Mass Effect Andromeda: Shitstorm Edition - RIP Biowear

[Jaimas]

...that awkward feeling when you feel like the only one looking forward to something.

I hope it does do well, really. I'd love nothing more.

I just have a fairly good feeling it won't.

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

CLANG. This sounds like you won't be able to get the best ending unless you buy fucking microtransaction bollox

Hmmm. Sounds a bit grindy to me.

I'll believe that when I see it.

Not too bothered either way. But is there ship to ship combat? That's what I want to know.

I liked driving the Mako. Anyone who says its handling is unrealistic has no understanding of how tanks steer and certainly not future space tanks with jump jets.

Groan. So basically they're aiming at the Tumblr shipping / headcanon demographic. This is why DA:I was so pants, because the characters solely existed as background colour and not as actual parts of the plot. Morrigan in DA was plot important as her quests affected the ending, as did Alistair's quests, and so on. ME2 got it right as well - you don't do the sidequests, you end up fucking yourself.

To be brutally frank, this whole "let's see how many genderspecials we can shoehorn into the game" is actually problematic because it reduces the alien races that you can pork to the Green Skinned Space Babes that Captain Kirk had such a lively time with and which the Tumblrina crowd would decry massively. It's just tokenism. Yeah, have your genderspecial shoehorning if you must, but actually make them a relevant part of the plot and narrative, not just there for its own sake and/or fanservice.

I actually blame Baldur's Gate II and its fandom for this. BG2 was an excellent, excellent game, but it unfortunately popularised romance sidequests. Granted, it didn't document them, they were just thrown in and the various romances were very nicely written and tied into the plot and suchlike really well, but the hordes of squeeing fangirls who wanted to ship Aerie and Viconia and Haer'Dalis arguably gave Bioware a reason to load their future games more and more with this sort of thing, to the point at which in DA2 your romance is a fucking plot tumour the size of a melon.

Needless to say, I bet you any money that there'll be at least one character who is all "have I mentioned I am trans today?" and stuff.

Could be good, although the crafting in DA:I was not particularly good and seemed thrown in because it had to be. Crafting in RPGs should be reserved for either legendary weapons and artifacts (viz. Crom Faeyr et al. in BG2, the witcher gear in Witcher 3) or sufficiently in-depth to make it interesting (viz. configuring the flagship in Star Control 2, reworking the various modules and/or modding them in Elite Dangerous). It shouldn't be "combine 3 kg iron ore with 2 kg wood and 1 kg osmium to see what has the most plusses," SKYRIM.

I'm still gonna buy The Long Journey Home (now appearing in April) over this.

I think the worst part about Tumblr's obsession with shipping plots is their ideas of a good romance are so goddamn boring. Love triangles, unrequited affection, a heart sweet dying; these are all taboo because the people Bioware now panders too absolutely hate it when anything bad happens to their OCs and kin characters. Their idea of a good romance is two queer brown girls blushing at each other for ten hours before finally holding hands and smooching. And somehow that's "powerful".

 

[Ruin]

I think the worst part about Tumble's obsession with shipping plots is their ideas of a good romance are so goddamn boring. Love triangles, unrequited affection, a heart sweet dying; these are all taboo because the people Bioware now panders too absolutely hate it when anything bad happens to their OCs and kin characters. Their idea of a good romance is two queer brown girls blushing at each other for ten hours before finally holding hands and smooching. And somehow that's "powerful".

Also in the Mass Effect universe interspecies sex and even marriage is pretty common. That's why it feels strange and out of place when you suddenly run into a gay couple and the game obnoxiously shoves in your face how brave and progressive it is.

