#also that not so fast is in kai's voice btw. for the immersive experience.

[the-gayest-tree-you-ever-did-see]

"cole brookstone isnt aro" NOT SO FAST

explain THIS.. thats what i thought.

[annakie]

Thoughts from the first few hours of Andromeda, Part Two

Picking up where I left off in Part One.

BTW, this is by far the best article I’ve read on all the ME:A hype, or anti-hype.  Even if you don’t read this, you should read that.

So, I was about at the point of basically, leaving the first room you get put in when I ran out of time this morning.  So let’s continue on The Game Opening.

You’re introduced pretty well into what’s happening and how to use one of the most vital (I think) and a brand new thing to ME:A, using your Omni-tool for scanning.  I’ve used that feature some so far, but not as extensively as I think I’m going to.  I like that they do give you a little visual and audio cue when you really should be scanning something, but I’m still constantly afraid I’m going to miss something.  It’s going to be like scanning for rescources in DA:I.  Even weeks after I finished my 2nd playthrough, I was still obsessively hitting the G key (I’d remapped scanning to G) to look for resources in other games.  It’s a cool tool that adds depth to the environment, and also a bit of obsessiveness for people like me who hate to miss anything.

One thing that hit me not far into the game is the amount of women on the Pathfinder mission.  Even if you don’t count the Asari you’ve met, and Ryder, since they can be either gender, you still run into a lot of ladies in the early part of Andromeda.  Two of the most important people you interact with are male, but there are at least as many women to talk to.

The cinematic experience not too far into the game gets great.  It’s hard to describe a bit of what I want to talk about without getting spoilery, but windows are used to great effect, making a part of the game in ME3 which sometimes got a little... wordy and long into a beautiful, breathtaking and ultimately OH HOLY CRAP moment that left me gasping and a little worried about one character’s fate.

One legit criticism I think is that you’re just kind of thrown into your character pretty quickly in the beginning and don’t have a lot of time to really start figuring out who they are.  I’m playing a character who I often play iterations of in games, so I already have a decent idea of her personality.  The problem is, you’re supposed to instantly care about members of your family, and you’ve literally gotten no connection to them, aside from making your sibling in the character generator.  It would have been nice to have at least a little interaction with them, and your character’s father, in some way before Things Start Happening.  

Dialogue

The dialog options are, I think, an improvement over ME1/2/3, and about on parr so far with DA:I. Rather than “Nice” “Neutral” and “Ruthless or Mean” most dialog options come with at least 2 of 4 choices to make that are more about personality than alignment.  My biggest complaint is that you are briefly shown a little box that tells you which option means what, and I don’t recall seeing that box again.  It’d be nice to have it show up a few times along the tutorial or to be able to call it up easily (maybe it’s in the codex?) to refresh your memory on which option leans which way.  Someone on Reddit was kind enough to throw this together, which is helpful.

Dialogue from NPCs is... I mean it’s Mass Effect.  Sometimes it��s moving, sometimes it’s natural or at least a non-issue, and sometimes it’s a little cringe-y and try-hard-y.  I mean, I don’t think I’ve heard anything so far that’s any worse than literally every word Kai-Leng ever spoke, so, as long as it stays above that metric, I’m ok with it.  But, I’ve only had meaningful interactions with about as many NPCs as I could count on one hand.  

Planetside

The first planet you land on is spectacular, visually.  I spent a lot of time just looking around, scanning things, poking into every nook and cranny.  There isn’t one linear path to go to, so I found myself backtracking sometimes because I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything.  (Even so, I feel like.... maybe I did?)   I’m not even off this planet yet, that’s as far as I’ve gotten, and I feel like I still have at least an hour to go on it.

I love the jetpack jumping, though sometimes you just wanna maybe skip over a rock and instead even with a quick bump you’re about 5 feet up in the air.  But I haven’t found moving around difficult yet, and though I did miss my first long jump, I haven’t missed another one.  So far, the movement system seems pretty forgiving, especially with the ability to climb ledges if you just barely short your jump.

There’s also a nice amount of audio cues, sometimes from your omni-tool and sometimes from your companion or your Ryder talking to your companion when there’s something worth checking out.  Still, I found myself scanning nothing, a lot.

What I didn’t notice an audio cue for was when you step on an ammo box, hearing your ammo refill.  That’d be nice.

