Speaking of flipping switches, that's also how the ending plays out. You don't really fight the Archon, you fight a miniboss (that apparently is in every planet), and you don't even kill him. You flip the switch, and that does him in. Its so pathetic, lacking in any sort of emotion weight. I laugh when people say that Mass Effect Andromeda was as good as the original series, because there's nothing there. A hollow husk that EA is now inhabiting, parading itself as Mass Effect. TL;DR, fuck this game.
The language in this game gives the impression that the writers grew up on buffy/whedon, then moved on to CW shows to pass time, and then spent the rest of their days on tumblr.
I get you i do...and im not saying andromeda is as good as the original, god no. But i am willing to say that in all. Its bot a bad game. I enjoyed it for what it is.
You mean like how Shepard didn't defeat Sovereign but instead got a mini-boss in Saren? Or how Shepard never even faced the main antagonist of ME2, but instead got a miniboss in the human reaper? You unplugged it the end. How about how Shepard defeated the reapers... No wait, you have the option to just turn off their switch.
@@tigeroix9759 I'm so glad you just pulled those examples without any context. Oh yeah, sure, you fought Saren, but ultimately he's the evil foil to Shepard. Your character is the antithesis to Saren just giving up and succumbing to the Reaper threat. That's why when you convince him to shoot himself either as paragon or renegade you got some emotion out of it. The whole journey led to that point, to show him he's wrong. And the robotic husk of Saren is an excellent final boss. I think I can agree with you on some extent that you don't really destroy Harbringer, instead you fight the Human Reaper, but it was super cathartic to just shoot him down everytime he says "ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL." And I totally disagree with your conclusion regarding the ending of Mass Effect 3 - choosing between three switches was why people hated the ending.
This came to mind when i played it and there was some sort of protest because i chose military outposts. Some orange hair fruitcake was upset because his little demands weren't met, no renegade to punch, no renegade to tell him to run back to mom and dad, nothing. Can't throw trash like Liam Kosta out the airlock either, or Cora whos whole purpose was identify as an asari, piss poor game in the best light.
If this game had renegade choices I would picked every single one. Almost every character in this game sucks so I feel like I really wouldn't care what they think of me helping the archon destroy the angara n everybody else.. Fuck all of them.
@@SoftExo I think we all know what kind of devs made the game, and why there were no renegade options for any of the situations you described, it would have been a hate crime and we can't have those in our progressive video games.
The problem with Ryder isn't that they're a doormat. It makes sense that a young character wouldn't be confident. The problem is there's no growth in the character. The story of an inexperienced person growing into a role thrust upon them would have been an interesting and different take on Mass Effect. Shame the game is unwilling to do anything ambitious.
Really? I felt like there was one. Like the last couple of story missions try very hard to make Ryder into a badass his dad was. He becomes way more decisive, his crew listens to him and he basically takes on entire armies by himself. During this one game Ryder definitely had more character development than Shephard throughout the whole trilogy. The Shephard you get at the very beginning of ME 1 is the very same Shephard you have at the very end of ME 3. I'm not saying it's bad, he's a great character, but still ME:A captured the whole feeling of "zero to hero" pretty good.
@@kolosmenus ryder is definitely one of the more generic protags I've played. Thats not too bad i itself but generic plus cringey dialogue is too much for me.
@Shawn Rasmussen In the Witcher 3 Geralt is a natural asshole who pisses off everybody, Horizon Zero Dawn has plenty of options to kill people or tell people to fuck off, and in skyrim, you can commit cannibalism. So Yeah there's no excuse.
Has there ever been a ruling "Council" in the history of gaming that hasn't deserved a stomp kick directly into the line of fire in a conflict their own idiocy created?
@@wormwood861 Hmmm... Lemme think... The Blue Chamber Collective in Outward is not completely idiotic. But they enforce blood prices on entire lineages for the actions of individuals, so they are pathetic. I need to keep thinking, it seems... What about... Erm... Ahem... C'mon, there has to be one... One! The moot in Skyri... No, those are puppets meant to elect a king that already bosses them around. There has to be one... I give up.
The concept of "Council" was invented to slow down the ability to take decision of defeated countries so that the winner can annex them over time because he seem more competent. Thus a Council is bound to make huge mistakes caused by either hydra phenomenom or lack of action when the time was right.
and then Shepard comes in .. office is trashed to shit and all and he just says " How about you two just kiss and get it over with?!" Turnes around and leave... god i miss the citadel dlc :-(
I attempted to role-play Ryder as a logical, no-nonsense, follows-in-Dad's-footsteps kind of character. I ended up having to gel this with the caveat "who is always open to listen to friends" when it was obvious that Ryder was more ship's counselor than captain. This was tolerable until it came to certain personal quests. The game let me be (mildly) peeved at PB when she nearly got us stranded on an unstable planet. However, it would not let me be even remotely upset with Liam who did something that by all logic should have gotten him court-martialed. And kicked off my squad. And probably put back in a stasis pod indefinitely. The retcon of Anders in DA2 arguably made more sense. You at least got to dish out whatever passed for justice in the end and be mad about it. I learned that I could have been content if the entirety of Andromeda dealt with getting a human foothold on Kadara. The Angarans, the mutineers, raiders, drug cartel underground, a savage but somewhat livable biome...it could have had that grim atmosphere that DA2 had tried to aim for. You're far from home, ill equipped, and it shouldn't matter what your dad's job was. You're out of your depth no matter how you slice it, and there should be a language barrier.
