[Megathread] Mass Effect Andromeda

[Matt0193]

not going to lie, i'm not going to forever view her as vince mcmahon and it will make the game so much better for it.

"It was me Ryder, it was me all along"

[Edge-]

I assume default 9 is the Ryder that's been shown in trailers? Because those presets do not look great, and with the limited customization options....*sigh*

Hopefully they'll have something that will let you recustomize in-game like you can with one of the DLC's in DA:I.

[NoiseTank13]

I think Andromeda was done by BioWare Montreal and not BioWare Edmonton.

Essentially the B-Team that did the DLC for ME3 is behind this.

[Tenjen]

Go to the game page in the origin client and click the download trial button.

Thanks! Downloading will still take a while though

[Lahis]

I assume default 9 is the Ryder that's been shown in trailers? Because those presets do not look great, and with the limited customization options....*sigh*

Hopefully they'll have something that will let you recustomize in-game like you can with one of the DLC's in DA:I.

The trailer faces are not customizeable. Those are all you have to work with when making your own.

[I Push Buttons]

Just noticed the Earth is backwards in the intro video. :P

Looks like they still haven't figured out what the Earth looks like lol... The Earth was backwards in ME1 when viewed from the moon.

[xerus]

I think Andromeda was done by BioWare Montreal and not BioWare Edmonton.

Essentially the B-Team that did the DLC for ME3 is behind this.

It was all three Bioware studios but a significant portion of the people who worked on ME1-3 no longer work for Bioware.

[MonsieuRoberts]

Ok i cant understand 1 thing
What actually i get when i preordered the game Origin says that i can download it on march 17th but will be able to play the game or have to wait 1 more damn week

You need Origin Access to play it early. Pre-ordering isn't enough.

[Gib Lover]

It was all three Bioware studios but a significant portion of the people who worked on ME1-3 no longer work for Bioware.

The timeline is actually really funny. Every time Bioware took a massive step down quality-wise, if you cross reference the linkedin profiles from people in the credits of the previous game they are all gone during the development of the next one.

The guy that wrote Halo 4 wrote more then half of Andromeda, and he butted heads with the few remaining leads from the older ME games and they all quit during development.

[Edge-]

The trailer faces are not customizeable. Those are all you have to work with when making your own.

...................................................

You can't see my face right now, but I'm sighing AS HARD AS I CAN.

[Deleted]

You need Origin Access to play it early. Pre-ordering isn't enough.

I have OA my version is deluxe
When i open Game page i see this things
Windows preload date march 17th
Windows release date march 23th so i`m not sure what exacly that means...The game will be avaliable for download before release but not playable or i can play 5 days earlyer because my OA (atm i`m downloading trial version too but 10 hours are not enough for teh weekend play

[Darkeon]

As a massive Mass Effect fan boy.... I had a really bad feeling about this one. Downloading the Trial as we speak, but the stuff I'm reading here leaves me saddened.

[Mister Cheese]

...................................................

You can't see my face right now, but I'm sighing AS HARD AS I CAN.

You think they would have learned after how many games where you couldn't change Shepard's face.

[Lahis]

You think they would have learned after how many games where you couldn't change Shepard's face.

The poster faces for Ryder's are modelled after real poeple. BW didn't have/want to get constent to make those customiseable.

[SDMF]

I came across this really interesting bit of information on another forum, thought I'd quote it. It explains why their games are progressively getting worse. I know it's all subjective of course but I wholeheartedly agree with it.

Bioware doesn't exist anymore.

DA:O was a surprise success that took 6ish years to make and almost everyone working at Bioware to put out the door. EA had no faith in it, and suddenly it was one of their top selling franchises. So they did what EA does to highly successful franchises, and asked Bioware to make another one. Except for this new one, they wanted it started and finished in under a year, as they had a dream of an annual RPG franchise. Mind you that's hard enough to pull off for FPS games which are relatively simple to make with multiple teams. Bioware was expected to put together a full length AAA RPG in 6-7 months while also putting out the last of the DA:O DLC.

This killed the company. Huge swathes of people up and quit. They couldn't handle the stress. They couldn't handle what they were expected to do. Every single major program director and creative lead left the company during this year period where they were developing DA2. Go look at LinkedIn profiles for the major people that worked on DA:O, and more then half of them suddenly leave Bioware in 2010. The combat director quit and wasn't replaced for months, so they had no real lead directing what the combat should have been during that period. Major story beats and combat ideas got forced into the game in the final months of 2010 not because they were good, but because the game needed to ship in a few months and it needed to get out the door. To help the DA team actually finish DA2 in a somewhat annual fashion, they drew most of the ME2 team off ME, throwing them into this grinder as well.

