#max plays me:a

[maxxiedemon]

You know, I was working with my gf through Andromeda and playing the introduction (again) with her. And I just realized...

Cora is really sweet about the whole “Alec died, I am so sorry, how are you?”thing. She is actually really on point about taking care of you first before anything else. She works REALLY hard to make sure that you, as the new Pathfinder that just lost your dad, is okay.

She takes care of you despite she is actually really hurt herself about not being the new Pathfinder.

I don’t know if there is any Cora hate, I’ve heard that there are. But, HOW COULD YOU HATE ON THIS SWEET GIRL.

[weirdbabs]

i hope that in da4, whenever it may come out, they go back to how it was in origins where you could truly build your character how you want. you want to be a mage that maxed out strength and uses swords? go for it. you want to be a warrior whos maxed out cunning and dexterity? hell yeah you can

either that or make it like in me:a where you can put points into different talents and change how youre playing as you go

[miketownsends]

"You're the most adorable critter I've met in Andromeda so far. Except Vetra, of course." that's adorable

[ladyherald]

today i got a whopping TWO whole banters on eos wow things are looking up.....

unlocking the memories is like my fav quest despite the fact that i spent literally half an hour today trying to drive up a cliff to get a fucking memory trigger..... it’s the shards all over again but it was worth it because i got to see max with her family (that glare she’s giving alec though...) and also a non-comatose scott for once (whom i am growing very fond of, i think i might make a playthrough as him as well).... what’s up with his wrinkly ass face texture though

the next memory was alec meeting with a “benefactor” of the initiative who wasn’t jien garson.... my first thought was the illusive man because... he has a lot of money i guess?? but then i found jien’s notes about how the benefactor was running from something in the milky way and “a storm is coming” etc etc and running from the reapers isn’t exactly the illusive man’s MO... also he’s still in the milky way in me3 meaning he couldn’t have had jien killed probably.... the plot thickens..........

i also did my first loyalty mission, vetra’s, and it was intense as hell... i love sid a lot i was so worried..... i’m very gay for vetra but i’m starting to think max might fit better with peebee (especially since they had zero gravity no strings attached-sex..... i love max’s dorky face in that cap she was like “peebee i haven’t gotten laid in 600 years my clothes are already on the floor... or um, floating away”) 

the derelict remnant ship on elaaden was fucking SICK i loved it, it made me think of the super star destroyer from the force awakens

[xldsims]

I wanted to ask about your technique for creating accurate recreations in cas. Mine always look sloppy and half-baked but yours are toe to tip, that's 100% that character.

I legitimately just look at images of a specific person or character, then I find the features that look as close to them in TS4 as possible. Usually requires tons of trial and error really. That and I have to (cannot stress this enough) make maxis match versions of their hair and making custom facial features. This usually requires some painting, meshing and playing around with tidbits. Luckily most of TS4′s hairs are versatile enough to create just about every hair I’ve needed for my characters :P

But in the end, I don’t really have a process or technique specifically. Just keep an image of the character on hand (several of them, and of different angles and profiles) – and you should be fine ;)

And if you’re willing to go the extra-mile, dive into meshing or photoshopping (to create custom facial details) so you can get them as accurate as possible.

(For ME, not ME:A, just ME, characters I usually have some 3d models of them on hand so I can actively look at them in 3ds Max while making them in TS4 :P).

[thunderheadfred]

MEA Party Week Meme

Rules: Answer the questions and tag 10 people. [Optional: post any MEA screenshot you’d like to share!] Don’t forget to tag your post with #meapartyweek.

I done got tagged by @stormcallart - thanks! This one has really been getting around so I’m not tagging anybody, unless of course you want to! Then tag me in your answers so I can see them!

Disclaimer that I am not the world’s biggest fan of Andromeda, but I’ll try to be as upbeat as possible, haha.