I dont even remember what liam did but i know it was dumb as fuck but i cared so little just dont remember. As far as PB goes i wasn't pissed at her but i do wish there had been an option to tell her she was going to make this up to me with lots of biotic Powers and zero gravity if you know what I mean.
@@furyberserk He wanted the Initiative and Angarans to get along so badly, he gave people who were basically strangers Nexus navpoints and data--jeopardizing the entire project and every person involved if any of that fell into the wrong hands. This very nearly happens because his contact was kidnapped by pirates.
It's funny, people liked Shepard because he/she is a hardass. Even paragon Shepard is tough as nails. Then they give us this wuss and expect us to be interested.
Its quite an interesting development to have a soyboy character change and become a hardass overtime through player choice, or continue to be a wahmen respecting cuck. Sad that Andromeda doesn't give us that choice...
@@puffer_frog I think Far Cry 3 is a good example of a character who starts off as a wimpy skinny rich boy and by the end is a drug-crazed psychopath who picks his teeth with human shinbones.
@@sebastianlacroix5871 it was great about that. The first 2/3rds building up, and the last 3rd as a bona fide action movie hero. Still my favorite of the post 2 games by far.
Ryder is the kind of character that would have existed in the previous games as a joke, you know, the kind of person you'd be tempted to bully in game, the kind of person even a full paragon or bust Shepard would throw out of a window.
at about 10:50 : I think that was the entire reason they changed the "Paragon/Renegade" system to this, it reduced the amount of work they had to do to change a character's reactions according to what Ryder said. Whether it was Emotional, Logical, or Casual, the person would, in the end, pretty much react the same damn way, whereas Paragon and Renegade usually produced very different reactions to Shepard.
Chup Smith this line of thinking is destroyed by the development and play out of mass effect 3, they just make 2 lines of asshole and not, with the exact same lines in response multiple times, to make 4 personalities is more difficult than to make 2, the work reduction was not allowing full personality choices in all conversations, but still required more work
On the subject of passive storytelling, I think there's one big thing that warrants mention, and that's SAM. I've said it once, and I'll say it again: SAM is the real hero of Mass Effect Andromeda. SAM can do EVERYTHING and it solves EVERY problem you come across. The Pathfinder is made out to be this legendary superman who will deliver everyone from evil, but the only thing the Pathfinder, and Ryder by extension, has that no one else does is an all-knowing AI lodged in their brain. And with Ryder being such a passive, insecure, inexperienced little pussy who only got the job because of daddy, it just goes to show that the only purpose Ryder serves for the Initiative is to be a walking antenna to get SAM wherever it needs to be, then nut up and shut up and do what the machine says. Ryder's qualifications don't matter because Ryder honestly has NO qualifications and doesn't develop any by the end, aside from being very good at killing. If SAM could fit inside a tubeworm, IT could have been a Pathfinder too.
This so much. I find it especially funny because the title of the Andromeda Protag is so unfitting. Pathfinder implies some kind of peaceful explorer, while Ryder is an unstoppable killing machine to get SAM where it needs to go and nothing more. Dumb muscle in essence.
I was fairly ok with Ryder being a weakling push-over. I thought that it would be interesting to see him slowly develop from a wimpy kid way over his head to a seasoned leader. I'm still waiting for this development.
I think part of the problem was that Ryder and friends were never allowed to be wrong, in regards to morality; any sort of wrong-hood was generally either a wrong-hood by mistake, misunderstanding or played for comedy. There were not enough times where you could actively do something that would benefit yourself at the expense of others, or even show the hint of an agenda outside of what you’re given. Ryder just got strung along on an adventure and blunder their way through the game. And none of your mistakes screw you or others over. Ryder is almost like Guybrush, which is why I think the writing’s other issue is that it’s written as a comedy of errors. There are just too many scenes where you can practically hear the canned laugh track, such as PB’s bloody personal quest and Liam’s personal quest, both of which should have ended in the player potentially kicking those characters out of the squad. But because Ryder and friends cannot do anything ‘wrong’, these mistakes have to played for laughs because this is Friends in space. I played Dragon Age Origins and was able to kick people off the team, let a demon go free for money and get an entire town killed by demons. My choices and mistakes had negative outcomes.
Actually, the fact that Sheperd never took shit from anyone whether paragon or renegade, is the first thing that unnerved me about Andromeda. Ryder is a nobody, who acts like a nobody, talks like a nobody, and feels like a nobody.
THIS IS THE ANSWER [SLAM] HERE'S MY WORK! Teacher: .... In my frustration I called The Whole Class a bunch of imbeciles. I forgot you were back in class. I apologise. [Exhale] Yes, ma'am. Thanks.
I'm a passive cardboard standie in real life, so I found Ryder's characterization to be very immersive and refreshing. Sorry, it was meant to be said that Ryder's characterization was found by me to be very immersive and refreshing.
Personally I am a pussy/cardboard irl, so I don't want to play as one or have one as protagonist in other media. I want to escape my daily live, not have it follow me everywhere.
@@Bluehawk2008 o no, human person friend, why would you ask a fellow real person something like that? ha-ha. i am definately a real human person of flesh and proteins like yourself! breathe oxigen and decay, amirite? 😬
Personality system seems like someone in Bioware looked at Alpha Protocol's stance system, and proceeded to not understand why or how they worked the way they did.