 

[Batman VS Tony Danza]

RPGs should learn to stick with reputation systems. When a game tries to use a universal good/evil system it's rarely consistent or the choices are so blatant that it's like the game is asking if you want to save a bag of kittens or drown them yourself. I'll drown the kittens on the next playthrough thx

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

RPGs should learn to stick with reputation systems. When a game tries to use a universal good/evil system it's rarely consistent or the choices are so blatant that it's like the game is asking if you want to save a bag of kittens or drown them yourself. I'll drown the kittens on the next playthrough thx

I think the original point of Paragon/Renegade was BW wanted to give you the option of playing Kirk or Picard. But the problem is Kirk wasn't a violent asshole who would punch a woman for bothering him and Picard wasn't a pushover wimp who would let Martin Sheen walk all over him.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

RPGs should learn to stick with reputation systems. When a game tries to use a universal good/evil system it's rarely consistent or the choices are so blatant that it's like the game is asking if you want to save a bag of kittens or drown them yourself. I'll drown the kittens on the next playthrough thx

Witcher got it right if you ask me by dispensing with reputation systems entirely, just showing you the consequences, both intended and not, and making you live with them.

Of course, this was stolen from Ultima VII but there you go.

Also also. Given this is space opera, and there are beings who engage in frankly alien systems of morality (viz. the Batarians believe slavery is a good thing because they consider it dishonourable to treat slaves poorly and would the dispossessed and dregs of society rather be thrown to the wolves, the Mycon in Star Control believe that they have a right to exterminatus garden worlds because it's part of their reproductive cycle, etc.) why bother with a karma meter at all?

 

[Batman VS Tony Danza]

Also in the Mass Effect universe interspecies sex and even marriage is pretty common. That's why it feels strange and out of place when you suddenly run into a gay couple and the game obnoxiously shoves in your face how brave and progressive it is.

That's why Dragon Age: Origins really was the only Dragon Age game to many people. The series went from having to hack your way through possessed, mutated mages who only seek to spread pure agony to.. a discussion about a friend of a friend being trans. I fought a giant vagina monster that pumped out Darkspawn but nah, let's talk about that shit instead.

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

That's why Dragon Age: Origins really was the only Dragon Age game to many people. The series went from having to hack your way through possessed, mutated mages who only seek to spread pure agony to.. a discussion about a friend of a friend being trans. I fought a giant vagina monster that pumped out Darkspawn but nah, let's talk about that shit instead.

I bailed on that conversation as soon as it started because fuck that. The world's at stake and I'm just gonna sit around in a bar having some dumbass conversation about gender politics? The worst part is you couldn't even challenge it. You had three options: "oh wait you're a man?", " "when did you realize you're a man?", or "I should go". Not that I would care about telling TransShep she wasn't really a man because again, I have to save the fucking world. But it really shows how nu-Bioware's writers just cannot accept someone as heroic if they don't think and act exactly like how they do.

I also don't understand the point of that anyway. What does it really contribute? Nothing. No one ever deadnames him. No one ever excludes him from their circles. No one even asks any kinds of questions which don't totally reinforce his identity. Apparently this dark fantasy world is one where every color in the gender and sexuality rainbow enjoys absolute validation and no one ever says anything about it. That character was there because Bioware wants someone to say nice things about them in a blog post.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

I bailed on that conversation as soon as it started because fuck that. The world's at stake and I'm just gonna sit around in a bar having some dumbass conversation about gender politics? The worst part is you couldn't even challenge it. You had three options: "oh wait you're a man?", " "when did you realize you're a man?", or "I should go". Not that I would care about telling TransShep she wasn't really a man because again, I have to save the fucking world. But it really shows how nu-Bioware's writers just cannot accept someone as heroic if they don't think and act exactly like how they do.

I also don't understand the point of that anyway. What does it really contribute? Nothing. No one ever deadnames him. No one ever excludes him from their circles. No one even asks any kinds of questions which don't totally reinforce his identity. Apparently this dark fantasy world is one where every color in the gender and sexuality rainbow enjoys absolute validation and no one ever says anything about it. That character was there because Bioware wants someone to say nice things about them in a blog post.

Yep. Baldur's Gate 1 featured Eldoth Kron, a sneering, womanising bard who lives for his own gratification and nobody else's and has a quest involving courting a super rich noble's daughter. If by courting you mean "seducing into a life of travel and finding herself for which she's completely unsuited in reality and who acts as a huge fucking load on the rest of the party." It was really rather nuanced. But nu-Bioware wouldn't write anything like that, because Eldoth has a banter with Shar-Teel, a violent she-warrior with a short temper, in which he tells her that her lot in life is to bake cookies and spit out children. (The fact that this leads to Eldoth's being stabbed in the face is neither here nor there.) If they did that, they'd be reeeeee'd at for being MISOGYNIST because of that line.

