Watch: Mass Effect Andromeda Gameplay Trailer

[hentropy]

I know people really want to hate this game for whatever reason, they didn't like the ending to ME3, they didn't like Inquisition, they don't like EA, or you're just cynical about every new release.

But the fact is, there's nothing in here that isn't "Mass Effect." Exploring worlds to gather resources? ME1 all the way. Except now it looks to be more interesting, as it's more than just Mako bouncy house and identical raider dens. There still appears to be big towns and outposts to explore, just like in ME1. What's next, complaining about the dialogue wheel?

I also love how Bethesda never gets this much crap for their creepy faces and thousand-yard stares and the fact that the same three people do 30 voices, but somehow it's a real issue with Bioware.

I wouldn't say I'm "hyped" about this game but it does make me more interested than I was before. Having a Mass Effect game where you're not playing the Chosen One with green particle effects isn't bad by my standards, and it'll provide more world-building opportunities when you don't have to make everything about Reapers and rogue AIs.

 

[major_chaos]

Yipes that facial animation was awful. Other than that what was on display here looked good, carrying over the punchy, varied weapons and powers from ME3 but making the combat much more agile and fast paced to avoid the "Gears of War but with lazers" feeling that game had, crafting is a good thing to me but hopefully they took the criticism from DA:I and made the resource gathering less of a slog, the ground vehicle looks like it handles infinitely better than the mako, and the environments look good if not revolutionary.

Also minor point, but was that a female Turian squad mate at the beginning? That would be interesting considering female Turians were totally unseen until the Citadel DLC for no adequately explained reason that I can recall.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

But the fact is, there's nothing in here that isn't "Mass Effect." Exploring worlds to gather resources? ME1 all the way. Except now it looks to be more interesting, as it's more than just Mako bouncy house and identical raider dens. There still appears to be big towns and outposts to explore, just like in ME1. What's next, complaining about the dialogue wheel?

ME1 had a few optional exploration side quests, but all the "resource gathering" came down to getting credits and xp. The actual resource gathering appeared in ME2 with its' probing mini-game (and the undying joy of hearing Tricia Helfer say "Probing Uranus") where it was linked to the upgrades. ME3 ditched the resource gathering in favor of having most planets have one or two war assets or quest items that you could find by probing.

The problem is that "resource gathering" also appeared in DA:I, where it was a giant time waster (much more so than in ME2), nominally tied into base upgrading and, more pertinently, the obtuse crafting system.

I also love how Bethesda never gets this much crap for their creepy faces and thousand-yard stares and the fact that the same three people do 30 voices, but somehow it's a real issue with Bioware.

You haven't seen people make fun of Bethesda's crappy facial models and almost non-existing facial animations? I'd love to live in your world, because I see it in just about every discussion about Bethesda games. One might argue, though, that Bethesda makes open world RPGs and the focus is on the player roaming the world, not on crafting engaging stories and characters. Bioware focuses, first and foremost, on characters and story, which makes poor models and animations all the more jarring.

 

[meiam]

Also minor point, but was that a female Turian squad mate at the beginning? That would be interesting considering female Turians were totally unseen until the Citadel DLC for no adequately explained reason that I can recall.

I always though that we were constantly seeing female version of most species but we just couldn't tell, if I just grab two koalas and give them to you, can you tell which one is the male and the female? Even creature that we constantly interact with like cats and dogs we can't really tell apart, so alien species is just way above us. The tell tale sign could be some color that are outside our visual range or some specific odor we can't even smell.

Of course that was before bioware got the minor case of brain aneurism and decided to go "no no we can totally differentiate male and female, you just never saw any before hand" and that kinda screwed everything up and introduced giant plot hole, sigh.

As for the game, itself, it's funny how after ME1 I would have said I was interested in ME2 because of the story, gameplay was pretty crappy after all and that's not why I'd ever pick up ME2. Now with ME:A its the exact opposite, I'm interested in the gameplay but I'm assuming the story will be complete crap. XD

 

[hentropy]

ME1 had a few optional exploration side quests, but all the "resource gathering" came down to getting credits and xp. The actual resource gathering appeared in ME2 with its' probing mini-game (and the undying joy of hearing Tricia Helfer say "Probing Uranus") where it was linked to the upgrades. ME3 ditched the resource gathering in favor of having most planets have one or two war assets or quest items that you could find by probing.