This is a very common problems with "pandering" works/stories. There is no passions, no "real" consequences, no creativity, even more there is no logical & common sense plots/paths at times.
I disagree on a bit about Odo and momma Troi. Odo had no problem morphing into stuff in presence of others, true, but in that situation he needed to rest and to do that he needed to go full liquid, which makes him very vulnerable, and that's his whole character arc basically - he is afraid of appearing vulnerable, he is deeply insecure (and justly so taking his circumstance), thus acts like a major asshole most of the time. While yeah that particular episode was on the weaker side of the show, I never thought it was inconsistent with the characters. Not the best example to bring up before ME:A roast, I'd say. Apart from that I agree with everything you said, great analysis as usual.
Yep, I agree. This critique really applies to TNG more than DS9, but DS9 had its share of those boring moments. After season one it's like a different show.
I think TNG was a bit boring in that department because of the setting. I mean, we are talking about professionals who grow to be friends over time, not the other way around and professionalism is someting Star Fleet members are good at, because they are trained to be. You don't want to have a crew were even the cadetts are constantly bickering at people with higher rank and where the higher ranked officers constantly have a go at each other or even vent their anger by _vaporising things with a phaser, while in the middle of a meeting of command level officers._ This might have resulted in a relatively small number of interpersonal conflicts amongst the crew, but _if_ there was a conflict, it usually hit much deeper, _because_ it was so ususual. Voyager on the other hand had plenty of potential for conflict and they quite often used it. And again, it was fitting for _this_ scenario. A ragtag crew of people who once even were enemies, a ship far away from home and resources, constant threats from the outside *and* the inside. And DS9 was somewhere in the middle and can, in my oppinion, not even really be compared with TNG. Because were the Enterprise is a "closed system", Deep Space 9 was not. A lot of internal conflict, let's say between Sisko and Kira were actually caused by something from _outside,_ by someone who was not part of the crew; but triggered conflict from outside. Also, the way TNG worked was generally a "Wagon Trek" with the brave scouts facing the hungry wolf or the moral dilemma of the day and the internal cohesian was just a given. Because when you don't work together in a scenario like that, you will most likely soon have to face severe consequences. Which is what keeps me wondering why those "Discovery" morons with their constant "Dawson's Creek" re-enacting are still alive.
@@Furzkampfbomber Interpersonal conflicts can be interesting for sure, but I find that - on the whole - moral, philosophical, and intellectual quandaries are far more interesting than people not getting along, or some external threat. TNG does this way better than other Star Trek series. Sure the main characters probably won't die, but if they do, it's going to hit harder. And sure they may not have loads of internal conflict that lasts more than an episode (notable exception being Ro and Riker and even that's fairly short-lived), but they lose nothing for it as the character growth outclasses any other series through the afore mentioned moral/philosophical conflicts. Hell, there is even a character whose primary character trait is their desire to grow as a person. I find the conflicts and characters from other series are not very memorable because they have no meaning besides "survive external threats, survive internal threats." It's basically the same argument for KotOR II being infinitely better than KotOR.
To be honest Alec Ryder would have been a better character to be the main protagonist. Playing as an older character would have been a refreshing change.
This video makes me wanna play the trilogy for the 5th time. I got halfway through Andromeda and at some point I just stopped playing it. I don't even remember making that decision. It wasn't any bugs or lack of polish, but it was just so utterly uninteresting that I can't even name a memorable moment in that mess. It makes me realize that Shepard was a big reason for liking Mass Effect -- it had character -- and if you remove character from this kind of game, it becomes just the same old follow the waypoints until you're bored kind of game.
Same. I reinstalled it - - downloaded 40 Gigs - - TWICE and uninstalled both times after 15 minutes of gameplay. I have over 60 hours over 3 Ryders, and only one of my Ryders got to the halfway point in the game.
yes, the game is just bad. it is like they don't know how to make a story interresting anymore. I mean, there we are trying to colonize other worlds and it feels like nothing is happening... nothing... nothing... it feels just like a big... nothing.
This is the only game that bored me to the point I found myself switching off in favour of doing chores... It took me weeks to complete purely because I could only handle it's tedium in very small doses, certainly not going to replay it ever again.
Playing this, I thought Rider was only starting out as a pussy, and that as the game progressed, and you accomplished more and more, she/he would get more confident and less awkward. I don't know how my expectations of Bioware's writing were still that high..
I cant even think of a single thing I enjoyed about this game even the characters I did like at the time sucked because they where one note 1 dimensional traits and nothing else I still think Allistair in origins is one of Bio ware's best characters because he isn't just "Comic relief" he has beliefs and opinions that clash with other opinions he has instead of just being "The good guy" he is also willing to execute mages,or okay with defiling an ancient relic. He has depths and sides to him that vary from situation to situation. instead of being the "Voice of reason" character at every turn
Honestly the only good thing about this game was Jaal and the few actually in-depth scenes we got with the Angara. The whole reveal that they were created by presumably the Remnant was well done and interesting, and Jaal as a character has a decent amount of depth to him. He still isn't the best Bioware NPC by FAR but by Andromeda's standards, he's phenomenal. Which... isn't saying much. The gunplay was an upgrade too, I suppose, though we all know that was largely to push the multiplayer on people...
Quite possibly the worst means to squander an opportunity to tell a great story. The premise couldn't have been better. This game could have been one of the best and most memorable experiences in video game history, like the games before it. Instead it was a politically plagued and incompetently handled project that went south the moment it deployed. A damn shame.