☆ What is your favorite scene in MEA? I still haven’t finished the game so maybe my favorite scene has yet to happen, but most of my favorite stuff was honestly in the first 1/2 hour. 

☆ What is your favorite quest?I I agree with most people - Liam’s loyalty mission is hard to beat.

☆ What is your favorite weapon? Custom Black Widow, Valkyrie assault rifle, Hornet SMG.

☆ What is your favorite armor? I like to mix and max custom armor pieces to give my Pathfinder a self-made scrappy look and also to get the best mix of tech, shield, and health boosts.

☆ What is your favorite power ability? I admit I never change profiles because I find the biotic+tech fire combos so effective. In particular, incinerate + throw. Big boom. Massive armor damage.

☆ What is your favorite planet? Once you clear out the smog, Eos is the kind of place I could live: dry and bright under that bottomless blue sky.

☆ What is your favorite addition to MEA that wasn’t in the original trilogy? Jumping I guess. Don’t mind the crafting system but wish it had been more carefully streamlined in the UI.

☆ Who is your favorite non-romanced (one you didn’t romance but can be romanced) character? (can be NPC or squadmate) I didn’t romance anyone *loud cough in Kallo Jath’s direction* but ummm. I guess Liam? He’s the only other Andromeda character I had any romantic attachment toward, but his lip-shine + crazy overly detailed skin texture in the bad lighting.... ahahaaaaa I got uncanny valley-ed and couldn’t do it.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

☆ Favorite squad/party combo? I really wanted this to be Vetra + Liam but WTF for some reason they hate each other in all their banter?? The all-time feel-stomping champs are Vetra + Drack. No comparison.

☆ Favorite non-bipedal animal on Andromeda? Not crazy about any of the animal designs in Andromeda tbh. Sorry. I guess the big flying ones on Havarl.

☆ What surprised you most when you first played MEA? A lot of not-so-positive things so let’s not go there.

☆ What is your favorite quote? The salarian under the Collective base who will fight with you if you touch his Mysterious Button, which is of course a reference to the Garrus-voiced salarian in ME3 who is similarly defensive about his work station. So turns out my favorite lines from ME:A are references to the OT... sigh. I’m a party pooper.

[thedeadflag]

Hey, now that you've played ME:A for a while, would you recommend it for others? I know that their portrayal of trans chars is at best problematic, to say the least, and probably not the only problem, but sadly, if I were to wait for a non-problematic, story-driven game, I would not play any games for a very long time. So aside from that, would you recommend it?

P.S.: Any good romance options?

I would recommend it, but with the qualifier that you should be as thorough in your first playthrough as possible, unless you are really good with skipping most non-key missions and/or are really good with doing a wealth of side-quests over again your next time around.

The story is…alright. If you want a comparison to the original trilogy, this is more akin to ME2′s structure. Less major narrative, more a scattershot of smaller stories mixed in with a bunch of character development. Bioware really did commit to the exploration theme rather than a detailed overarching narrative.

The characters are great. Obviously, they can’t be compared in investment to the original trilogy standbys, given they had 2-3 games to grow into themselves, and often the time between games fr layers to grow fonder of them. But the core group is great. Not a huge fan of the side characters on the ship aside from the doc, but I really like the group.

And while F!Ryder’s voice acting starts off slightly rocky, I much much much prefer her delivery and characterization to M!Ryder’s. Honestly, I think I like Fryda Wolff’s Ryder more than Jennifer Hale’s Shepard. It’s a close call, but…If I had to make a list of the best ten voice acting moments in the series, I think 6 would come from ME:A, and they’d be filling up the top 8.

