I beat the final "story" mission last night and despite a lot of glitches popping up, and the whole thing being heavily (almost painfully) derivative of the ME1 ending battle, the ending wasn't as terrible as I was expecting... because honestly I was expecting a shit show.

Can anyone confirm if the final mission has ME2 style good/bad events if you didn't do all the various ark and loyalty subquests? It really felt like it, but because I did all the secondary stuff I was assuming that I got what could only be considered the "best ending". Also does the final boss battle change depending on which of the four speech options you choose to psyche up your crew? Because I chose "we need to fight smart" which made my final boss battle massively disappointing and easy (if it actually affects the battle that is... if it doesn't change the battle then geeze guys what a letdown).

And now that this game is in my rear view mirror (and preparing to be uninstalled from the HDD) I think I can safely say the game is heavily derivative of the first ME game to a fault, the quality control is downright abysmal, the writing that is not a direct lift of ME1 stuff is hackneyed and cliche, and the voice acting runs the gamut between terrible and tolerable... but between all the glitches, callbacks and groan-worthy moments there are a few decent moments of gameplay (that are quickly repeated so often that they lose all impact by the fourth time you do them). There is not enough quality here to justify paying full price (or even half price) for anyone but the most die hard, rose colored glasses glued to their head fanboy. The game could have been great, but due to a Mako-load of questionable creative choices, poorly developed sections, possibly rushed production and various just head scratching "why did they do this this way?" stuff we got what we got.

I think I can safely give this game a ProJared rating of a "Cheap Chinese Knockoff Benetton N7 T-Shirt out of Ten".

The only benefit i have seen from doing the vault on Elaaden is the heat penalty instantly goes away.  Unlikely Eos where you had to wait, the instant you complete the vault, temps go down, no more hazard.   Beyond that, it may affect a quest or two, not sure.   The outpost seems to be tied to the drive core rather than the vault.

I can confirm that you must have the Outpost to get the Architect quest.  Which means if you don't give it to Morda, no Architect.

And by cloaking worm, if you mean The Abyssal, you can't attack it or hurt it. It doesn't engage and is impervious to any damage.  It simply runs its routes and ignores everything.

If you make certain choices in the game there are Click To View Spoiler

That second part I have no idea.

I've had my glitches, but it still doesn't even come close to early Skyrim for me.

And early Skyrim wasn't even close to the bug fest that was Daggerfall at launch.

Sources: BioWare Montreal Scaled Down, Mass Effect Put On Ice For Now

I lost interest and stopped playing after finishing the ice world. 

It's unfortunate, but unsurprising and maybe even deserved.  ME:A was not the game it could have/should have been.

That said, I hope this isn't the end for the series.  There was a way to continue this universe, even in the way they did it, had the presentation been better.  Hopefully after a few years we'll see something that is as good as it could have been.

Or at least give me a remastered trilogy, dammit.

Good riddance.

I'd rather they leave Mass Effect in the past than attempt another Andromeda.

At this point, I'm just going to pretend Andromeda never happened. 

I guess I'm alone in wanting to see what happens when the rest of the Kett comes knocking then or if Click To View Spoiler

I'm interested.  I think the story was decent.  It was the gameplay (other than combat) and pacing that I didn't think was so hot.

This.

I beat it last week.  The only time it felt like a mass effect game was the last mission.

What a fucking waste.

BTW...$20 resell value right now....

im at 54% done and i havnt touched it in weeks.

Rerolled a few times to get the face the way I want....I keep stopping at the ice planet...

Game MIGHT have been ok if you could have played laughing at the tool bags you had to work with.

It actually gets good once you get off the ice planet.  

Me as well,

I think if they wouldn't have killed Sheppard in ME3 and had the same people in this game I would have had more interest it continuing.

well i finished it.


not replaying it.

New patch announced, it adds more fudgepacking options!

BioWare

Yup.  On one hand, don't really care.  On the other, the 'ran it by the LGBT council folks' part made me   Fucking hell, EA/Bioware.  Seriously?  Well, I guess Bioware is off the preorder list now too.  So Ubi, Bioware (who I never expected) EA, and Activision I'm waiting on game wise.  Guess that leaves me with Bungie, Arkane, and Bethesda.

My main problem is every Mass Effect I've played, I've become totally engrossed in to the point I just play and play with every free moment till I've blasted through the campaign.