Indeed, as long as the ME3 ending loomed over the series the premise for Andromeda could never be anything but a attempt to continue the franchise without having to address said ending. This doomed Andromeda from the get go as the hoops needed to jump through to make it work already broke the universe it was based in.
I think a prequel would've been amazing or maybe the redemption story of a Mercenary? Even a ME4 direct sequel would've been cool. Driving around the galaxy, trying to mend the scars of war...
If it was politically plagued, we at least would have the opportunity to go "hm you're right, showing up unannounced and demanding the native population give us a place to live WAS a bad idea, we're sorry" but they didn't even have the balls to create any sort of narrative that could be at all criticised. It's all "uwu yes we're the hero, thank you!"
2:05 I'm not going to lie, I didn't even realize the first was using passive voice - like that. I actually thought you meant someone hit "you" with a tree branch when you started to run, as opposed to "you" running into a tree branch. Edit: in the absence of the second statement, the first isn't just passive, it's ambiguous.
The passive voice can be useful for politicians and it's ok when you want to bluff your way through school work but it's generally very bad for any creative undertaking.
The modern "education" system. Don't teach reading and writing, no, teach FEELINGS and INCLUSION. Not ragging you man, but if you do any job that requires writing, you quickly get taught the diff between active and passive voice, even in scientific writing. NO PASSIVE VOICE, and also, never be a passive doormat pussy.
@@BooDamnHoo Bullshit. Passive voice has an important role to play. Just because people abuse it doesn't mean we should just stop using it. Let me rephrase the above example: I started running only to be hit by a tree branch. In the absence of the second statement it's very clear what we mean. The narrator started to run and was shorty hit by a branch. Especially if we continue with something like: I hurriedly stood up, desperate to discover the identity of my unseen attacker...only to see the monkey, grinning. Passive has its place. But going as far as saying that one should never make use of the passive voice? That is going too far.
Mass Effect 2 realised how pointless the Mako was and at least that Malo had weapons so you didn't need to hop out every time someone fired a pistol at you.
Shepard wouldn't take shit from anyone. But then again, these people tried to create a character that is SO NOT SHEPARD, that they actually forgot that they are supposed to create proper one, if they ever knew how to, in the first place. Moral of the story: never focus on bullshit too much.
Serafion Agrippa yea they played it safe but at least as inquisitor you could actively grow into the role of a badass commander of a great fighting force.
16:57 I believe the (entirely skipped over) implication was that the Andromeda Initiative only picked that place because the ancient Adromedans had already terraformed so many worlds in that area; which they only saw because of that Geth FTL telescope. And turning the terraforming devices back on was more because the evil space energy cloud (forget what it was called) was causing them to malfunction.
After finishing TellTale’s Batman game just recently I came to a realization, the choices in andromeda aren’t just weak because they don’t show the effects, the original game was very similar, there was no reason to not for example ensure Kirrahe survives Virmire until the third game, it’s that there’s no implications, not to mention a lack of diverging paths of scenes, with the exception of some of the major quests to produce Outposts, what is the implication of killing or capturing Knight? Very little, they were a fringe group, comparing to a similar situation in Call if Duty: Black Ops 2, what’s is the implication of killing or capturing Menendez? Well in fact the game even shows you, and if it didn’t it would still tell you, his last line before you blow his brains out, if you do, is ‘Martyr me, for Cordis Die’ (the revolutionary organization he founded) and if you do blow his brains out, that’s what happens, Knight doesn’t have this, she’s just cut from anywhere and everywhere, no one mentions her after your decision to drop or drag her, the outpost prerequisite quests are much better and ask more questions, the power play of Kadara, while hilarious in its climatic scene in terms of how shit it is, brings different ideas to the table that are far more interesting that choice felt meaningful even if I don’t see anything too extravagant in terms of change
I enjoyed Andromeda, but this is the best critique video I've seen. If story and characterization had been stronger, the janky animations would have been less of an issue.
Andromeda was ok for one play through. I tried to play it again with a new character but quickly found that there was absolutely nothing interesting left. That's new in the Mass Effect series.
I thought that if we chose military or scientist outposts that maybe it would change how other races saw you. Like if you were an invading military force that could be pretty cool. But nope this game was shit
Logically and in reality as humans we would have set up a military outpost if other races existed out there with hostile intent. But SJW Bioware dev team are anti military and anti masculine male.
@@sparhawk1228 I mean, I wouldn't go that far lol. It makes sense that a colonisation effort made primarily to escape the Reapers would be primarily focused on science and engineering since that would very quickly set up the basis for viable colonies. The issue is that the choice does not matter beyond how much shit Addison gives you about it afterwards. All things considered, both Ryders options are quite masculine in terms of the little character development we got being "I like to start shit and I like guns" which aren't typically feminine traits. The issue is that your choices about the game world don't matter and your choices through Ryder do NOTHING to shape their personality.