Aside from the trans stuff the game fails hard at, there’s the frustrating issue of turians always always wearing armor and most having glaringly white carapaces. Like, in the OT, you’d see a wider range, but in ME:A, I’d wager over 70% of turians have super extremely white faces to where it’s distracting. And the asari characters, aside from PeeBee, all have the exact same face. That’s equally disturbing and breaks immersion. And the character creator is 100% junk, with very very little options for customization, and most customization options are complete junk and look ridiculous. Some presets look great and others look very uncanny valley unless you manage to work a miracle. And it can be very tedious to deconstruct your weapons and armor for materials, requiring a half dozen to a dozen menus, depending, but it’s 100% necessary because the stuff you attach when you develop them, you’ll get back after deconstructing, and that’s much better than a bit of extra coin. I also wish that the merchant system was better, because there needs to be a better way to sell 1000 of a given material without slowly scrolling up to that number or down to that number from the max amount. And I have some qualms about the main narrative and how they handled the whole colonization theme. I could continue with issues, but I’ll leave it at these.

In terms of gameplay, I hear on higher difficulty that it’s sort of required to shift profiles, favourites, and use consumables. I find the gameplay clunky, especially the cover system which has gotten me killed numerous times on the lowest difficulty. Sometimes something that looks like cover and should realistically be cover, isn’t treated as cover by the game engine, and so my advice is that if you’re playing at higher difficulties, take every opportunity to boost your damage reduction, your core health and shield numbers, etc. etc. And then if you feel you get the hang of it later, or are higher leveled enough for it to matter less, re-spec. But seriously, there will be many occasions where you’ll move to new cover and it won’t be able to protect you in any way shape or form. I suppose consumables would be useful in that instance, but I never did get the hang of using them.

As for romances, PeeBee and Vetra are excellent in their own right, though PeeBee gets far more material to work with, and Vetra gets a cheap fade to black but she’s also very adorable and lovely so it’s a toss-up. If you’re running DudeRyder, Cora seems like she’d be a good go, I like her well enough.

[randomlygeneratedstring]

random Andromeda notes, vol. II

I am well aware of the fact that by the time I will have ME:A finished, some gamers will be finishing their 3rd (4th, ...) playthrough, but meh. 

Anyway. There are some things in the game interface that I really like and I wish were there in the trilogy. Like very detailed journal about missions. The notes “ON HOLD” so I am not confused if I missed something or should have done something, etc. Or the distance meter between me and the mission objective. Handy! 

I still did not figure out how the profile works and why should I use them. I have maxed my favorite tech skills and I am using them now, but I see no reason to tune other profile or switch between them. But this also means I have loads of skill points I have no use for.  But I am playing on casual, more focused on the RPG aspect of the game, I am not really into shooting. So the possibility of me finishing ME:A without using profiles is very much real.

How the hell do I change loadout for my squadmates? Their weapons? Is it even possible?

Also, comparing weapons at shop/sell kiosks with my current weapons sucks a big time. I ended up writing my weapon’s stats on a post-it on my screen :D

[covert-joy]

So things have been super stressful and nerve wracking lately, but hopefully things are turning around.  I’ll actually start posting again in April and elucidate more then, if things work out.

My son played through Life is Strange last month, and that was probably the only thing I really wanted to post about on tumblr.  It was fucking awesome, if I do say so, to watch him make his own decisions through the game.  He was fiercely protective of Kate (hell yeah), accepted the date with Warren and kissed him at the end, and chose to save Arcadia Bay at the end.  He LOVES Max, and that made me so happy.  I tried not to influence his choices, but after he was done with the game, we talked about the two endings, and how frustrating I thought they were.  He came up with some ideas on how it could be better, but he still thought saving the town was more “right” than saving Chloe.  

Even though his choices weren’t my choices, it was so much fun watching him play and react to the game.  One interesting thing about it was that he said that he related most to Daniel because he looks most like him.  We talked about how you can feel close to people even if you don’t look like them, but I also think he saw himself in Daniel because he’s an outsider, and that was definitely interesting, because usually my son doesn’t seem to notice social order.  He will act like he doesn’t know or care about cliques or what other people think about him, but his reaction to Daniel’s character was very telling.

Watching him play through it made me love it all over again, even though I’m still mad at the way it ended.

