[Megathread] Mass Effect Andromeda

[Sunseeker]

So in current news.

Players will not have control over squad mates ability use.

For older news the pause for action selection is also gone.

That seems...odd? I get that it lends itsself to a more fast-paced combat and to be fair I rarely used the feature (because I'm lazy and don't hardmode) but it's functionality is essential to actual tactical gameplay since ya know: game AI is stupid.

[Dnusha]

So guys, apparently you can't use powers of your squad.

neogaf

/thread

[Ilikegreenfire]

Just because it wasn't seen doesn't mean it wasn't developed. Nothing about the hornet says that Cerberus developed and deployed it only after the timeline of Mass effect 3 started. We also don't know what model the Hornet the AI is using. In ME3 you can also buy it before encountering Cerberus so it is widespread enough that 3rd parties are selling it.

It isn't much of a stretch that a human-first black ops group would supply humans with weapons. Or it could have been bought from a weapons dealer and nothing to do with Cerberus. There is no proof at all. There are just a lot of hints pointing towards something. But that is the catch, sometimes the obvious isn't the answer for a reason. Bioware could easily be throwing up smoke and mirrors with all of these little hints just because they can.

This is what i'm saying, at the very least he gave them guns, at the worst dad Ryder and Cora are Cerberus agents.

I mean if the Hornet was already developed in 2 Shep would sure as hell have had access to it. According to the wiki the soonest you can get it in me 3 is after Priority: Tuchanka, by that point you had already done multiple Cerberus centric missions, Mars, Sur'kesh, etc with the Hornet being the grunt level Cerberus unit's main weapon. The Andromida Initiative had to get them from Cerberus

The Andromeda initiative is founded 7 years before Me1. Cerberus only goes rogue a few months before Me1 according to Kohoku. The idea that TIM would have no involvement in something that big especially when nothing else major is going on, while they still had the backing of the Alliance, is kind of silly, bordering on plot hole level.

[Lahis]

So in current news.

Players will not have control over squad mates ability use.

For older news the pause for action selection is also gone.

So Squadmates literally have no combat meaning then. Their weaponfire has never been significant compared to yours and now you can't even exploit theri abilities for tactical advantage.

[Nerraw]

So Squadmates literally have no combat meaning then. Their weaponfire has never been significant compared to yours and now you can't even exploit theri abilities for tactical advantage.

We don't know how the ingame AI has improved in the last five years.

[Elim Garak]

We don't know how the ingame AI has improved in the last five years.

Trust me it didn't since 1999, and I only use that date because it sounds cool and from last century.

AI stands for Artificial Idiot for a reason. The only way it can do anything meaningful is with heavy scripting of the whole combat session <- something you can't do in open world games.

So it will play the same way ME3 played with "allow auto-ability use for squad-mates".

[Derah]

I'm hoping that there's no disparity between romanceable people in ME:A unlike Inquisition.

I mean, in Inquisition, there's only 3 girls to romance, Cassandra, Sera, and Josephine, (And of those 3, only 2 are available to any given player, as Casandra is only available for guys, and Sera only for gals) but over FIVE guys to romance, Dorian, Blackwall, Iron Bull, Cullen, and Solas (Of which, only 2 are available to guys, and ALL OF THEM are available to gals except for Dorian)

I'm hoping for a bit more parity regarding this in Andromeda. So far we got 3 girls confirmed as romances, and 1 guy. Hopefully the final number will be the same for both gendered Ryders. So far, the only squadmates that arent romanceable are Drak and Liam (For now, I mean I doubt they'll make Drak romanceable, but its almost a guarantee that Liam will) and we don't know if there are more squadmates to be revealed, or if these six are all we're gonna get (Which would be disappointing TBH. ME2 had over 12 well developed fun companions, Inquisition had 9. Numbers smaller than these become a tad bit disappointing.

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So Squadmates literally have no combat meaning then. Their weaponfire has never been significant compared to yours and now you can't even exploit theri abilities for tactical advantage.

I dunno, I just played the suicide mission on Hard, and the cover fire of Legion equipped with a Widow, and Grunt equipped with a Claymore was pretty fucking strong.

I didn't even micro-managed their abilities, yet they provided quite a lot of support over the whole thing.