Finally a video that hits the nail on the head. For all the flak that this game took for the facial animations, the glitches and the 'political correctness' BS, the lack of interesting things to do, and worse, lack of interesting end goals to achieve was what doomed the game for me. It felt like a combination of the worst PvE aspects of WoW (inconsequential fetch/kill/find random stuff sidequests, uneventful 'exploration', grinding, 'mobs' that are literally standing still or moving very slowly and can be easily avoided, etc... and the few mission hubs felt lifeless and not remotely the home of anyone, just places with people standing on them. But by far the worst was combination of an incredibly dull storyline and its ****** vaults, a milktoast hero I couldn't care less about, a stupid main antagonist that was laughable to say the least, and the worst anticlimactic conclusion to an RPG, both in level design and storytelling that I've seen in many years. Everything else is just beating on a dead horse....
I'm starting to think people should put the written name on screen of whoever they're talking about, particularly after yesterday hearing someone mispronounce Albert Foucault as "Albert Faux-cul".
A problem in Star Trek? Bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish Thats the way we do things, lad, we're making shit up as we wish The Klingons and the Romulans pose no threat to us 'Cause if we find we're in a bind we just make some shit up
No no no. We have to put some dylythium crystals in the in the energy core relay matrix. Someone get in the Jeffries tube and find intersection J-52. There's a random box there, with a convenient countdown timer on it. It's super dangerous, so one of the most important officers on the ship should probably go do it. The Captain, maybe...
Great essay, as I've come to expect from Strat Edgy productions. One minor disagreement... A lot of nerds - including myself - have the exact opposite tastes to the OP when it comes to Star Trek. I hated most episodes that focused on two characters bitching about each other. It's the politics and intrigue that I find the most fascinating. Episodes like "Balance of Terror" from TOS or "In the Pale Moonlight" from DS9. One of the lead writers from Star Trek TNG described how he loved eschewing 'soap opera plots' in favor of portraying a psychologically healthy crew that worked together smoothly. (I can hunt down the video if anyone wants it.)
I hoped andromeda would be happening after the original trilogy (it is not so difficult to do) with "the legend of the Shepard" almost turned into a religion, all the species going to andromeda with an actual good reason to do so, and all the story being about "what happens when we are the reapers"
Andromeda's premise is brilliant, but as a game it's just outright dull. Even the combat lacks anything really interesting other than charge & cloak. "Passive" is right. It's a none entity.
I mean, the premise is at least slightly inconsistent with previously established lore, but it's not bad by itself. Without the Mass Effect name attached to it, it could've been a great new sci-fi IP. The problem is that it was basically put together with an inexperienced team with not enough time to actually think things through. It was a corporate project led by completely delusional paper pushers that just wanted to bank in on the Mass Effect name.
I recall being dreamy of having mass effect character interactions mixed in with colony/city building, exploring brand new space and technology and alien and all that. It all seemed perfect. Too perfect, I suppose.
What is interesting in the setting: - New galaxy, completely alien to the explorers so likely very incompatible for them (undercut by finding same stuff as in our galaxy - aliens which are basically almost races of humans), - Entire fleet is just a small group, how can they deal if they arrive at even a single fully industrialized planet with their thousands to their billions (just lost in translation, that puny fleet is somehow immediately becomes a power in relation to war with Ket), - Frontier feel, space faring civ needs so much and you only have your ships to start with, so much effort and organization is ahead (forget that, terraformers are just waiting in the ground for player to push a button).
Andromeda is a game written and developed by what amounts to a team of wet blankets. Not entirely their fault, the project was too big, the team too inexperienced, and the label 'Mass Effect' had too much hype associated with it for them to have matched the previous games barring some kind of miracle.
O. The. Facial. Animation. Still. Hurts. Me. So. Badly. Better writing would absolutely be necessary to make it worthwhile. However, no matter what the dialogue choices, plotlines, character motivations, this is a heavily visual medium and the creepy, uncanny animations overshadow everything else to the extent that even with the best story it would not feel right.... And also the voice acting.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion. Mine's the complete opposite: this game could have had the best graphics, facial animations and voice overs in the market and it would have made absolutely no difference to me. It would still have been one of the most disappointing games I've played in the last 5 years or more. I wholeheartledly agree with the points made in this video: this game felt like everything was phoned in... the design of the side missions, the new races that I couldn't care less about, the dialogs, the exploration, the main story line, the stupid vaults, the overall sense of mediocrity in anything related to the creativity necessary to pull off a project like this. The difference between playing ME 2/3 and this... thing was more or less the difference between feeling immersed in an epic interactive story, and feeling like you're a little kid being bored to death by his parent, who's desperately trying to make up a shitty bedtime story on the fly.
Well said Guillermo St ! I do agree with the points in the video and what you are saying about the plot elements. I simply meant that even with better writing they would need to have fixed the animations and acting in order for the game not to feel so... odd? Empty? Anyway, nice reply! The game was a serious disappointment. I edited my post a bit to try to clarify.
Quarian Ark. But yea I agree that shit was definitely shoehorned in. It shows a glaring intent, they intended to recreate Mass Effect in Andromeda, by giving themselves a way of moving as many if not all the milky way races to Andromeda, & completely ignore the trilogy by the clusterfuck way they ended it. They wrote themselves into a wall & have no way to undo that or proceed from it without a complete and utter retcon of ME3.
I always believed that rpgs should be like choose your own adventure books. Each choice shifting the story, leading to a different outcome. I think dragon age origins does this well. For every subplot, you make big choices and they have unique consequences. Do you side with the elves? Side with the spirit and set her free? Or savagely destroy the elves? The consequences of the choices change who supports you in the last battle and how your companions feel about you. And it also makes it interesting! But when there’s fake choices, like the one in andromeda, it just feels like your reading a linear book from beginning to end, and that’s fine, but that’s not why I play rpgs. If it wanted to be a game that had a linear plot it should have committed to that, developed a really complex main character, and had us play them. Instead, it gave us false hope of character creation, when in actuality we got a floppy puppet man who says dumb things without us being able to control them.