In other news, I can’t play more than an hour of ME:A without wanting a better character creator.

And I’m totally obsessed with the My Favorite Murder podcast.  I’ve been listening to every episode, starting with the beginning up till today, and while a lot of the stories are fucking depressing, I’m also thrilled to hear two women who like each other having fun and being funny.  Usually, if I want to hear women on podcasts, I have to turn to NPR, or some other dry, fact based show.  MFM is pretty much the opposite of factual, but it’s still fabulous.

Anywho, going to bed, think positive thoughts for me, because I’m going through a period of major transition and every bit helps.  TTFN, mes amis (oh yeah, and I got my French passport renewed, because I want to be ready for the end of this obviously failing experiment).

[tsvitok]

homebasered replied to your post “homebasered replied to your post “I really, really dislike the fact...”

to be fair, i have yet to get to know who cora actually is. But that's a slippery slope into spoiler town (which sounds very mad max)

There is zero spoiler if you’ve played even five minutes of the game, or seen multiple trailers which I believe she was in.

She’s the human female squad member.

Think of her as ME:A’s Ashley or Miranda - only not (as an article I read recently put it) a space alt-righter, or an excuse for Yvonne Strahovski’s #datass.

In other words, they finally made a female human squad member with a personality whom you didn’t instantly want to punch.

You also cannot romance her, which is incredibly bothersome for a number of reasons. Least of all, she’s the best female squad member.

I mean I don’t want to be rude but, I’d totally hold hands with her if they’d let me.

[maxxiedemon]

How dare Peebee be so endearing. Why the fuck are all the Andromeda crew members so endearing. STOP.

[neacle]

Team Girls <3

[miketownsends]

uuuuuugh did i make the right choice I CAN NEVER TELL IN THIS GAME

[ladyherald]

warning for andromeda spoilers and silly hypothesizing 

i thought i was gonna play all day today and get really far but i got called into work so that didn’t happen.... but i did play a bit this evening and max made peaceful first contact with the angara and it was maybe the best day of her life

also got a trophy for setting shit on fire a lot? and i love the screenshot it made lmao

she and jaal are going to be best friends i know it.... also this game is so funny like..... jaal: [complains about the nomad] ryder: I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL TURN THIS CAR AROUND

jaal and vetra’s nomad chats were pretty great...... and oh my god the message board thing on the tempest is so great??? cora talking about how peebee ‘died’ in the evacuation drill and peebee just wrote ‘I LIVE IN AN ESCAPE POD’

and also bc i’m mostly making these posts for myself to look back on when i’ve finished the game.... i think the sam/ai/alec plot is super interesting and i get really excited when i find new memory triggers... i can’t wait to find out what’s actually going on and how it connects to momma ryder because she has to be more involved than her illness/death motivating alec or whatever lmao.... i remember some character talking about how alec thought ai/human merging was The Shit™ so maybe he tried to save her through/as an ai?? did he succeed??? is she a part of sam somehow??? (is alec?????) honestly pls just let ellen be more than Dead Wife Motivation™

[venomlad64]

A Lads First Impressions: Mass Effect Andromeda

Alright. I’m sure, well not really no, that those who are a fan or like reading my ramblings on games I’ve played might’ve been waiting for this. So here it is, first impressions of ME:A. As always, this is a FIRST IMPRESSIONS and NOT a review. Meaning it’s my thoughts and feelings during the first hours-days I spend playing a game. I give it a few days (3 max) before I do this so I can give it a fair shake. Clear, good. Lets get this started.

I’ve seen all the vids people made and I’ve played the trilogy several times. The first thing I feel I NEED to say about this game is this: It’s honestly NOT as bad as people are claiming it to be.