Baldur's Gate 2 had Edwin, a smug and obviously evil wizard who gets a lead on a Nether Scroll, which is a legendary record of uber-powerful primordial magic. You go into the crypts and nick it and he sets about decoding it. Later he works out the spell encased in it and casts it. It turns him into a woman, which is played for laughs at the deeply sexist and smug Edwin's expense. They wouldn't dare do this would nu-Bioware. The transtrender mob would eat them alive.

 

[GeorgeDaMoose]

The series went from having to hack your way through possessed, mutated mages who only seek to spread pure agony to.. a discussion about a friend of a friend being trans.

You're almost right. The series went from dark fantasy with moments of light hearted bants sprinkled a little bit here and there to Dragon Age: The Anime where you could choose ANY waifu/husbando complete with fanfic-tier writing. THEN it went to having talks about trannies while your PC stares blankly and offers no meaningful input to any conversation.

 

[Batman VS Tony Danza]

You're almost right. The series went from dark fantasy with moments of light hearted bants sprinkled a little bit here and there to Dragon Age: The Anime where you could choose ANY waifu/husbando complete with fanfic-tier writing. THEN it went to having talks about trannies while your PC stares blankly and offers no meaningful input to any conversation.

They also added time travel in Inquisition. Luckily you just went into the future and see a possible outcome but it's generally a good idea to not fuck with time travel unless the story is based around time travel.

 

[Jaimas]

I bailed on that conversation as soon as it started because fuck that. The world's at stake and I'm just gonna sit around in a bar having some dumbass conversation about gender politics? The worst part is you couldn't even challenge it. You had three options: "oh wait you're a man?", " "when did you realize you're a man?", or "I should go". Not that I would care about telling TransShep she wasn't really a man because again, I have to save the fucking world. But it really shows how nu-Bioware's writers just cannot accept someone as heroic if they don't think and act exactly like how they do.

I also don't understand the point of that anyway. What does it really contribute? Nothing. No one ever deadnames him. No one ever excludes him from their circles. No one even asks any kinds of questions which don't totally reinforce his identity. Apparently this dark fantasy world is one where every color in the gender and sexuality rainbow enjoys absolute validation and no one ever says anything about it. That character was there because Bioware wants someone to say nice things about them in a blog post.

Yep. Baldur's Gate 1 featured Eldoth Kron, a sneering, womanising bard who lives for his own gratification and nobody else's and has a quest involving courting a super rich noble's daughter. If by courting you mean "seducing into a life of travel and finding herself for which she's completely unsuited in reality and who acts as a huge fucking load on the rest of the party." It was really rather nuanced. But nu-Bioware wouldn't write anything like that, because Eldoth has a banter with Shar-Teel, a violent she-warrior with a short temper, in which he tells her that her lot in life is to bake cookies and spit out children. (The fact that this leads to Eldoth's being stabbed in the face is neither here nor there.) If they did that, they'd be reeeeee'd at for being MISOGYNIST because of that line.

Baldur's Gate 2 had Edwin, a smug and obviously evil wizard who gets a lead on a Nether Scroll, which is a legendary record of uber-powerful primordial magic. You go into the crypts and nick it and he sets about decoding it. Later he works out the spell encased in it and casts it. It turns him into a woman, which is played for laughs at the deeply sexist and smug Edwin's expense. They wouldn't dare do this would nu-Bioware. The transtrender mob would eat them alive.

What's funnier is that they'll go full retard to remove shit that is even remotely "problematic" from the games. Using DA:I as a control (because we all seem to be doing that for example), I remember that pretty much all the previous grimdark from the first two games was gone, along with all the implications therefrom. What's that? You have the terrifying implications of what the Darkspawn were doing to prisoners, to the point where it could have come out of Berserk? Well that shit's too grim, so it's gone now. Who cares if it was setting up something resembling stakes in our story and made shit fucking terrifying, we've got a new demographic of people who don't buy video games to appeal to.