The problem is that "resource gathering" also appeared in DA:I, where it was a giant time waster (much more so than in ME2), nominally tied into base upgrading and, more pertinently, the obtuse crafting system.

A few optional exploration quests? The original game is what, ten hours if you do nothing but the main story mission, if that? Over half the game was exploring those 20 or so "optional" planets, and it was the only way to get decent gear and be at a decent level for the late story missions.

In DA:I, the crafting/resource stuff felt rather tangential and seamless, pretty much every resource could be gathered on the way to quest markers and the crafting system was about as "RPG" as it gets. If you choose to obsess over the crafting materials well, that's kinda your choice.

And it appears Andromeda is going to be similar to ME1, the bulk of it will be missions and resource stuff will happen along the way. And it actually makes more sense with this than it did previously, as it's part of your job and not some stupid errand The Chosen One has to do.

You haven't seen people make fun of Bethesda's crappy facial models and almost non-existing facial animations? I'd love to live in your world, because I see it in just about every discussion about Bethesda games. One might argue, though, that Bethesda makes open world RPGs and the focus is on the player roaming the world, not on crafting engaging stories and characters. Bioware focuses, first and foremost, on characters and story, which makes poor models and animations all the more jarring.

Granted I don't hang around forums where they specialize in talking about such things, but for some reason it's always the first thing people bring up with Bioware, but with Bethesda it only occasionally gets mentioned. I certainly never see anyone say they're disregarding the game because of it. If anything it just shows how difficult it is to get something like that right without spending your entire budget on it. There are people who do that, they're called Pixar/Dreamworks/etc. "Bioware Face" has been around since KOTOR, and it didn't ruin KOTOR.

But like I said, I still have yet to see anything in this trailer that wasn't in at least one of the Mass Effect games. Like the previous ME games, it'll have its problems and annoyances and stuff they didn't think through (like scanning in ME2), but there's no reason to believe it'll be a terrible game and huge departure from what made the others good.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

But like I said, I still have yet to see anything in this trailer that wasn't in at least one of the Mass Effect games. Like the previous ME games, it'll have its problems and annoyances and stuff they didn't think through (like scanning in ME2), but there's no reason to believe it'll be a terrible game and huge departure from what made the others good.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with your general sentiment. My fear is that the disastrous "Open World"-design that brought down DA:I will also be present in ME:A, in which case it will be a total no sell for me. If ME:A manages to feel like a real world (ie. Witcher 3) instead of clusters of mobs scattered about a (way oversized, empty) map seemingly at random like a mid-00's MMO, I'll be much more interested in it.

But since DA:I was the latest outing from Bioware and they seem insistent on taking a similar route with ME:A, I will remain skeptical until I see more of this open world. Because I do like open worlds, but I also hate the MMO-approach of just scattering mobs, resources and quests about them seemingly instead of organically.

 

[Ishigami]

It just wouldn't be the escapist forum without some BioWare hate. War never changes?

Looks fine to me.
New powers seem pretty interesting and I like that they apparently want to abolish the class system and give us an open skill tree. Combat in video also seems pretty vertical with jet pack and charge.
I still like ME1 the best. So I'm glad that some big planets to explore are back. Makes the universe appear to be more real. Don't get the hate on open world. If you don't want to participate just rush to next main scenario objective and ignore the side stuff?
It's like people complaining about gay romance options, just don't pick them?
Animation and voice acting seems fine too. Sure animations are not the best ever but far from really bad. Maybe some people here need some perspective? I mean you guys are currently playing FFXV right? Those facial animation and lip sync.... or lack thereof.
Setup is pretty interesting and basically the only way I will touch it. So its fine too. Not sure about the "old threat" story but since... DA:O I'm more interested in "side" stories which take up most of the games now anyway.
But then again according to this forum I'm strange as I mostly liked DA:I.

The Witcher 3 easily has the best facial animations in gaming. They seem to be handcrafted to perfection. They're even better than Ubisoft's motion captured animations from Unity or LA Noire's "revolutionary" animations. Because unlike those games, The Witcher 3 animations are filled with subtle details

Yea... no.


