Just preordered Mass Effect Andromeda.

a reply to: ketsuko

I gotcha. Well, video games do have a tendency to leave plot holes in their stories. I guess that's why I appreciate the Witcher series so much. It just seems complete.

I recently beat Final Fantasy XV. Good game, good story, but there just seemed to be a few things unanswered. It almost seems like game developers cook up these interesting tales and then when it gets x amount of money into the production they say "Oh, #!! We have to wrap this up" and start plugging things in to bring it to a conclusion. It's common.

originally posted by: CreationBro
a reply to: ketsuko

In the end of ME 3 i wiped out all of the reapers by sacrificing myself...didnt know about the ending you mention??

Oh, you mean control where you plug yourself in to become lord of the Reapers and effectively doom yourself, a mortal, to become immortal and live in isolation?

I wonder how well that's going to work out? How long before you go insane and start the whole thing over again?

Honestly if you get the perfect ending where you unite the whole galaxy and you choose the shoot the hologram kid in the head option, the reapers still should have lost big time.

originally posted by: Puppylove
Honestly if you get the perfect ending where you unite the whole galaxy and you choose the shoot the hologram kid in the head option, the reapers still should have lost big time.

I guess I was thinking that with all the different ways Dragon Age: Origins ended and with ME:3 being the end of the trilogy, they could build in a lot of different options instead of one misplaced deus ex machina that gave you three different explosion colors that pretty much ended up in the same way.

a reply to: ketsuko

I agree. I mean if you choose the "shoot the kid" in the head option, the next incarnation of sentient organics succeed in uniting and defeat the reapers with the help of the warning you leave behind.

Well... if you do this right you actually do unite the entire galaxy against the reapers. So why in the heck if we get the perfect ending can't we, you know, do what the next incarnation does after doing the same thing we JUST DID!

Honestly should have been a secret ending, if you unite the galaxy and then choose the "FU" option which is none of the three, instead shooting the kid, the reapers just plain lose, but only IF the entire galaxy is united.

a reply to: Puppylove

You know, I don't even have to have all my endings be happy. In fact, I had one or two Sheps who were slightly tragic and would have done well as tragic endings, but I just felt like the whole ending from the beam on belonged to a whole other game.

One of my favorite DA:O endings is the one where my mage couldn't harden Alistair, so she left him at the gates and sacrificed herself because she couldn't countenance the dark ritual either.

One of my DA2 playthroughs saw Hawke knifing her own lover in the back after he went nuts and blew up the chantry.

a reply to: ketsuko

Every ending doesn't need to be happy, but when you spend weeks in the real world putting the entire galaxy back together and unite everybody only to auto fail to win if you choose to trust in the strength of the galaxy you united, and then have the game tell you the next incarnation did exactly the same thing you did but succeeded where you failed is bull#.

a reply to: SpeakerofTruth

I will wait a while, the price is prohibitive for this game and with the issues outlined by other's on this thread it has made me for one think twice, I liked the mass effect game's, have all three and all there DLC's as well as modded them a little just to make them that bit better but remember ME3 really was the last ME game, ME A is just a reboot as they have now put in place this model of delivering episodel content and milking there fan's for all the money they can get, also they have started down the road to the rental market were you do not own a game in any sense of the word but merely rent it, have to log in at least once a month so that your game stay's active and are planning to release game's that will require you to pay once a month also, it was tested on the MMO community and they were lemming enough to pay like this so this corp thinks it is a good idea to keep this ball rolling even with NON MMO's.

Personally I hate Origin, it is an appalling platform with poor user interface and even though I initially hated steam I now find myself championing steam over Origin for oh so very many reason's.

Someone else whom may be trying to go down this route is Bethesda with there new online app, as yet it is in it's infancy but I smell origin clone all over it and they are beginning to move away from the steam platform as well.


I may buy this game when it come's down on an offer at some point in about six month's but only may and then I suspect I will probably be modding the heck out of it to make it more usable, from what I have seen of the video's on youtube, geat looking story but the enemy protagonist look's like a sci fi drop out from a B grade sci fi movie (or a badly made up star trek fan from a convention somewhere), the interaction seem's often to have only two game pad oriented option's - I am a mouse keyboard guy myself and would want to see more extensive dialogue as that look's like even with open world element's it will be a very on the rail's kind of game but will have to wait for you guy's to play test it and give your verdict's.

SkillUp did a review of the game now that the last embargoes have been lifted. He gives it a 7.5 out of 10. It's a lengthy review (about 20 minutes) but I've always felt like SkillUp is good about calling a spade a spade when it comes to games and developers.



ETA - forgot a synopsis: basically what we all have heard already as being issues are issues; he enjoyed playing it, likes some characters but not others, considers the combat an improvement, but doesn't feel the game overall measures up to the ME bar from the original trilogy; thinks the next game will be an improvement, but the game is still worth playing.

originally posted by: Shamrock6
SkillUp did a review of the game now that the last embargoes have been lifted. He gives it a 7.5 out of 10. It's a lengthy review (about 20 minutes) but I've always felt like SkillUp is good about calling a spade a spade when it comes to games and developers.

