Mass Effect or Wildlands?

[Pete Cash]

I've put a few more hours in

The pacing is bad because of the nature of open world stuff. Adding the mission on hold stuff was a great idea in a tighter narrative game and it would have fixed the pacing issues in the OT

The combat is fun but limited by the small array of enemies. This wouldn't be an issue in itself. The original trilogy in particular mass effect 1 had the same issue but mass effect 1 was an RPG firstly not an action game.

The crew probably isn't as good as it could have been. Cora is kinda annoying. I went into the game expecting to hate PB expecting her to be the hurr let's pump out meme characters but she is my favourite asari across the series.

The game does stuff well mind. I prefer the more optimistic tone in my dumb shlocky space adventure. I like Ryder he is fun. I like the loyalty missions thus far. I like the new races.

But it does a lot wrong

There is a lot of padding so if you are the type of person who has to complete everything it will suck. If you can say f**k off I'm not going to scan those bodies and you can't make me you will enjoy it a lot more.

All in all I quite like it but you have to be willing to excuse a number of flaws and a number of these flaws will come down to personal taste.

Ryder isn't Shepard he is a goof (at least the way I play him) I like that. Some folks miss the badass Shepard though. As I said above I like Ryder more. It comes down to what you want out of a protagonist

Basically I'd recommend it to a fan of the series but I'd also say try it before you buy it if possible.

Also I cannot stress strongly enough be prepared to step away from the obvious padding missions and I say that as someone who went through a million of the same box fortress in mass effect to complete it.

So I like it, FD hates it but I support the raiders and watch all their games so you know I've a history of good choices in my entertainment

 

[Pete Cash]

I know nobody cares about this game lol but something that bugs me a lot is how SAM basically robs you of any kind of agency.

In the witcher 3 which Mass effect has ripped the f**k off in a lot of way (such as the hilarious scanning/witcher senses) geralt does on the rails solve problems for you. The guy shits exposition but it works because it feels like you the player are solving a mystery. So when Geralt scans something and says gruffly "hmmm this footprint isn't human. I better follow them" it is more satisfying as a player than SAM going "beep boop the switch is over there pathfinder"

The Mass effect series have never been all that tricky games. I mean I can see the huge f**king yellow icon telling me to press the button SAM. I get it mate.

Edit

Now that im nearing the end here is my opinion.

Mass effect has been historically a very stupid game series held together by tight scripting of the missions. Its a series literally held together by a linear story and an illusion of choice.

It seems crazy that bioware would then go away from that.

Each mass effect game truly has some stupid storyline choices. Mass effect 2 is almost a perfect game but its so thematically out of place in the series. It was also an idiotic decision to kill shep made even more stupider by having cerberus rebuild him and thats the best game in the series. It is extremely good though. Possibly the second best rpg of all time in my opinion

Mass effect 1 has creepy liara and all the aliens are just exposition buddies. They all get seriously fleshed out in mass effect 2 (it rules) but an overall solid story line.

ME:A is an ok story. There are some cringe moments but nothing terrible. Its a more consistent story than ME 3 but without the highs of that game (priority tuchunka) but it certainly doesnt have anything as ball kickingly insulting as priority rannoch which i would consider one of biowares low points for story telling if they didnt beat it a couple of hours later with the actual ending.

Now in a lot of ways ME 3 as far as story goes was saved by the weight of the series. It was past games that sunk their emotional hooks into you as far as tuchunka went. If it had to survive off its own stories it would be even worse than ME:A. I love happy endings. Id have taken the garrus and shep sinking beers on top of the last reaper that they punched out the sky over the ending we got but the idea that space jesus Shephard could talk the geth and the quarians into peace in 10 seconds based on being mates with tali and legion is pretty dumb.

And what the hell happened to the geth ? And why is there a literal anime running around with a sword ?

 

[Parra Pride]

And what the hell happened to the geth ?

The arcs ship off during Mass Effect 2, when nobody but Shephard has anything but hostile interactions with the Geth, not sure why they would ship them off as well.

And why is there a literal anime running around with a sword ?

What?

 

[Pete Cash]

Kai Lang is a really dumb character and is essentially an anime.

What i mean about the geth is they completely change between mass effect 2 and 3 in personality. They went from quite interesting characters (a collective race) to pinnochio wishing they were real boys. The characters took a complete 180.