Mocap is certainly not a solution for every game but be real...

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

Dear God, as soon as I saw the facial animations, I turned the video off.

I'm not spending 200 hours watching that. That's just...creepy.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Mocap is certainly not a solution for every game but be real...

I am being real. Due to the nature of that game every character was overacting. Expressions might look realistic from a technical perspective, but they looked completely unnatural because of how exaggerated every animation was. There was nothing more immersion breaking than looking at their faces.

My fear is that the disastrous "Open World"-design that brought down DA:I will also be present in ME:A, in which case it will be a total no sell for me.

You can bet your firstborn that it's exactly what it will be.

But the fact is, there's nothing in here that isn't "Mass Effect."

Except for the entire galaxy. To some people (me) that's the most important bit. I don't care at all about some distant galaxy and a story set 600 years into the future. For me this is not Mass Effect. This is just a sad attempt from a bunch of hacks who needlessly wrote themselves into a corner and were too stupid to figure out how to fix it.

 

[Hawki]

Okay, I hate to be "that guy," but how the heck can an entire galaxy be short on resources? I mean, the Milky Way is big, like, really big, and the Andromeda galaxy is even bigger.

Actually that part I can sorta defend, without the Reapers to push the reset button every few millions years the galaxy would get overpopulated pretty quick and would quite literally run out of planet very soon. But this is going to make a few things weird, essentially technology should be so advanced in andromeda that they would surely have discovered a way to cross to other galaxy (since the milky way find a way even though they were reseted by the reaper) so there's no explanation why they weren't colonizing other galaxy to alleviate the problem.

I did think about the Reapers, but (and yes, this is nitpicking) I can't help but think that the idea of an entire galaxy running out of resources is one that inherently stretches credulity, given how big a galaxy actually is. Inhabitable worlds, maybe? I can buy that. But, resources in of themselves? Nup.

 

[hentropy]

But like I said, I still have yet to see anything in this trailer that wasn't in at least one of the Mass Effect games. Like the previous ME games, it'll have its problems and annoyances and stuff they didn't think through (like scanning in ME2), but there's no reason to believe it'll be a terrible game and huge departure from what made the others good.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with your general sentiment. My fear is that the disastrous "Open World"-design that brought down DA:I will also be present in ME:A, in which case it will be a total no sell for me. If ME:A manages to feel like a real world (ie. Witcher 3) instead of clusters of mobs scattered about a (way oversized, empty) map seemingly at random like a mid-00's MMO, I'll be much more interested in it.

But since DA:I was the latest outing from Bioware and they seem insistent on taking a similar route with ME:A, I will remain skeptical until I see more of this open world. Because I do like open worlds, but I also hate the MMO-approach of just scattering mobs, resources and quests about them seemingly instead of organically.

Well you bring up an interesting point about how you would want to do it "organically". It might just be personal taste, but the way The Witcher series did it felt just as organic as DA:I, which felt as organic as DA:O, which felt as organic as Skyrim and Fallout 4. You can say what you want about Bethesda games being "about" exploration, but they're really not. In Skyrim and Fallout 4, doing anything else other than the main quest makes no sense whatsoever. You do it only because they put it there for you to do.

In ME:A at least it seems to be organic from what little information we have, everything that you do seems to have a logical motivation for it. There's no epic story that you have to do in order to save the galaxy, but let me stop by to gather some Iridium. To me at least, that's what makes something feel seamless and organic. Do I (my character) have an actual reason for doing it?

I have an embarrassing amount of time sunk into DA:I, even though I had misgivings about how much they changed the core formula. I don't let those misgivings get in the way of what otherwise is a good game, however. I don't let "it looks like an MMO" or "it doesn't do things the same way as The Witcher 3" affect my opinion of it.

 

[Saulkar]

On the one hand; fuck yes.

On the other hand; what'll actually be the gameplay elements?

The action looks good, but I want a lot more from a Mass Effect game. The scanning stuff somehow makes me hope that it'll have a wee bit of a Metroid Prime feel, but that's probably too much to hope for. The resource gathering (also, the idea is stupid, it's an entire galaxy) doesn't sound all that appealing though.