This one, I felt like it started strong, and then... they abruptly ran out of ideas and decided to just do Spacefaring Navi vs. Reapers 2.0. Not to mention my crew is one big writer virtue signal. Really, I only have what, two or three crewmembers who aren't LGBT now? I wonder if I'm supposed to be detecting a message about acceptance here. I'm not sure, it may be too ham-fisted for me to pick up on the subtle tones. I always loved getting to know my crew. This crew, I just... I have no feeling for them. They're so plastic, and no amount of I AM GAY AND/OR BI ACCEPT ME makes them more relatable.

Haven't played in about 6 weeks because I found myself about the launch the game, then going, "Meh. I'm going to back to shooting Sicarios in Bolivia, I actually have fun there, and the movement system isn't from 2007."

The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda's Troubled Five-Year Development

Excellent article that explains why Andromeda turned out to be something of a shitshow.

I'm almost finished with ME2. Me3 next.

should I not even bother with Andromeda?

Save yourself the trouble, unless you really like the ME3 multiplayer, then you can try the ME:A multiplayer. Kinda meh, imo, not as good as the ME3 one, though not sure why.

enjoy the original trilogy and then pretend that bioware went bankrupt

I love the ME series.  Probably one of my favorite series.  That said, I pretend that ME:A is a bootleg korean copy that I got in a flea market.  The gameplay is pretty good, story is alright, but it's not on par with the original trilogy.  I still play it though, just temper my expectations.  That way it is still fun.  It's not on par, but is still a fairly fun game with a bit of suspending your disbelief.  They are still rolling more patches and multiplayer missions, so I hopes at least.

Somehow I ended up banging Peebee when I wanted to grudgefuck Cora for being a bitch.  Apparently my Ryder can't find his testicles with an omnitool, biotics, AI assistance, and both hands 

Maybe this will be their big kick in the ass to just bring the ME trilogy with all DLC and updates into the Frostbite engine as a fully remastered series.

From the article I posted above, it sounds like Frostbite was about the worst choice they could go with for an RPG, though I'm sure they really didn't have a choice since they are part of EA.  They probably should have stuck with Unreal.

Either way though that is also my hope.  There really should be a trilogy re-release/re-master, with all DLC included.  In fact, that may be the only way to save the brand at this point.

Nope.  Can't trust Bioware at this point.  They'd probably add features, like over 87 new gay romance options.  "Watch the horrible remastered animations of Shepherd's face as Garrus rams his ass!"

Can't trust Bioware Montreal.  Difference.

My thought was they already made the ME toolset for Frostbite, so just use the systems already in place to cut down on a ton of the dev work.  Most of it would just be texturing, importing and upscaling levels, etc, so long as they kept the base 3d components.

Would porting all three games over to a new engine be that simple though?  I'm not in game development obviously, so I wouldn't know.  But at first glance it seems like it would probably take quite a bit of work.

Also, they probably aren't putting the tier 1 studios on a port/remaster project.  They'll use the same types of outside studios that normally do that kind of stuff - and who knows how well that would go.

If the assets are stored as regular 3d models and textures, it 'should' be pretty simple.  They'd have to probably tweak the wireframes to bring people/units up to the same animation status but it largely should be fairly simple, minus a fair bit of debugging.  Retexture, tweak animations, vocals are probably good to go, etc.

All depends on how they stored the data though.  If it's all in engine stuff, then it gets weird.  If it's stored as modules, that is a lot simpler to do.  Can just import the base stuff (level design, guns, whatever) into Frostbite and go to town.

A lot of "IF" though.  I have no freaking idea how Bioware/EA treats their code once it goes gold.  Considering it is 5-7 years old, they might have already purged the assets since its outdated and out of print.  A guy is allowed to wish though.  Miranda's ass in 4k. 

I doubt they make remasters. The sordid tale of Andromeda is enough to show me that EA / Bioware were all about profit and quarterly earnings than they were about quality and actually caring about their franchise. They were willing to knowingly release a shoddy product just to hit an arbitrary street date their accountants and shareholders came up with.

Plus Bioware is focused on their new fail-waiting-in-the-wings "Dylan". I imagine the Mass Effect universe is just going to quietly be suffocated with a pillow in its hospital bed, then thrown in a mass grave out back next to the desecrated corpses of Deus Ex, Hitman, and all the other big triple A games that were butt fucked by their studios and publishers all in the name of profit.