Just discovered your channel, first view. Worth a sub. I am really digging this video essay style of content on various media topics that I either agree with, change my mind on or learn about.
I always hated Star Trek. And loved Mass Effect 1 and 2, even 3 (who didn`t feel like a deity when his Shepard jumps out the boogey, right in front of a Reaper, and says "Sync the entire space fleets weaponry up to my laser and I`ll paint the weak spot, I`m fucking this thing up right here and right now!") Andromeda? Jesus christ...
😂 That’s what I told my brother when he ask me how it was playing Andromeda. I told him, “Only if you like playing as a push-over pussy.” I didn’t finish the game.
honestly the thing that kinda pissed me off with this game is the utter lack of a actual defense fleet for andromeda because "reasons" anybody else, and for ryder his attitude was annoying vs. shep at least at least have him/her grow a frelling backbone
Possible troubleshooting Dialogue: Ryder has the 4 personality types but the one(s) you pick most often will be referenced by the people that know you and might even influence non-optional dialogue or combat quips. Ryder speaks with the authority that he/she has been granted but uncertainty in some situations early on. If you find this comment and scroll through others, you'll see other people pitching the very valid idea to make Ryder a panzy at first or at least a fish out of water who isn't used to this level of responsibility but grows into the role of pathfinder over time. The dialogue choices stick around but are delivered with more confidence as Ryder experiences more on his/her journey. Gameplay: ME:2 with verticality and ME:3 weapon choices (balance weight with ability cooldowns/stamina) Story: They straight up retconned the Krogan character who saw both the first contact war AND the genophage. He doesn't harbor ill will towards anyone and just bitches about being old instead of dead. If you're gonna write an entire section of lore around genocide and warfare, even addressing it in other titles, why in the crispy crunchy Kentucky-fried fuck would you just shrug that off later on? The Krogan on the journey to Andromeda would still be sterile from the genophage meaning they're likely to die off in Andromeda making they're entire journey pointless in the first place. Have some balls, say the bad shit that happened before actually happened and at least address it in conversation instead of 2 throw away lines about your entire race having fewer odds of survival than a chimp on the moon. TL;DR: watch the video TL:DW: fuck EA
The correct way to play first three games is to hack paragon and renegade meters so that you can pick any option you want. Save someone here, bash someone's face in there, then pick a neutral option without being afraid to lose points, like that.
They could have made some of these missions take away from the viability, meaning you have to choose which are better for you, or better for the colony
Hard stop. That's one of my most memorable conflicts in DS9. My boy Brodo has some seriously thin skin when it comes to displaying inadequacy and vulnerability with his true self. The dude is body dysmorphia personified. He'd have Chadded up a 13 inch magnum dong for Kira, but at the end of they day he knows he's just a puddle of goo pretending to be a man. Displaying that level of vulnerability to anyone when you've been alone for so long and don't even know who you are isn't easy for the guy who has to regularly bounce drunk Nossicans off the Promenade for a living.
I've always heard about passive tense and passive actions for character and how active is almost always better, but I never thought of passive "writing" on a story-scale. Interesting food for thought!
I tried playing a Ryder who embodied the essence of a vanguard. In combat, she zoomed towards things and punched them in the face. In dialog, I wanted her to zoom towards conflict and punch it in the face, with the downside being screwing things up due to brashness. In my mind, the entire reason Ryder went on the initiative was to zoom towards an entire galaxy and punch it in the face. My ideal Ryder was someone who lived to complete the biggest, longest, most badass zoom-and-punch in human history. All of the "I'm unsure of myself" scenes really put a damper on that notion.
You probably don't remember the episode of DS9 in particular, but even though Odo's shy about his fluid form and finds dealing with Troi's mother an awkward situation, that's not why he holds onto his solid form longer than usual. In the episode the elevator the two of them are in gets stuck, and the way Cardassian elevators are designed means that if he were to revert to a fluid form without a container, he'd leak out of the bottom and get electrocuted on the exposed power conduits underneath (Cardassians apparently don't have an OSHA equivalent). Him holding onto solid form when he'd normally 'sleep' in fluid form isn't out of politeness or sociality; it was literally a matter of life and death.
I did everything there was to do in this game and don't recall a single stand out moment. I had to force myself to beat this game because it carried the Mass Effect title and I had already spent my cash. It was a painful experience
The first sentence is more interesting. To be "hit by a tree branch" means that something swung the tree branch at the speaker. There's more drama. The second sentence resolves all the drama and just reveals the speaker as a klutz.
there were more choices then just Paragon and Renegade in the Mass effect 1 and 2, there were decisions and actions that if taken or not taken would ultimately change not only the ending but also the build up to the ending.
Speaking of flipping switches, that's also how the ending plays out.
You don't really fight the Archon, you fight a miniboss (that apparently is in every planet), and you don't even kill him.
You flip the switch, and that does him in.
Its so pathetic, lacking in any sort of emotion weight.
I laugh when people say that Mass Effect Andromeda was as good as the original series, because there's nothing there.
A hollow husk that EA is now inhabiting, parading itself as Mass Effect.
TL;DR, fuck this game.