Ditto. Despite the constant upgrades to combat I still keep going back to Mass Effect 1 as there is something about the relationship between the RPG and Combat elements I cannot quite pin down that somehow just rubs me the right way. On its own the combat is sorta meh but in ME1, it works. Without interesting RPG mechanics, exploration, and feeling truly isolated on an alien world, what drew me into the series in the first place (and I am not getting any of that from the trailer), I do not think I could call it a Mass Effect game. Hopefully I will be proven wrong while I offroad with my Turian Waifu.

The first part of this video sums it up nicely:

Hey, off topic but was it you that posted a video link to a video-game commentator a couple of weeks ago, who may or may not be the one in this video, that everyone in the forums was all like "OMG! You know him too?" and I was all like "I think I will sub to this guy" but forgot to? Do you know who (youtuber) I am talking about?

EDIT: I took the time to go through this guys youtube channel and I actually recognised some of the videos (the ME3 ones) and thus know that the guy in the video you linked is not the one I am still searching for.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

This is just a sad attempt from a bunch of hacks who needlessly wrote themselves into a corner and were too stupid to figure out how to fix it.

The Bioware community offered dozens of ways to fix it. It'd be more accurate to say that EAware were too cheap to fix it.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Y'see that's the thing; they're all subtle animations and none of the plasticity that faces also carry. I have yet to see a character in there crack a wide smile, look genuinely distraught or enraged or anything other than small smirks or stern frowning.

Really? Because there's plenty of that too. Just not from every character. They all have unique expressions that fit their personalities.

I've only recently played through the main game, first game I finished in a while even, and I honest to God cannot recall any sort of elaborate facial expressing in any character. All small stuff, more downplayed emotions. But no guffaws, no knee-slapping laughs, no sobbing, no utter shock, etc. To put it in different words; everyone was so composed. People aren't composed all the time.

Also, mind you; all of this is coming from someone who found The Witcher 3 to be his favourite RPG in years.

 

[Quellist]

Looks like it went full shooter I remember when Mass Effect was an RPG

Pfft, barely.

You want RPG? Play Quest for Glory, or Daggerfall, or this:

Sorry but the first ME was a proper Bioware RPG with shooter elements. Before the cancer that is EA took over

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Y'see that's the thing; they're all subtle animations and none of the plasticity that faces also carry. I have yet to see a character in there crack a wide smile, look genuinely distraught or enraged or anything other than small smirks or stern frowning.

Really? Because there's plenty of that too. Just not from every character. They all have unique expressions that fit their personalities.

I've only recently played through the main game, first game I finished in a while even, and I honest to God cannot recall any sort of elaborate facial expressing in any character. All small stuff, more downplayed emotions. But no guffaws, no knee-slapping laughs, no sobbing, no utter shock, etc. To put it in different words; everyone was so composed. People aren't composed all the time.

Also, mind you; all of this is coming from someone who found The Witcher 3 to be his favourite RPG in years.

No, I agree, Witcher 3 was/is definitely amazing. But garunteed those facial animations have nowhere near the amount of moving muscles as Half Life 2. Like Yahtzee said, it's mostly the eyebrows and limited mouth muscles that pull the heavy work. In Half Life 2 they specifically touted something like over 40 separate facial points for their expressions. Closest to that, that I'm certain of, beats it is LA Noire, which pretty much cheats this whole thing. Really, Witcher 3 did not have that many points to each NPC's face, nowhere near, logically. But they did also have great, talented voice acting...never underestimate that.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Looks like it went full shooter I remember when Mass Effect was an RPG

Pfft, barely.

You want RPG? Play Quest for Glory, or Daggerfall, or this:

Sorry but the first ME was a proper Bioware RPG with shooter elements. Before the cancer that is EA took over

Sorry but it never made sense to me that a character like Commander Shepard should be putting any levels in weapon skills because as a decorated special forces soldier they should be able to do that shit in their sleep. ME2 did go too far in the other direction in gutting the skills and weapon mod systems but made up for it by having the best crew (overall) and I think ME3's very flexible loadout system should be the default: wanna focus on your powers and use them with a gun there 'just in case'? Go nuts. Wanna go into battle with enough firepower to qualify as a regiment all on your own? God speed you mad bastard.