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It does mean that combat will be far less tactical this time around, since you can't pause and give orders anymore, cover is no longer mandatory, skills are used on the fly, and the lack of a global cooldown means you can spam your different attacks.

[zealo]

We don't know how the ingame AI has improved in the last five years.

Maybe, but I sincerely doubt it'll be much smarter than in the trilogy. In the video they put out just recently you can see companions just standing there out in the open face tanking a mech unit at one point.

[Derah]

This is what i'm saying, at the very least he gave them guns, at the worst dad Ryder and Cora are Cerberus agents.

I mean if the Hornet was already developed in 2 Shep would sure as hell have had access to it. According to the wiki the soonest you can get it in me 3 is after Priority: Tuchanka, by that point you had already done multiple Cerberus centric missions, Mars, Sur'kesh, etc with the Hornet being the grunt level Cerberus unit's main weapon. The Andromida Initiative had to get them from Cerberus

The Andromeda initiative is founded 7 years before Me1. Cerberus only goes rogue a few months before Me1 according to Kohoku. The idea that TIM would have no involvement in something that big especially when nothing else major is going on, while they still had the backing of the Alliance, is kind of silly, bordering on plot hole level.

You are looking at this only in extreme poles.

Its just a gun.

Do recall that EDI mentions in ME2, that Cerberus owns several legal enterprises, including weapon manufacturers, that DO sell their goods to the general public. In fact, not everyone associated with Cerberus, is a part of the radical extremist organization, many are just random schmucks that work in many of their legal corporations. Its entirely possible that the gun made it to andromeda simply because key members of its development team were tapped by the Andromeda Initiative. Leaking private corporate secrets wont really count for much when you're 2.5 billion years away from their galaxy.

My main reason to be skeptic over TIM involving himself in the Andromeda Initiative, is that it doesn't play into his rhetoric or his plans. He is driven to ensure Human Dominance in the Milky Way, and later on, combating the Reaper Threat. Those are his two main priorities. Cooperating with alien races has never been a part of his agenda, let alone let them have any equal standing to humanity, which is something that the Andromeda Initiative is VERY MUCH trying to attempt on another galaxy.

At best, he'd see the Initiative as a waste of time and resources trying to tame a different galaxy, when there's still so much unexplored ground in our own. At worst, he'd see it as breaking his founding principles to compromise his plans on the Milky Way for a project that is not guaranteed to succeed, and if for some reason does manage to accomplish its goals, it wont happen within his lifetime.

Do recall the guy is a massive control freak. Whatever fruits the Andromeda Initiative brings back for humanity on Earth, if any, wont happen for several generations. If at all. And that's assuming nothing catastrophic happens to them. Doesn't jibe with a guy so obsessed with control, to invest heavy resources and time into a project where he personally would stand to gain so little.

He's a lot of things, but magnanimous or generous is not one of them.

[Lahis]

Yeah, reason for Cerberus weapons in Andromeda Initiave is likely the most obvious and boring one: they sold the weapons to them with their legal enterprises before going full Jihad on the whole Galaxy between ME2 and ME3.

[Cosmic Janitor]

So in current news.

Players will not have control over squad mates ability use.

For older news the pause for action selection is also gone.

I never cared about controlling my squad mates. The game could be played like dragon age on easy mode for all I care. I want the space opera and RPG part of it.

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We don't know how the ingame AI has improved in the last five years.

Considering how "AI" (read: piss poor scripting) has improved since the 80's, I think it's fair to assume that it hasn't increased much if at all .

[Derah]

Considering how "AI" (read: piss poor scripting) has improved since the 80's, I think it's fair to assume that it hasn't increased much if at all .

I don't agree with this sentiment. Some games feature incredible AI, either for friends or foes. Half-Life 2 has a terrifyingly effective enemy in the form of the combine. The AI of those guys is almost scary.

I guess they can't make it THAT good for friendly NPCs, because if they did, they'd pretty much play the game for you, and that's boring. That's what happened with Quiet in MGSV. She comes with a shitload of disadvantages (Her weapon is loud, alerting every enemy, she's finicky to use, has a tendency of killing everything, including soldiers you wanted to capture, etc) but her AI is so good that once you equip her with a silenced non-lethal rifle, she more or less plays the game for you, and can clear entire enemy outpost on her own.