By the time DA2 launched, around half if not more of the original "Bioware" was gone. Go through the credits of DA:O, ME1, or ME2 and start LinkedIning people, none of them work for Bioware anymore. Most left between 2010 and 2012.

It's been a pretty steady drain since then. Compare the credits list of Inquisition to the credits list of DA:O or DA2. It's almost an entirely new team, and it's a team that Bioware specifically hired to replace the losses from DA2. It's why so many styles have changed since then, why the gameplay changed so steadily, and why they chose to try so many new things. Because Inquisition wasn't made by the DA:O team trying their hand at open world game design. It was maybe 1/6th of the guys that even touched DA:O/DA2 suddenly getting an influx of new blood, most of it Bioware fans finally getting a chance to work for the company they loved, that had great new ideas for what they wanted out of future Bioware games.

It's the same for the ME team. The brain drain has been bad, and the development of Andromeda has apparently picked off massive chunks of the team. The lead writer of the group was the lead writer for Halo 4, and he apparently clashed with a lot of the senior writers/main writers of previous ME games. A whole bunch of favorite ME writers have quit the company, and on various development forums have mentioned it was due to creative differences with the former lead writer. Gameplay leads have been leaving the ME/Bioware teams at a pretty steady pace since the game was developed as well. The story had to be picked up mid completion as the lead writer got forced out/quit and replaced, which likely doesn't mean great things for the narrative ( which we are also seeing here. ). Andromeda has currently had the great slow drip of Bioware talent since the dark days of 2010 when DA2 "killed" the company. They've been forced to cycle talent multiple times during the development of Andromeda, not just in management ( which has seen multiple complete turnovers ), but also among the rank and file people working on the game.

This isn't to say Andromeda can't be great, or that it won't live up to the hype. I'm personally hoping it does because I need something to play right now. But if it's good, it'll be good on it's own merits and it's own merits alone, rather then because "it's a Bioware game, I like Bioware!". Because Bioware doesn't exist anymore, it's a completely new entity and needs to be treated as such. People really need to be viewing this as "EA'S NEW ACQUISITION, BIOWARE VICTORY'S FIRST RPG. HOPE IT'S GOOD." rather then "Bioware always makes quality. I know what I'll get here.". As it is right now, EA is propping up Bioware's corpse with a new studio and hoping people don't notice while they keep using it as their RPG house.

[I Push Buttons]

Also my main complaint outside of the animations and terrible character creator is that Bioware still don't know how to do depth perception consistently.

I say consistently because in the past they have done some good examples, but in Andromeda its back to shittyness. In Andromeda you can easily perceive the Hyperion, the scourge, the planets, etc., as little low poly low res models a hundred digital feet away from the window you are looking through. They don't SEEM big, they don't SEEM far away...

Then look at like an example from a planet in SWTOR from six years ago... The planet SEEMS huge... It SEEMS far away... It looks nice... You moving back and forth doesn't change its perspective like its a little model ten feet away from you.

I just don't get how they can seemingly have the expertise to do it right, but then still do it so wrong.

Andromeda:


SWTOR:

[grandpab]

I feel like this gonna be the hardest game for me to get off the fence for this year. I want to like it, and I want it to be something I can dump 100 hours into, but I'm becoming more and more skeptical the more I read.

[Dezerte]

Hmm, I think I'll be sitting on the fence for this one for a while. Of course, there is the "free demo"-option available (no, not piracy - EA's refund program).

[rhorle]

origin REALLY needs a builtin FPS counter like steam and uplay

Nvidia can display frame rates with geforce experience. Click the settings gear near top right, then under general click the settings button under share (middle to bottom left) then turn on the FPS overlay. Some games it doesn't work on but those have mostly been the Windows 10 store versions.

[Kathandira]

I came across this really interesting bit of information on another forum, thought I'd quote it. It explains why their games are progressively getting worse. I know it's all subjective of course but I wholeheartedly agree with it.

Moral of the story. Stop selling out to EA. They do not have your projects best interests at heart. They jist want to bleed Dev's dry for money.