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

Using DA:I as a control (because we all seem to be doing that for example)

Because Inquisition was their most recent game and has the most pathetically obvious pandering they've ever demonstrated. On top of the unengaging combat, awful crafting, uninteresting characters (except Blackwall, that guy was fucking great) and the most pitifully bland no-surprises uninspired story I've played in years.

 

[Whatisgoingon]

After the clusterfuck that was ME3's terrible story (gameplay was fine, but it was more than just the ending that was the problem with the story), and Dragon Age II being a horrific follow up to one of my most favorite games of all time makes it so that I stay far away from BioWare as possible.

However, I have a friend that stills buys all their games, even though he admitted he didn't like DAII, and he confirmed my fears about Dragon Age Inquisition, so I'll see what he's says about Mass Effect Andromeda. If he doesn't give glowing praise to the game, I will never pick it up, if he does love it, I will buy it on discount/sale.

 

[Ponderous Pillock]

The game is gonna be generic as all hell both in gameplay and story because anyone with an iota of talent at Bioware fucked off once their Star Wars MMO flopped. It's all industry newbs and dangerhairs left at that studio.

The fact that Andromeda has cycled through 3-4 writing teams despite not being released yet just affirms that this new Mass Effect game is going to suffer from the same setting and narrative issues that ME2 and 3 had. Trying (poorly) to do a hard sci-fi story with an ever-changing team of writers guarantees you'll have lore problems down the line.

Also, can we take a minute to appreciate that Bioware fucked themselves so hard letting Casey Hudson write the ME3 ending on his own that they had to set the next game in a different galaxy to get away from the plot armageddon he created?

See, that terrifies me if it's had to have three different writing teams on it then it's going to be a fucking abject mess story-wise before we're even out the gate. You can pass batons when it comes to such things, but only if the next lot at least respects the lore of the previous holders. We've already seen how they don't do that to even beloved franchises like Baldur's Gate, so fuck knows what they've done to the shattered husk of Mass Effect.

Also, Hudson was a fucking idiot with his "lots of speculation!" ending, especially as so many people shat out better ones which litter the internet. Some even managed ambiguous endings which were so hilariously superior to the old one.

He also made the grave mistake of explaining the reapers which was 101 of "fucking up literally everything." explaining their creation. Fine. Explaining their weapons? Fine. Explaining their motives? Fucking stupid.

Up until that point the Reapers had been a menacing, cleansing effect on the galaxy which nobody knew why they did it and always assumed the dominant galactic species of the time was responsible for all the tech they found. The reapers in 1 and 2 were clever, insidious and left tech behind to ensure we'd become complacent about developing new technology because, why bother? Shit that works is right god damn there!

Then their reasoning was revealed which was not only hilariously broken (We slaughter the galaxy to save it from itself) but reduced them from a hideous virus-like force of nature to a fucking janitorial team.

It also didn't really seem to take into account that every cycle shitloads of resources get expended time and time again, ships have to be build and destroyed, asteroids have to be mined, stations, planets settled. All of that takes time, resources. Resources which are still finite. Eventually the cycles will have reached the point the reapers would never be activated ever again because there'd be not enough shit left to build with. They'd sow the seeds of their own destruction. Which'd make the Reapers more clever because, again, they simply have their nature or programming. They'd be the scorpion on the animal's back.

Just annoys me that really clever, and yet really obvious things were there for the taking and they didn't because they tried to be too clever.

I also don't understand the point of that anyway. What does it really contribute? Nothing. No one ever deadnames him. No one ever excludes him from their circles. No one even asks any kinds of questions which don't totally reinforce his identity. Apparently this dark fantasy world is one where every color in the gender and sexuality rainbow enjoys absolute validation and no one ever says anything about it. That character was there because Bioware wants someone to say nice things about them in a blog post.

Yeah but they got a cool trans character in guize, that's the point.

The thing is, they're appealing to at most 900,000 people in the USA. Idiot tumblrites are "demanding" more trans representation and it's already showing the lazyness of the writers off because they're box ticking, rather than creating a character who just happens to be Trans.