The language in this game gives the impression that the writers grew up on buffy/whedon, then moved on to CW shows to pass time, and then spent the rest of their days on tumblr.
I get you i do...and im not saying andromeda is as good as the original, god no. But i am willing to say that in all. Its bot a bad game. I enjoyed it for what it is.
You mean like how Shepard didn't defeat Sovereign but instead got a mini-boss in Saren? Or how Shepard never even faced the main antagonist of ME2, but instead got a miniboss in the human reaper? You unplugged it the end. How about how Shepard defeated the reapers... No wait, you have the option to just turn off their switch.
@@tigeroix9759 I'm so glad you just pulled those examples without any context. Oh yeah, sure, you fought Saren, but ultimately he's the evil foil to Shepard. Your character is the antithesis to Saren just giving up and succumbing to the Reaper threat. That's why when you convince him to shoot himself either as paragon or renegade you got some emotion out of it. The whole journey led to that point, to show him he's wrong. And the robotic husk of Saren is an excellent final boss. I think I can agree with you on some extent that you don't really destroy Harbringer, instead you fight the Human Reaper, but it was super cathartic to just shoot him down everytime he says "ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL." And I totally disagree with your conclusion regarding the ending of Mass Effect 3 - choosing between three switches was why people hated the ending.
@@idleeidolon I think that's an insult to Buffy broski :))). I think they got the Buffy vibe, but not what made certain episodes great.
*_If I had a nickel for every Renegade option this game needed..._*
I know. People probably would've given slightly more positive feedback if we could at least tackle all the shitty characters.
This came to mind when i played it and there was some sort of protest because i chose military outposts. Some orange hair fruitcake was upset because his little demands weren't met, no renegade to punch, no renegade to tell him to run back to mom and dad, nothing. Can't throw trash like Liam Kosta out the airlock either, or Cora whos whole purpose was identify as an asari, piss poor game in the best light.
If this game had renegade choices I would picked every single one. Almost every character in this game sucks so I feel like I really wouldn't care what they think of me helping the archon destroy the angara n everybody else.. Fuck all of them.
@@SoftExo I think we all know what kind of devs made the game, and why there were no renegade options for any of the situations you described, it would have been a hate crime and we can't have those in our progressive video games.
@@TheThingInMySink Yep. No talent, no discipline, not hired on merit, political ideologues. Oh Bioware, how the mighty have fallen.
The problem with Ryder isn't that they're a doormat. It makes sense that a young character wouldn't be confident. The problem is there's no growth in the character. The story of an inexperienced person growing into a role thrust upon them would have been an interesting and different take on Mass Effect. Shame the game is unwilling to do anything ambitious.
Really? I felt like there was one. Like the last couple of story missions try very hard to make Ryder into a badass his dad was. He becomes way more decisive, his crew listens to him and he basically takes on entire armies by himself. During this one game Ryder definitely had more character development than Shephard throughout the whole trilogy. The Shephard you get at the very beginning of ME 1 is the very same Shephard you have at the very end of ME 3. I'm not saying it's bad, he's a great character, but still ME:A captured the whole feeling of "zero to hero" pretty good.
pretty good is subjective
@@kolosmenus Going from 0 to 100 in "the last couple of missions" is not character development. That's lazy writing.
It's almost as if they realised too late their mistake and kind tacked it on the end in a rush.
@@kolosmenus ryder is definitely one of the more generic protags I've played. Thats not too bad i itself but generic plus cringey dialogue is too much for me.
"It's fun to play as someone with low self-esteem, isn't it?" This line cracked me up so bad :D
The council: i dont trust you
Shepard: *let the geth destroy them then proceed to create human led council
Shepard: I am the council *renegade laugh
It sucks we can't play a renegade now because it would not be "politically correct".
@Shawn Rasmussen In the Witcher 3 Geralt is a natural asshole who pisses off everybody, Horizon Zero Dawn has plenty of options to kill people or tell people to fuck off, and in skyrim, you can commit cannibalism. So Yeah there's no excuse.
Has there ever been a ruling "Council" in the history of gaming that hasn't deserved a stomp kick directly into the line of fire in a conflict their own idiocy created?
@@wormwood861 Hmmm... Lemme think...
The Blue Chamber Collective in Outward is not completely idiotic. But they enforce blood prices on entire lineages for the actions of individuals, so they are pathetic.
I need to keep thinking, it seems...
What about... Erm... Ahem... C'mon, there has to be one... One!
The moot in Skyri... No, those are puppets meant to elect a king that already bosses them around.
There has to be one...
I give up.
The concept of "Council" was invented to slow down the ability to take decision of defeated countries so that the winner can annex them over time because he seem more competent. Thus a Council is bound to make huge mistakes caused by either hydra phenomenom or lack of action when the time was right.
Imagine Ryder trying to stop Jack and Miranda fight in the Normandy...He would get his ass kicked lol.
and then Shepard comes in .. office is trashed to shit and all and he just says " How about you two just kiss and get it over with?!" Turnes around and leave... god i miss the citadel dlc :-(
Ofc lol, Ryder is a newb, shepherd's a war vet
@@xyr3s Nope. Ryder is just the new age equivalent of a SJW hero.
Alec Ryder would be made a better main character.