ETA - forgot a synopsis: basically what we all have heard already as being issues are issues; he enjoyed playing it, likes some characters but not others, considers the combat an improvement, but doesn't feel the game overall measures up to the ME bar from the original trilogy; thinks the next game will be an improvement, but the game is still worth playing.

Well, anything that's a 7 or above is worth playing to me. I don't know when 7 and 8 became a "bad" score, but it seems to be trendy to consider anything lower than a 9 as "bad." Not me. I suspect I'll play it and consider it a strong 8. That's good enough for me.

a reply to: SpeakerofTruth

Probably when games started to cost $60 or more.

Hopefully it provides more replayability than DA2 did then. I think I could only stomach that 2 times because the story was just too linear.

As far as the dialogue tree goes, we may only be seeing that there are two options a lot of the time because most of what's been shown so far has been careful to not be too spoilerific. They may have been cutting into the dialogue for that reason and showing the more limited dials, but I have no way of knowing if that's true or not.

Also, any truth to what I've heard in some places that if you commit the ultimate blasphemy of not wanting a diverse pre-set you are stuck with Sarah Ryder face and can't customize at all because they didn't give you the option of a white pre-set head in the CC?

a reply to: ketsuko

IGN's screen shot

I think some people were unaware of how the presets work. I initially thought I was stuck with an Asian looking dude and couldn't change it no matter how hard I tried, but then I figured out that you have to select a "preset head" and then go in and edit it. I just started trying to edit a head thinking it was the only one I could edit.

Also, I think some folks weren't aware you can change skin tone, as well.

a reply to: Shamrock6

That's good. I usually like to work with white, Asian and Latino for my characters. I sometimes go darker than that, but games generally tend to make it hard for me to get the right features for me to be happy with the really dark skin toned models. I always have specific faces in mind and my CC skills just aren't up to even getting in the ballpark.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: SpeakerofTruth

Probably when games started to cost $60 or more.

Well, heh, the cheapest I remember new AAA games ever being is $50. Even the NES cartridges $50-$60. I can still remember my mom and dad saying "We're not paying 40 or 60 dollars on a game." Lol.
Frankly, if I get at least 30 to 40 hours out of a game, I don't mind the $60 price tag. When I start having problems with it is when I only get 12-15 hours and it still has a $60 price tag attached to it. I guess that's why I don't really play that many shooters. Shooters tend to have $60+ price tags attached and typically you're lucky if you get 20 hours of gameplay; it's usually 12-15.

I didn't pre-order, mostly because I just never pre-order games and prefer to wait for the reviews. (I think the only game I pre-ordered in the past couple years was Total War Warhammer). I loved the first 3 games but set my expectations lower for Andromeda since the team developing it was basically new to the series. I'm not sure if any of the original developers had a part in developing Andromeda.

The reviews have already started coming out and they pretty much are saying what I was expecting. Game Informer - 8/10 IGN - 7.7/10 Gamespot - 6/10. The PS4 version on Metacritic has the most reviews in (35) with an average of 75%. The previous ME games on Metacritic were ranged from 85% - 95%. This might be one of Bioware's lowest rated games.

I am looking forward to some of my favorite youtubers giving their thoughts/reviews on the game to (TotalBiscut, AngryJoe, Worth a Buy, etc...). I think a few of us on ATS follow ACG on youtube and he already put out a video on Andromeda. He says just wait for it to go on sale.



I will be picking the game up eventually just because it's Mass Effect.

a reply to: buni11687

I watch Angry Joe. Even though I am going to play the game regardless, I want to see what he thinks.

Honestly, the game isn't getting criticized on gameplay, most have said it's fun. It isn't getting criticized on story, most have said it's good. It's getting criticized on graphics. Frankly, I couldn't care less. That's just being honest. Mass Effect is and always has been about gameplay and story, sooooo....

a reply to: buni11687

Yeah, I saw that one earlier.

I'm disappointed that EA farmed this one out and let them phone it in like this.

At this point, I'm just sort of hoping for something slightly north of DA2 ... says how bad it was that I can't even remember the official name of the entry.

If I can get through it and find the desire to replay it two or maybe three times, I'll count the money well spent. At that point, it will actually have beaten Mass Effect 2 (don't tell anyone but I actually can't stand that game except for the suicide mission which I love).

a reply to: ketsuko

Lol, I played through all three of the Mass Effects at least 4 or 5 times a piece. I played either the first or second, don't recall which, so many times that it wouldn't even play anymore because the disk LITERALLY had laser burns on it. I kid you not. I literally burned the game up. Lol. I am terribly addicted to the Mass Effect franchise.

DA 2 was just bad. I liked DAO and DAI, but DA2 was a huge disappointment to me too.

After reading through reviews and player comments, I can tell everyone right now, this is going to be the most polarizing game this year. You're either going to love it, or not really like it at all. There doesn't seem to be any "happy medium" at all.

Been play for the last 6 hours.

So far, I'm happy with it. I wasn't expecting it to look tons better than ME3, but at 43 GB download, I did want and expect content, content, and more content, and so far it looks like they've delivered on that!

Well....there goes my social life, hehehehehe.