You only need look at the one in Bioware where you're locked into that stupid convo, or have to abandon it wholesale, or Watch_Dogs 2 where the only principled politician you meet early on is some black tranny.

This attitude pisses me off because they're so scared of pissing off the moronic noisy crowd, it's the same in the UK too, where the first Trans Character on Eastenders is the nicest man possible in a soap opera which regularly shows off bullying, murder, drugs, alcohol and shitloads of domestic abuse.

It makes shit storytelling, and shittier shows and games as a result.

 

[Brandobaris]

It's sad how badly the squandered the franchise.

 

[Cynical]

I don't hold out much hope for Andromeda, for reasons many have already covered, but here's some of my own reservations:

1. Bioware of today has shown a totally willingness to not only throw their own plot consistency under the bus to either pander or letting their own fanfic supplant previous lore, and unfortunately, it's gotten worse instead of better over time, so I have no doubt Andromeda is going to be what happens when you let the shit tier fanfiction writers of the ME fandom have creator power over the franchise.

2. ME 1 and 2 were pretty good. Different in style and storytelling, but they generally had consistency save for a few minor issues only made worse in ME3. ME3 had all the major stuff makes sense for 2/3's of the game, but lots of other minor details as well as the ending being idiotic no matter how you tried to look at it (regular or Extended Cut version) rendered the end result a tainted franchise that was compromised by stupid writing eclipsing good writing, and since most of the remaining ME writers are the one responsible for the stupid writing and the newbies are Tumblrinas with creator power, I fully expect we'll get Mass Effect as interpreted by dangerhairs.

3. Romance in ME was never all that great save a few arcs. Even in ME1 it was easy to get railroaded into Liara or Kaidan by pure accident, most of the ME2 romances were fine but most had a clunky transition to ME3 if they didn't return as a playable character, and ME3's main character romance arcs were generally decent, but the side ones felt really tacked on, (Traynor and the reporter chick especially, their dialogue came off like stilted, cliche cringe) though Cortez was pretty well written.

If Andromeda retains all the dumber writers and they plan to include more romance arcs, then screw it, I'm out, I'm not forcing myself to read bad fanfic romance no matter who I pick.

4. Crafting systems can be good, it just depends on how you do it and how well you wedge it into the game. Deus Ex Mankind Divided's crafting system felt a tad superfluous, but it didn't hurt the game too badly and didn't seem too out of place. Skyrim's crafting system was an easily abused numbers fest that fit the world but implementation was pretty poor.

If ME:A implements a crafting system, I'm worried it will be poorly implemented, a number grind, and feel completely tacked on.

 

[Watcher]

I thought DAO was mainly David Gaider, who was responsible for the excellency that is Baldur's Gate?

Okay correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm nearly 70% positive that Gaider wasn't a writer while he worked on BG. I think Gaider didn't start as a lead writer until Neverwinter or something.
Also DA was mainly Gaider. He was the lead writer for that game and is responsible for the main story, a few origin stories, Morrigan, Alistair, Zevran(?), and some other shit. Hepler was in charge for most of the dialogue in Orzammar if I remember and she was the writer for Anvil of the Void/A Paragon of Her Kind. Which is the Branka quest line. Other writers worked on shit like the Circle questline and the Redcliffe Connor questline.

Gaider was not involved with the company til BG2

He wasn't a big deal at Bioware until Dragon Age due to the company splitting up duties across two games since Mass Effect and Dragon Age were developed relatively independently of each other (among many other things like general reshufflings in the company post EA buyout. See the credits of ME1->ME3 for an example of this)

Drew Karpyshyn was a much better writer and could be easily seen as the reason why games like Baldur's Gate and Kotor were so successful. David Gaider had relatively good ideas when he was starting out but it became clear he used a lot of them up around the time of DAI given how many of his characters start to blend together

 

[Ruin]

This might be marginally better than DAI if only because EA is profit obsessed and Inquisition sold very poorly for a AAA game in an established franchise. I'm hoping EA told them knock off the social justice shit and make a game that people want to buy.

 

[Watcher]

I'm hoping EA told them knock off the social justice shit and make a game that people want to buy.

>expecting this from nuBioware