

My party is only 14th Level, so we're probably not strong enough to deal with the Architect yet.

[RIPPA]

I like how JT is telling us about a mission that literally all of us have done weeks ago.

Well except maybe Gonzo

[J.T.]

17 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

I like how JT is telling us about a mission that literally all of us have done weeks ago.

Well except maybe Gonzo

Hey, I don't expect everyone to do every single additional task. 

Some folks cut to the chase and rush to the endgame.

My Male Human Sentinel is up to 9th level now.  I ran the Bronze APEX mission in my queue with some randos this morning before breakfast.

Only one more Sentinel to drag to 10th and then I can work on my Uncommons and try to unlock my remaining Rare characters.

I'm in the death throes of this project at work.  I hope to be online by the same time as last night aka no later than 7PM EST.

[Gonzo]

1 hour ago, RIPPA said:

I like how JT is telling us about a mission that literally all of us have done weeks ago.

Well except maybe Gonzo

Slow and steady, damn it.

I will finish this game before football season. Maybe.

I might even try multiplayer at some point.

[RIPPA]

The best will be if you still manage to finish before JT

[J.T.]

39 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

The best will be if you still manage to finish before JT

This is within the realm of possibility.

[Robert C]

15 hours ago, jstout said:

I was looking for that in the article. I dunno about you longtime ME nerds, but I really liked the single player. Did it have flaws and bugs? Sure, they all do.

But I reslly loved the storyline and relationships, and there were just so msny loose ends that need to be tied together that the (possible) thought of no sequel at all leaves me as displeased as when I watched the last "Deadwood."

I can see reasons why people complain about the game.  I think it's a good to very good game, but it felt like the single player game was the least of the four Mass Effect games.  

There are a bunch of positives.  The negatives that come to my mind - purely my own (quite likely shitty) opinions:

- The storyline was weaker than the first three, especially ME3.  The beginning sequence of ME3 up till you get off of Mars is easily the most gripping gaming experience I've had.  The first two were good to great in this regard as well.  There were some parts of Andromeda that were really good.  Drax's loyalty mission comes to mind.  But overall, this one was weaker.  Part of this is probably an unavoidable consequence of their decision to go more open world.  That part of ME3 I mentioned was completely linear, which made the narrative much easier to script.  It's hard to have a good, coherent narrative when the player has the freedom to do most things in the order they choose.  But part of it is under their control as well.  ME2's loyalty missions, along with the Shadow Broker DLC, allowed a lot of flexibility in when you did them, and I didn't see much in Andromeda that I thought was as good as most of those

- The characters mostly didn't stand out to me compared to the older games.  I don't think it's completely fair to expect them to, since they had three games to make you care about most of the characters in the older games, but that doesn't change my not really caring much about folks outside of Drax and Jaal.  I did really enjoy the banter between those two when I took them on missions.  I also enjoyed Liam during his loyalty mission, though not so much outside of it, and I thought Reyes' stuff was quite good too.  But I do think folks are upset they don't care about these new guys as much as the ones in the older games.  Folks expecing the movie night thing to feel like the end of the Citadel DLC from ME3, were surely disappointed.

- A lot of the sidequests felt pointless.  I've felt that way about most Bioware sidequests since DA2.  This game had a few that were particularly egregious, where if felt like they just decided to make you travel to various planets to lengthen the quest in place of adding any actual gaming experience.  Contagion is the obvious example, but certainly not the only one.

- The Andromeda Initiative is populated by a bunch of ugly motherfuckers.  I didn't care too much about that, but a bunch of folks clearly did.  

- Damn there were a lot of bugs in this game.  I hardly encountered any bugs in the first three.  This one felt like an Obsidian game with the number of bugs I saw.  At least there wasn't a giant, game breaking bug like DA2.

[J.T.]

3 minutes ago, Robert C said:

- Damn there were a lot of bugs in this game.  I hardly encountered any bugs in the first three.  This one felt like an Obsidian game with the number of bugs I saw.  At least there wasn't a giant, game breaking bug like DA2.

Please do not put the evil of Alpha Protocol on this game.

[Robert C]

2 minutes ago, J.T. said:

Please do not put the evil of Alpha Protocol on this game.

I was thinking SWTOR2. Stayed well away from Alpha Protocol

[J.T.]

2 minutes ago, Robert C said:

I was thinking SWTOR2. Stayed well away from Alpha Protocol

Yeah, the endgame of KOTOR 2 was the opposite experience of KOTOR 1. 

If if leveled up Your Revan up to the point of total badassery, Malak's Force Resistance still made all that effort inconsequential.

Meanwhile, if you leveled up your Jedi Outcast to the point of total badassery, Kreia and her minions were a cakewalk especially if you used the Invisible Ninja Jedi class.

[RIPPA]

I think what bugs me (no pun intended... probably) are people who are irritated by bugs in this game but will give Bethesda games a pass

[Robert C]

6 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

I think what bugs me (no pun intended... probably) are people who are irritated by bugs in this game but will give Bethesda games a pass

That's part of the charm of Bethesda games.  You know going in they're gonna be broken in ten thousand ways

[J.T.]

5 minutes ago, Robert C said:

That's part of the charm of Bethesda games.  You know going in they're gonna be broken in ten thousand ways

Also, most players give Bethesda a pass because it responds to bug reports fairly quickly and the devs are generally very supportive of the mod community.

Troika had the same relationship with its customers before the company went under.  The mod community for VtM: Bloodlines is still creating content to this very day and the game is well over ten years old and doesn't even run on current operating systems.

[RIPPA]

Which is what Bioware has been doing with Andromeda (well except for the mod stuff)

But I am not going down this path further because I already took my blood pressure medicine for the day and I don't think my Dr. wants me taking a double dose

[J.T.]

6 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Which is what Bioware has been doing with Andromeda (well except for the mod stuff)

But I am not going down this path further because I already took my blood pressure medicine for the day and I don't think my Dr. wants me taking a double dose

When I was in High School, we had a teacher with a heart condition and we used cut up in class on purpose to see how soon into the period we could make him leave the room to take his medicine. 

I think our record was ten minutes.

"My... pills....."

Every student in that classroom probably punched their preferred passenger status ticket to Hell that year.

[Robert C]

Just ran into something interesting, at least to me.  Apparently one of the small things that bugged me was purely my fault.  Spoilered for the slowpokes:

Spoiler

It actually annoyed me when Captain Dunn survived the crash at Meridian.  ME3 had me conditioned to the point where I was absolutely expecting her to make the noble sacrifice, then she popped up like nothing happened.  I thought they'd gone soft and stopped killing folks off.  Found out today that I was to blame due to some decision I made somewhere.

 

[Gonzo]

1 hour ago, J.T. said:

This is within the realm of possibility.

Is this considered a "race" then? Because it seems to be a really strange idea for a race.

[J.T.]

8 minutes ago, Gonzo said:

Is this considered a "race" then? Because it seems to be a really strange idea for a race.

No, it is not a race. 

I am just being made fun of because I am extremely meticulous when it comes to role playing games and I am easily distracted by nearly all side missions.