Theo wrote on Aug 22, 2017, 08:43:
never played this was it really that bad? meta critic seems to be OK (criticreviews, not the public, i distrust the public as they are not paid to offer a balanced view).

It's not bad, it's just nowhere near as good as the previous ME games. (Ignoring the shitty animation issues)

There are several story missions which are excellent, and some of the companion "loyalty" missions are good as well, but everything in between is literally just mind-numbing filler shit. Imagine an Ubisoft game, only a thousand times worse.

The story itself is pretty forgettable (even if the missions are pretty good) and carries none of the gravitas or suspense of the earlier games. It throws exactly one curveball at you, the rest is utterly predictable.

And then the biggest mortal sin of an ME game, most of your companions are just terrible. Liam, Cora and Jhaal can go straight in the trash. Drack is just Wrex (he's cool, but he's just Wrex), whatsherface is bland Garrus, and at least Peebee is somewhat original. If you ignore the fact that she literally looks like every other female Asari in the game. They have exactly one model for every female Asari. I guess we shipped 10000uplets to the Andromeda Galaxy or something.

The combat is excellent, but it just can't carry the game. Once you've got some powers going and you find a working combo, you're just going to repeat that throughout the game, and since you can only carry three powers at once (technically you can carry 12, since you have four sets of three, but switching between the sets means every power goes onto a cooldown, so why bother?), it very quickly becomes rote. I played a Vanguard, very quickly became nigh-immortal, and then it was just slogging through absolutely endless hordes of mooks. (most battles were over in ~ 10 seconds, but it still got boring quickly.)

The mp is good, though. A lot of fun, imo, but whether you'd agree depends on whether you like horde mode.

All in all, I'd say that if you pick it up for 20 bucks or so, and just do the main story and companion missions, and ignore literally everything else, you'll get your money's worth out of it.

This comment was edited on Aug 22, 2017, 09:40.

never played this was it really that bad? meta critic seems to be OK (criticreviews, not the public, i distrust the public as they are not paid to offer a balanced view).

My 2 cents on the issues raised here:

Someone here said that StarCraft was updated after 20 years. I'm pretty sure it was because of the remaster Blizzard issued around the same time, not because they still deeply care about the original game.

As for NMS still being updated (and with substantial improvements at that), I myself am puzzled about this as well. In my wild imagination, I see the devil (Sony) telling Sean Murray, cuffed and at gun point: "You will give your unfinished game to us, to sell whenever we see fit, even in unfinished form, in full price. You will lie in public to the media through your teeth about your game. You will be reviled, slandered and hated by the gaming community. But for that price - once we have deemed our sales adequate, and once your public image is destroyed, we will leave you to your own devices, and we will let you still develop the game as you see fit."
You may think Murray is a goddamn asshole, and you may be right, but honestly - with the amount of love NMS is getting a full year after release, I find it hard to believe he is. I would never have agreed to the deal above, but it seems he did.

And as for BioWare, EA and ME:A... I would have to join the "I told you so" choir. And I, for one, can also prove it. It is so, so sad for me to be right about this though, of course.
https://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl? action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=181981&id=1139713&view=threads

(Without the space after the "?", of course. URL embedding here is pretty crappy)

jdreyer wrote on Aug 21, 2017, 14:09:

Kxmode wrote on Aug 21, 2017, 12:24:
You've only been registered since Feb 17, 2017. EA bought BioWare in 2007. Care to explain how you "told us so"?

Read the whole thread. He lost his old user name.

There's no quote or link to their old post, so I am forced to ask still, how he or she "told us so?"

GothicWizard wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 23:28:

Orogogus wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 16:21:

Your post history only goes back to February 2017.

I knew some hero was going to split hairs over that. This is my new account, I couldn't recovered my old. I believe I set the account email to an email I no longer have as I let that domain expire.

Allow me to quarter that split hair and ask for your old user name.

Kxmode wrote on Aug 21, 2017, 12:24:

GothicWizard wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 13:18:

Icewind wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 12:46:

As someone who interviews and hires people for my company, I can tell you that these millennials work very cheaply.

I'm betting that revolving door of cheap, wide-eyed, day-dreaming millennial fresh meat is too tantalizing for BioWare to abandon.

The culture there is dead anyway, since the people who were around during the days when "CRPG" meant something are long gone.

When EA bought BW I was on the beginning of the end bandwagon and took a LOT of heat for that view. Everyone was like 'oh they still have the core dev there it will be fine'. I said within 6 months you will start seeing the exit of those core devs, mgt and it will just be a circling the drain affair as time goes on until it's just a shell of BW in name only. I was laughed at on their forums and here.

I am not above saying, I told you so.

You've only been registered since Feb 17, 2017. EA bought BioWare in 2007. Care to explain how you "told us so"?

Read the whole thread. He lost his old user name.

GothicWizard wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 13:18:

Icewind wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 12:46:

As someone who interviews and hires people for my company, I can tell you that these millennials work very cheaply.

I'm betting that revolving door of cheap, wide-eyed, day-dreaming millennial fresh meat is too tantalizing for BioWare to abandon.

The culture there is dead anyway, since the people who were around during the days when "CRPG" meant something are long gone.

When EA bought BW I was on the beginning of the end bandwagon and took a LOT of heat for that view. Everyone was like 'oh they still have the core dev there it will be fine'. I said within 6 months you will start seeing the exit of those core devs, mgt and it will just be a circling the drain affair as time goes on until it's just a shell of BW in name only. I was laughed at on their forums and here.

I am not above saying, I told you so.