There are several sidequests already, and all of them seem logical for their location and at least somewhat important.  The map is more of a general location than a specific path taking you right where you need to get to.  As far as I can tell, there’s no golden trail to follow if you set a quest objective, so you’d better be ready to explore. 

There are goodies hidden in nooks and crannies if you keep your eyes open.  There is a slight immersion problem with picking stuff out of alien’s boxes and being able to just pop it right on your gun or whatever, but... you gotta get that equipment somehow.

Combat

I’ve only done a handful of combats, maybe 3 or 4.  So far, my first impression is I wished I’d picked another class.  I went with Infiltrator because it fit the character, but I think the only thing I can do right now is stealth.  I think I accidentally hit escape or went through the tutorial tips too fast in combat because it’s not feeling very organic to me yet.  Again, with needed to really dig deeper into those menus.  If I restart when the full game comes out, and I probably will, I think I’m going to go with the Leader “main class” instead of Infiltrator.  

So so far I’ve mostly done the “pop out of cover, shoot a few rounds, pop back into cover” type combat, since I don’t have any particularly good weapons, armor or abilities yet.  

I need to dig through the codex to re-read up on combat.  Hopefully there will be a training simulator back on the ship like in ME2 and 3 so I can get better.  So I don’t have a great review for the combat yet, because I’m just not doing it right yet. :)

Voice Acting

I’ve heard mixed reviews on the VA.  I’ve enjoyed hearing a few familiar Bioware voices (Koth from SWTOR’s VA is an early, minor NPC for instance, and I’m preeeetty sure I’ve heard Brandon Keener at least once).  Natalie Dormer is great.  I’m happy with F!Ryder’s voice so far, Liam’s VA is great, love that voice, looking forward to hearing it regularly for awhile.  There have been a few places here and there that the minor character’s VA wasn’t as great as normal Bioware standards, but those have been few.  I hope it continues to be so.

Speaking of Liam, I’m planning on romancing him first, though I’m also hoping to try a few other romances in future runs.  From the first moment I saw Liam it was like “OH, I’ve made a good choice.”  I haven’t even gotten near to a flirt option yet, but I’m ok.  He’s a good dude to just hang out with for now.

Back to the Music

I’ve been listening to the soundtrack while writing this and am on the 12th track.  It’s been very enjoyable so far.  There hasn’t been anything that has reached out and just grabbed ahold of me like “Leaving Earth” or “Suicide Mission” or “Vigil”, but it’s all been very listenable.  “A Better Beginning” (the home screen track) is the closest to being a standout so far which... makes sense, I suppose.   I kind of miss squadmates having their own themes, but ah well.  Some tracks harken back to the 80′s nostalgia of ME1, some are far more orchestral arrangements like ME2 or 3.

Overall.....

I mean, look, I love this game.  Already.  There are some very valid criticisms, but I mean, come on, there are some very valid criticisms of literally every Mass Effect game, none of them are perfect.  They all have kind of awkward first and second missions, they all take awhile to settle into themselves, they all take awhile for combat to start to come naturally (especially getting into ME1... I tell newcomers to just put it on easymode and don’t feel bad about it.)

The character generation is by far the worst part of the game so far, and it’s workable, and Bioware has said that they’re “working on it” so... let’s cross our fingers they help us out soon, or that the modders (all hail the modders, we love you now and forever) will, at least.

If you’ve read some of the shitty reviews online, God forbid you read the RPS one or the slightly better IGN roundtable, please go read this great article from Forbes. (The one Iinked at the top of this post).  It’s a fantastic breakdown of the hype, the anti-hype and what Bioware/EA’s done wrong with this launch.

The game feels like Mass Effect. I’d like maybe a little more solid callback but again, it’s super early in the game for me and I also don’t want people hainging posters of Shepard and talking about how great they were every minute.  

I am so excited to keep playing this game.  I can’t want to get into it more.  I am weeping at the thought of my 10 hour trial being over in like... 7 more hours of gameplay.  And remember that you can love something for what it is, and criticize the hell out of it for what it isn’t.  You can celebrate what it gets right and still point out what it gets wrong.  Just because something has flaws and isn’t perfect, that doesn’t mean it’s bad, terrible, useless, unplayable, ruined, etc.  

Screw the hype.  Play the game, judge for yourself.