So ideally what we should get from ME:A is a weapon mod and loadout system similar to ME3 but a talent system (bar weapon skills) more like ME1 so we can put ranks in stuff like the powers or tech we use, or conversation, general fitness and strength (here the talent acts as a sort of shorthand for Ryder's regular PT) and maybe something exotic that's new.

Sound fair?

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I have an embarrassing amount of time sunk into DA:I, even though I had misgivings about how much they changed the core formula. I don't let those misgivings get in the way of what otherwise is a good game, however. I don't let "it looks like an MMO" or "it doesn't do things the same way as The Witcher 3" affect my opinion of it.

Last I checked, I have some 100 hours sunk into DA:I, so I can't really say I didn't like it. DA:I induced a certain kind of fatigue in me and I kept thinking of The Old Republic when I played it, in terms of design, rather than DA:O or DA2. I kept playing because the writing was often top-notch Bioware, but I also forced myself through a lot of slogging in the open world, which always struck me as enlargened to suit more players than were around. This led to my opinion of DA:I sinking notably once I was done with my first playthrough, because I can't stomach going into that gameplay again, even if I liked the environments, characters and stories the game presented.

In hindsight I felt that DA:I was wasting my time, which is a feeling that I have never gotten from a Bethesda game or even the Witcher 3. A large part of it was down to the open world and its' decidedly mmo-approach to world design. If ME:A can solve that and give us an open world that feels worthwhile and resource collection that doesn't feel like a stupid slog, I'm down with it. But since I belong to the group of people that feel that Bioware has been sliding ever since ME2, I remain skeptical until they show me how the open world actually plays.

 

[Quellist]

Looks like it went full shooter I remember when Mass Effect was an RPG

Pfft, barely.

You want RPG? Play Quest for Glory, or Daggerfall, or this:

Sorry but the first ME was a proper Bioware RPG with shooter elements. Before the cancer that is EA took over

Sorry but it never made sense to me that a character like Commander Shepard should be putting any levels in weapon skills because as a decorated special forces soldier they should be able to do that shit in their sleep. ME2 did go too far in the other direction in gutting the skills and weapon mod systems but made up for it by having the best crew (overall) and I think ME3's very flexible loadout system should be the default: wanna focus on your powers and use them with a gun there 'just in case'? Go nuts. Wanna go into battle with enough firepower to qualify as a regiment all on your own? God speed you mad bastard.

So ideally what we should get from ME:A is a weapon mod and loadout system similar to ME3 but a talent system (bar weapon skills) more like ME1 so we can put ranks in stuff like the powers or tech we use, or conversation, general fitness and strength (here the talent acts as a sort of shorthand for Ryder's regular PT) and maybe something exotic that's new.

Sound fair?

Personally i'd prefer the weapon and loadout system from ME1 but i'd take that if it was offered! I'd also prefer environments that looked like real places not setpieces designed for firefights with convenient chest high walls everywhere...

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Y'see that's the thing; they're all subtle animations and none of the plasticity that faces also carry. I have yet to see a character in there crack a wide smile, look genuinely distraught or enraged or anything other than small smirks or stern frowning.

Really? Because there's plenty of that too. Just not from every character. They all have unique expressions that fit their personalities.

I've only recently played through the main game, first game I finished in a while even, and I honest to God cannot recall any sort of elaborate facial expressing in any character. All small stuff, more downplayed emotions. But no guffaws, no knee-slapping laughs, no sobbing, no utter shock, etc. To put it in different words; everyone was so composed. People aren't composed all the time.

Also, mind you; all of this is coming from someone who found The Witcher 3 to be his favourite RPG in years.

Geralt displays a lot of rage in some parts of the game despite being "stripped of emotions" and so does Triss when she kills Menge. Then there's the Bloody Baron. He's very expressive as well. There's quite a bit of sad faces in a ton of scenes and there's sobbing at the end of the battle for Kaer Morhen, Ciri's facial expression stands out. There's quite a bit of laughter in later parts of the game when Geralt finds Ciri. And Hjalmar laughs out loud in a few scenes too.