You've only been registered since Feb 17, 2017. EA bought BioWare in 2007. Care to explain how you "told us so"?

necrosis wrote on Aug 21, 2017, 00:24:

HorrorScope wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 23:43:

WaltC wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 17:29:
Nobody, but nobody comes close to CDPR in game support--it's not even close, CDProjekt is so far ahead. As is well known, they support their games years into the future,

I think Blizzard surpasses them, just saying...

And I think you are high, just saying...,,,,,,,,,,

High and correct. Diablo 2 was updated in 2016. Granted they have the years in and the money to do this.

Nucas wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 18:48:

Creston wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 18:43:
Good job, EA. Another franchise you've ruined.

i got the impression from that post-mortem jason schreier wrote that the real issue wasn't executive meddling, but quite the opposite; bioware montreal needed firm management and never got it. someone needed to take ownership of the team and no one did.

Which is on EA, right? Also, EA was the one who decided "let's let the C-level team take the reigns on Bioware's best selling franchise, while the A level team works on whatever the fuck Anthem is supposed to be."

Citizen P wrote on Aug 21, 2017, 00:28:
I liked DA: I. ME: A was steaming pile dumped on top of a great setting.

That's a strange opinion, considering the two games share most of the same flaws. Specifically, half-assed side-quests and barren environments that are pointlessly large and boring to explore. Seems bizarre that you could enjoy DA:I but hate ME:A.

Why would I ever buy another Bioware game after this? I bought Andromeda because based on what I saw, I would enjoy it. And I did.

But if they are just going to leave things hanging, well, fuck them. I don't care if I had fun, if there's no proper conclusion.

UttiniDaKilrJawa wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 15:26:

Sempai wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 15:19:
It's telling that EA's decision to pull out of Mass Effect Andromeda less than 6 months post release, and yet Hello Games continues to support No Man's Sky..

Hello Games continued support of No Man's Sky is one of those things that kind of baffles me. On one hand it's great they are still updating the game for the people that own it.

On a financial perspective it doesn't really seem to make much sense as there really won't be a tremendous amount of income derived from this.

Which leads me to believe this is either a.) a self-driven "passion project" style effort to complete the game as they had envisioned, b.) a completion of the contract they had with Sony in exchange for the PS4 exclusivity, or c.) an attempt to salvage their studios reputation for future releases.

Whichever the reason I sure am enjoying their updates :).

NMS is being patched because the team is still there working on something else in parallel. The ME team has been disbanded and there will be no more mass effect games until someone decides to reboot it. EA is putting everything into star wars games. Disney wants to extract value! In case you couldn't tell from this press release, the person writing it is quitting or taking a different job. Bioware Montreal is over and done with as far as we can tell.

I liked DA: I. ME: A was steaming pile dumped on top of a great setting.

HorrorScope wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 23:43:

WaltC wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 17:29:
Nobody, but nobody comes close to CDPR in game support--it's not even close, CDProjekt is so far ahead. As is well known, they support their games years into the future,

I think Blizzard surpasses them, just saying...

And I think you are high, just saying...,,,,,,,,,,

HorrorScope wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 23:43:

WaltC wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 17:29:
Nobody, but nobody comes close to CDPR in game support--it's not even close, CDProjekt is so far ahead. As is well known, they support their games years into the future,

I think Blizzard surpasses them, just saying...

Yeah, the original Starcraft received a new patch this year, almost 20 years after the game's release.

WaltC wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 17:29:
Nobody, but nobody comes close to CDPR in game support--it's not even close, CDProjekt is so far ahead. As is well known, they support their games years into the future,

I think Blizzard surpasses them, just saying...

GothicWizard wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 23:28:

Orogogus wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 16:21:

Your post history only goes back to February 2017.

I knew some hero was going to split hairs over that. This is my new account, I couldn't recovered my old. I believe I set the account email to an email I no longer have as I let that domain expire.

I'm not splitting hairs. You said to go look at your post history and I can't. You didn't even say what your old name was.

Warskull wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 20:44:

Everyone knew it would eventually happen, even if some gamers were in denial. Bioware managed to retain its quality and not get EAified much longer than the average EA acquisition. EA bought them back in 2007. While there were signs of problems before this, 10 years under EAs umbrella without falling apart is pretty impressive. EA usually rots a studio out in 5.

That's a valid point. Though one could make the argument the downward spiral started with the hot mess that was DA 2.

Orogogus wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 16:21:

Your post history only goes back to February 2017.

I knew some hero was going to split hairs over that. This is my new account, I couldn't recovered my old. I believe I set the account email to an email I no longer have as I let that domain expire.

The Half Elf wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 14:22:

GothicWizard wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 13:18:

Icewind wrote on Aug 20, 2017, 12:46:

As someone who interviews and hires people for my company, I can tell you that these millennials work very cheaply.

I'm betting that revolving door of cheap, wide-eyed, day-dreaming millennial fresh meat is too tantalizing for BioWare to abandon.

The culture there is dead anyway, since the people who were around during the days when "CRPG" meant something are long gone.

When EA bought BW I was on the beginning of the end bandwagon and took a LOT of heat for that view. Everyone was like 'oh they still have the core dev there it will be fine'. I said within 6 months you will start seeing the exit of those core devs, mgt and it will just be a circling the drain affair as time goes on until it's just a shell of BW in name only. I was laughed at on their forums and here.

I am not above saying, I told you so.

Hey Captain New's Flash, we knew this was going to happen as soon as it was announced. Why? Um... Maxis, Murky Foot, Bullfrog, Dice (not as bad as the others) etc, etc, etc.

Let me fill in some of your etc's: DreamWorks, Mythic, Westood, Pandemic, Origin, and Visceral... It's sickening how EA has destroyed so many amazing development studios.

Bioware is already following the unfortunately inevitable road to death spiral followed previously by Maxis in 2015 and Mythic in 2013

This comment was edited on Aug 20, 2017, 22:43.