Speaking of synthetics the EDI storyline was so utterly cringe worthy in mass effect 3. Why oh why did they make her a sexy robot with a faux camel toe.

Im not against sexy characters in my sci-fi shlock. Hell i would criticise ME:A for not being sexy enough. Everyone is minging. So bioware spending 60 percent of the development cycle on getting mirandas arse perfect is fine but EDI is embarrassing as f**k.

Now mass effect 3 is a much tighter narrative. MA:A has a lot of plodding around in boring open worlds but story wise i think MA:A is better. Its just andromeda lacks direction through its open world

 

[Parra Pride]

Yeah, I shouldn't have just skimmed through your post and assumed it was all relating to Andromeda. My bad.

 

[Eelectrica]

Now mass effect 3 is a much tighter narrative. MA:A has a lot of plodding around in boring open worlds but story wise i think MA:A is better. Its just andromeda lacks direction through its open world

I gave MEA another look yesterday after work, to see what was changed with the new update, which amounted to not fixing anything that's actually wrong with the game. Anyway where I think the game shines is in the actual quest missions and companion missions.

BW don't have a clue how to do the open world thing. They really need to just give it up as a bad idea. They also need to ditch crafting. Or change the way they do it since all quests and exploring leads to are more bloody crafting materials. No unique gear or quests or things like that.
I did one mission last night which had me jumping around the galaxy to 4 or 5 planets with about 2 minutes dialogue on each. Just some absolutely horrible quest and design choices.

Thing of it is the DLC might end up saving the game as the DLC will be more focused on doing one thing instead of about 100 things and doing them all, for the most part poorly.

 

[Pete Cash]

Open world games don't really match with BW strength which is really tight narrative experiences. Take the Witcher 3 which is about as perfect as an open world RPG can be and even that game suffers from narrative issues if you really think about it. Its just CD prokect hit almost everything they did as far as narrative went out the park so the obvious pacing problems of Geralt walking around a huge map finding frying pans while the world is ending aren't as obvious. It helps that the player is role playing as a specific character so when they give the option of a serious dick or a sarcastic dick those are the option the Witcher universe (the games at least I haven't read the books) Geralt would take.

You can't role play Geralt in the same way that you can role play Shepherd

So they throw this big open world and cut back on the way to play Ryder. Now as I said I would role play a nice dude 99 percent of the time but they have removed one of the selling points of the series.

I was reading that this game was plagued by problems. One of the team leaders wanted to make it a procedurally generated game for some bizarre reason so they wasted years on this vision that would ultimately be thrown out. EA brought in noted shitty writer Mac Walters who has never really wrote anything decent to be the project lead to save the game.

It just blows my mind that BW wanted to step away from what brought them to the dance. I think it is clear that they realised they were f**ked for time and just said f**k it most players role play a paragon character so lets just make Ryder largely a decent bloke/bird and save some time.

So after the disaster of the ending of ME3 they then waste time trying to make a game that would not fit in the universe at all and they salvage the game to what we have now and have probably killed the IP. At least in the short term. What a disaster

Still I enjoyed it lol but I am in the minority

 

[Parra Pride]

I gave MEA another look yesterday after work, to see what was changed with the new update, which amounted to not fixing anything that's actually wrong with the game. Anyway where I think the game shines is in the actual quest missions and companion missions.

BW don't have a clue how to do the open world thing. They really need to just give it up as a bad idea. They also need to ditch crafting. Or change the way they do it since all quests and exploring leads to are more bloody crafting materials. No unique gear or quests or things like that.
I did one mission last night which had me jumping around the galaxy to 4 or 5 planets with about 2 minutes dialogue on each. Just some absolutely horrible quest and design choices.

Thing of it is the DLC might end up saving the game as the DLC will be more focused on doing one thing instead of about 100 things and doing them all, for the most part poorly.

Is DLC even coming with BioWare putting the series on hold?

 

[Eelectrica]

Is DLC even coming with BioWare putting the series on hold?

I'd imagine they'd at least complete and release the Quarian one and see how that goes. I notice they've already discounted the game - $30US from GMG now.
Get those extra few sales and see if DLC can resurrect the game is my guess.