First off the models. They honestly do not look as bad as people keep claiming they are BUT they do look like updated ME 3 models because they carry the same issues they have and a few more. Honestly, all I saw people posting were the same 3-5 pics/vids of the same fucking scene so that doesn’t help. One thing I cannot overlook are the eyes specifically and how they dart about as if someone is moving the script/teleprompter around their face. I also can’t overlook how stiff some of the people look when talking. At least in the old ME games the characters moved around a bit, here they can sometimes come off as static dolls who can only move their mouth and eyes while swaying slightly. Speaking of talking...

The voice acting: Hit or miss but mostly in-between, so ok at best. I feel this is a combination of the audio and the VAs delivery being some what inconsistent. For example, Liam can be pretty hard to understand and I can’t be sure if it’s one or both of these things because when he’s clear it sounds great, but otherwise it can seem a little muddled. The VA for male Ryder is fine, even though he comes off as a Nolan North wannabe but I’m not really complaining since I love em. In summation, it’s like I said but it could definitely be better.

The writing: So far it’s ok. Again, I can’t really say much about it since I just hit the first planet but it does a pretty good job of setting the mood/tone and honestly, I’m fine with it being pretty light hearted compared to the old trilogy. It can be a little annoying to some fans sure, but personally it doesn’t bother me at all. We’ll see if that changes later on.

The gameplay and visuals: Probably the most solid thing about this game. The world is B-E-A-UTIFUL and the vehicles and weapons are very nicely done, even tossing in some classic weapons you’ll remember and enjoy. Combat is smooth and is an improvement over ME 3, which is saying something because 3 had the most polished combat of the trilogy (while the story took a nose dive into a black hole). It’s super fun being able to easily dodge and get away from a bad situation with your jetpack/dodge. The “Mako” is back and man does this game do a good job of reminding me of why I enjoyed exploring in it back in ME 1. I adore driving around the planet, finding stuff, killing stuff, and generally having that sense of exploration and adventure given to me. It also feels a lot better to drive, easily switching between 4-6 wheel drive to climb stuff and then shoot off into the sunset. Like “Breath of the Wild”, there’s a lot to explore and you’ll enjoy doing so, if you like that kind of game or that portion of the original that was cut out in the sequels.

Overall: As I said before, it’s not as bad as people are claiming it to be BUT it’s definitely no master piece. Not even close, but there are rumors they might be working on a patch to fix the issues so who knows. But as it stands right now, it’s a average-slightly above average game. The audio and models lack polish and there are some bugs here and there (I haven’t suffered the ones in vids, just a enemy blipping out of existence for a moment and coming back). I know it’s made by a different team so maybe they were just under a lot of pressure, but still you have to deliver a solid product and this is pretty shaky. Not horrible, but shaky. Otherwise I, personally, am enjoying the game so far. I’d give it a 6-7/10  and unfortunately wouldn’t recommend getting it unless it’s at a reduced price or you’re a chill ME fan. Whether my view changes or not as I play is unknown but it’ll be funny either way.

[viviae]

alright so me:a review so far combat - absolutely fantastic im playing a pure adept and it's almost as fun and satisfying as an adept in me3, but granted not all my abilities are maxed yet so i still have to use a gun (sob). exploration - fun at times, im not a huge exploration fan and considering the second planet you go to is radioactive it's hard to enjoy the exploration. graphics - fantastic, everything is beautiful and look so good while still retaining that mass effecty feel to it which i feel dragon age lost in inquisition. story - pretty interesting, there's a few plot points and moments where i was like wow that's stupid and could have they literally not thought of a better way to go about this characters - i love the crew so much. i don't like cora tho but that's just kind of a me thing, she's still well written. PeeBee is great and i love her she's not like what people thought would be a "sera clone" but she's actually pretty interesting and i'm dying to romance her next play through to get to know her. Vetra is everything i ever asked for and more, i literally have the goofiest grin when she's on screen. Drack is funny and a blast, imagine a grumpier zaeed. animations - alright, it's not as bad as people think. there are a few moments i swear people are crossed or they just move their faces in just the wrong way and i want to scream.