One of Mass Effect: Andromeda's Biggest Failings

[Winter]

While there are many, and I mean MANY, problems with MEA there is one issue that I think really doomed the game and that is how badly it's budget was handled. While MEA is well known for how cheep it looks the thing of it is is that it DOES have some rather impressive graphics, from the loading screens that shows you arriving to the planet, seeing the planet outside and on top of that the gameplay is actually really good. But here's the problem, a lot and I mean a LOT of these bits could have and really should have been left out to so the budget could in other areas could have been used.

For example, take feature that shows the world your at being shown outside your ship. This is honestly a really solid effect and while they're rather slow I do actually like the effect of seeing the travel between worlds. The problem is, you really didn't need either of these. It's a waste of money that is only there to look cool and as a result the money for the facial animation is wasted so we get all the $#!t we got in the main game.

Let's take a look at The Witcher 3. This was a game that actually had a smaller budget then MEA and yet you'd never know to look at it. That's because the developers knew how to cut corners to save on money for the stuff that actually mattered. Take for example the use of drawings that is used for the games various endings and the recap loading screens. The reason these are used is that it's actually cheaper to just have a series of drawings instead of making a series of cutscenes, include a stylized blood stain that moves us along to the next drawing so it's all done in a single take to make it look cool. Even Dragon Age 2 knew to due this to recap the events between time jumps or Dragon Age: Inquisition using tarot cards in place of the first two games character models when choosing companions.

Let's also take a look at a non-gaming example with Cowboy Bebop. While a beautiful anime did you notice that throughout most of the episodes there's actually not that much movement? Yeah, until we get to the fight scenes there's a lot of cheating going on by doing things like focusing on a characters eyes, or pulling the camera back while two characters talk to one another. This means that money is saved by showing you basically still frames that are moved around a little bit to give the illusion of life so when the scenes that actually need the movement come in, like the fight scenes, it looks amazing because the animators knew how to hold back to save on the money they would need for later.

Contrast this with MEA's planet jumping loading screens. This is spectacle for spectacle sake and as a result wastes money. Another example of MEA wasting it's money is how the conversations with the mysterious backer is handled. Instead of just having us hear their voice the game instead shows us a screen in which the backer changes races every few seconds to keep their identity a secret and it's such a waste.

They could have just kept them in shadows and all we get from them is their voice which is distorted like what we got in the Citadel DLC with Shepard's Clone. This would actually have been easier to animate so and you can save that money for, you know, a good script, solid facial animation and a story with characters we can actually get invested in.

Say what you will about DA2 but it honestly made better use of it's budget and as a result did create an overall better game.

[CharlesPhipps]

I think the biggest thing that doomed Mass Effect was the fact it wasn't any fun. Same as Dragon Age: Inquisition.

The second thing that doomed it is if you're going to do a sequel to a series people love, maybe you should set it in the same galaxy and time frame.

The third thing was it was butt ugly.

[Riedquat]

It was thrown out and restarted more than once, and that's why it suffered, mostly from a plot that was clearly thrown together at the last minute. I can't see how reducing spending on the technical side would've helped that, and some of those effects might've been from bits of development that didn't need to keep being started then chucked.

[Kinky Vorlon]

The second thing that doomed it is if you're going to do a sequel to a series people love, maybe you should set it in the same galaxy and time frame.

The problem with a sequel in the same universe is you have to address the issue of which of the endings is cannon which is opening a gigantic pandora's box of nerdrage, just look at the uproar over the ending when ME3 came out. Prequels have the issue where there can be a lack of narrative tension and risk contradicting cannon.

[CharlesPhipps]

The second thing that doomed it is if you're going to do a sequel to a series people love, maybe you should set it in the same galaxy and time frame.

The problem with a sequel in the same universe is you have to address the issue of which of the endings is cannon which is opening a gigantic pandora's box of nerdrage, just look at the uproar over the ending when ME3 came out. Prequels have the issue where there can be a lack of narrative tension and risk contradicting cannon.

That strikes me as a bit like the problem of Amazing Spider-Man 2.

"No one in the audience wants you to kill Gwen Stacy."

"Kill Gwen Stacy!"

No one in the world likes the endings of Mass Effect 3 and would love if you just wrote a happy ending.

"Fuck them all! Keep it ambiguous!"

Mind you, if they were going to do sequels then WHY write an impossible conclusion in the first place?

[hammerofglass]

The biggest problem for me is Ryder. If you're character's starting position is "completely unqualified but got the job anyway because of who their daddy is" you're working uphill for likability to start, but they just never really rose above it. It didn't help that both voice actors chose to give him/her a really annoying voice.

With Shepard it always felt like you were along on their adventure. Ryder feels like the boss's idiot kid who follows you around, contributes nothing, and gets handed credit for your work.

[Madner Kami]

@"One of Mass Effect: Andromeda's Biggest Failings"

The fact that I can't boot Liam from my ship. Can't stand that guy, complete screw-up. Tries to "make the team a family", but neither trusts the family, doing stupid shit behind the back, nor does he interact with the crew in nice ways.

I did not like him from the first moment I met him in the game, didn't get much better when he used me on Aya, risking a diplomatic incident, but the moment that really made me detest him? I get this mail, telling me he fucked up and needs my help. I go and talk with him and he tells me that these Angarans he tried to make close friends with in the interest of diplomacy, (Hello, not your job, that is mine and you should have run that by me, especially since you already showed that you are a bad Crisis Responder), vanished and he needs my help in finding them again. "Ok, they are your friends, so why are you trying to hush-hush it?", was my immediate thought and then he drops a bomb: He gave them sensitive infos on the Nexus location, according nav-points and "Nexus data"... You know, the unfinished space station without weapons, which's only defense is, that it's location is unknown to these genocidal maniacs named Kett, who hunt us... But oh wait, it gets worse. Somehow. When I tell him off about it, that he should immediatly have raised alarms instead of hushing it up, his reply:



No. You are not going to fix it. I have to fix it. Our team has to fix it. And if this goes sideways, the entire fucking Initiative has to deal with it and fix the issues you caused, maybe be forced into an unwinable direct armed conflict. After being told off and chastised, he still doesn't fucking get it and I know that kind of guy, I have to deal with two of those in my departement and, there as well as in this game, I have no means of simply shaking them back to reality or just flat out boot them from the work-force and this makes me so incredibly angry, because I know that guy will fuck up again and it will, again, be me that has to fix the fucking issue that shouldn't have existed in the first place, if he had just held his feet still for a moment and talked to me.

And it still gets worse. The mission that sprouts from this fuckup... I get progressively more angry with his shit during this mission. He's acting like a fucking child and it becomes clearer and clearer why he got booted from the police force. I mean, he flat out tells you early on in the game, but it takes a while to really sink in and maybe you want to read nice things into it early on, benefit of the doubt and so, but it's purely on him and his behaviour, that he got the boot and he keeps doing it, just as predicted.
The mission is over and I softly suggest to keep his Angaran friend around, until the Nexus can update it's security measures, because of course the data he gave his Angaran friend made it's way into the hands of someone who you certainly don't want anywhere close to that data. What's Liam's reaction to it? He freaks out and starts chewing me out over trying to fix his fucking mess...


youtu.be/Qz_rRlNjUW0

Fuck. This. Guy.