That's the risk of having an exceedingly good AI companion. They steal your thunder and you end up feeling less like a hero, and more like a sidekick. Which is why they tend to scale down the AI on friendly NPCs.

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Yeah, reason for Cerberus weapons in Andromeda Initiave is likely the most obvious and boring one: they sold the weapons to them with their legal enterprises before going full Jihad on the whole Galaxy between ME2 and ME3.

Yep. Cerberus was a conglomerate of private companies and contractors before they went psycho in ME3, with several civilian and military companies in full legal standing. The simplest explanation for a Hornet gun in Andromeda, is the same reason why the N7 weapons from ME3 (Which were developed specifically during the reaper invasion) are also in Andromeda: Bioware wanted guns from previous games in the new one.

They'll provide an in-game explanation for why these guns are there, but don't expect any earth shattering revelations. They'll likely go with "these are advanced prototypes that were created because we tapped key people in the development sector" or the even more common one "We reverse-engineered these out of very early prototypes we managed to steal/buy"

[Nerraw]

It appears that a preview-embargo is being lifted tomorrow. Let's remember to put story info into [spoiler][/spoiler] tags please!

[Deleted]

Remember to put thread title in spoiler tags as well.

[FobManX]

I don't like not being able to control my squadmates abilities. I'm a control freak. But I imagine the game will be easy enough on Normal mode that it probably won't matter.

[Ilikegreenfire]

http://bsn.boards.net/post/305838

Hard to compare them apples to apples. ME2 added layers of defense (shield, barriers, armor, etc.) to everybody, which made it brutally difficult to take enemies down. While I enjoyed the challenge of ME2 Insanity, I didn't like that Adepts got the shaft due to all those layers of defense.

With MEA, we decided to keep defenses static (i.e. If an enemy doesn't have shields on Normal, then he doesn't have them on Insanity either), but we increase enemy durability enough to require a well-made character (and ideally well-crafted weapons) to take them down quickly, we increase enemy damage enough to melt you very quickly when you're out of cover, we increase enemy reaction times and make them smarter about flanking and taking advantage of when you do something unwise (trying to use a hover attack when surrounded by entrenched foes, for instance), using more flushing attacks to force you out of cover, and so forth. We also scale the player's health and shield gates, so you've got very little slack if you screw up.

In general I find that if I want to get through insanity without a silly amount of deaths, it's best to:
- Optimize my build. Your skills, armor, weapons, and profile should all have strong synergies.
- Build in some flexibility. Whether with Favorites, Consumables, backup weapons, or some mix of the above, be prepared to deal with different sorts of threats than my "main" build is optimized for.
- Use my squad smartly. Choose their skill evolves in a way that complements yours and each other's. In battle, order them into strong positions which guard my flanks, and order them to directly attack a target when a good opportunity presents itself.
- Git gud

So insanity looks to be less bullet sponge and more along the lines of making enemies deadlier and smarter

[Derah]

Remember to put thread title in spoiler tags as well.

o_O you mean the game takes place in Andromeda!?!?!?!?!?! SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! >_<

[I Push Buttons]

http://bsn.boards.net/post/305838


So insanity looks to be less bullet sponge and more along the lines of making enemies deadlier and smarter

I hope its at least a little bullet spongy.

In Dragon Age Inquisition the enemies seemed bullet spongy at first on the hardest difficulty, but after you get even some moderately optimized tier 2 gear things became a cakewalk... And after you got tier 3...... Just looking at enemies one shotted them. Made for a very dull endgame (until trials).

[Witchblade77]

damn it. pause function was my fave thing about bioware gameplay :/ well.. there go any plans of me playing anything melee or sniper like.

something of note. if Inquisition is any indication (no to mention ME3) squadmate =/= romancable, and romance option =/= squadmate. its quite possible that there will be romance options that you won't be able to take with you in combat. similar to Josephine and Cullen (and Cortez and Traynor)

[Nerraw]

damn it. pause function was my fave thing about bioware gameplay :/ well.. there go any plans of me playing anything melee or sniper like.

I fully expect active camo will have a perk to slow down time while scoping.