Miranda would be in charge
I attempted to role-play Ryder as a logical, no-nonsense, follows-in-Dad's-footsteps kind of character. I ended up having to gel this with the caveat "who is always open to listen to friends" when it was obvious that Ryder was more ship's counselor than captain. This was tolerable until it came to certain personal quests. The game let me be (mildly) peeved at PB when she nearly got us stranded on an unstable planet. However, it would not let me be even remotely upset with Liam who did something that by all logic should have gotten him court-martialed. And kicked off my squad. And probably put back in a stasis pod indefinitely.
The retcon of Anders in DA2 arguably made more sense. You at least got to dish out whatever passed for justice in the end and be mad about it.
I learned that I could have been content if the entirety of Andromeda dealt with getting a human foothold on Kadara. The Angarans, the mutineers, raiders, drug cartel underground, a savage but somewhat livable biome...it could have had that grim atmosphere that DA2 had tried to aim for. You're far from home, ill equipped, and it shouldn't matter what your dad's job was. You're out of your depth no matter how you slice it, and there should be a language barrier.
Legion had more personality.
I dont even remember what liam did but i know it was dumb as fuck but i cared so little just dont remember. As far as PB goes i wasn't pissed at her but i do wish there had been an option to tell her she was going to make this up to me with lots of biotic Powers and zero gravity if you know what I mean.
What did Liam do again? I doubt it was so bad if I don't remember.
@@furyberserk He wanted the Initiative and Angarans to get along so badly, he gave people who were basically strangers Nexus navpoints and data--jeopardizing the entire project and every person involved if any of that fell into the wrong hands. This very nearly happens because his contact was kidnapped by pirates.
@@furyberserk it might be more of a matter of just how forgettable liam was even when i played the game i keep forgetting he existed
It's funny, people liked Shepard because he/she is a hardass. Even paragon Shepard is tough as nails. Then they give us this wuss and expect us to be interested.
they tried to make a soyboy as the hero.
Make them endearing and make them grow as characters, then yeah, you can get people interested.
But that requires good writing.
Its quite an interesting development to have a soyboy character change and become a hardass overtime through player choice, or continue to be a wahmen respecting cuck. Sad that Andromeda doesn't give us that choice...
@@puffer_frog I think Far Cry 3 is a good example of a character who starts off as a wimpy skinny rich boy and by the end is a drug-crazed psychopath who picks his teeth with human shinbones.
@@sebastianlacroix5871 it was great about that. The first 2/3rds building up, and the last 3rd as a bona fide action movie hero. Still my favorite of the post 2 games by far.
Ryder is the kind of character that would have existed in the previous games as a joke, you know, the kind of person you'd be tempted to bully in game, the kind of person even a full paragon or bust Shepard would throw out of a window.
at about 10:50 : I think that was the entire reason they changed the "Paragon/Renegade" system to this, it reduced the amount of work they had to do to change a character's reactions according to what Ryder said. Whether it was Emotional, Logical, or Casual, the person would, in the end, pretty much react the same damn way, whereas Paragon and Renegade usually produced very different reactions to Shepard.
Chup Smith this line of thinking is destroyed by the development and play out of mass effect 3, they just make 2 lines of asshole and not, with the exact same lines in response multiple times, to make 4 personalities is more difficult than to make 2, the work reduction was not allowing full personality choices in all conversations, but still required more work
On the subject of passive storytelling, I think there's one big thing that warrants mention, and that's SAM. I've said it once, and I'll say it again: SAM is the real hero of Mass Effect Andromeda. SAM can do EVERYTHING and it solves EVERY problem you come across. The Pathfinder is made out to be this legendary superman who will deliver everyone from evil, but the only thing the Pathfinder, and Ryder by extension, has that no one else does is an all-knowing AI lodged in their brain. And with Ryder being such a passive, insecure, inexperienced little pussy who only got the job because of daddy, it just goes to show that the only purpose Ryder serves for the Initiative is to be a walking antenna to get SAM wherever it needs to be, then nut up and shut up and do what the machine says. Ryder's qualifications don't matter because Ryder honestly has NO qualifications and doesn't develop any by the end, aside from being very good at killing. If SAM could fit inside a tubeworm, IT could have been a Pathfinder too.
This so much. I find it especially funny because the title of the Andromeda Protag is so unfitting. Pathfinder implies some kind of peaceful explorer, while Ryder is an unstoppable killing machine to get SAM where it needs to go and nothing more. Dumb muscle in essence.
InvertedWIng it would actually be really cool if you played as the ai and you can inhabit people’s body.
@@midshipman8654 Now there's an idea for a game!
Jackson Almodobar Kinda reminds me of another highly criticized game... Xcom the bureau declassified.
Well wouldn't that be actually good drama in a next game.
- Player picks professional
Ryder: "I wish I was a loofah"
I was fairly ok with Ryder being a weakling push-over. I thought that it would be interesting to see him slowly develop from a wimpy kid way over his head to a seasoned leader. I'm still waiting for this development.
I think part of the problem was that Ryder and friends were never allowed to be wrong, in regards to morality; any sort of wrong-hood was generally either a wrong-hood by mistake, misunderstanding or played for comedy. There were not enough times where you could actively do something that would benefit yourself at the expense of others, or even show the hint of an agenda outside of what you’re given. Ryder just got strung along on an adventure and blunder their way through the game. And none of your mistakes screw you or others over.
Ryder is almost like Guybrush, which is why I think the writing’s other issue is that it’s written as a comedy of errors. There are just too many scenes where you can practically hear the canned laugh track, such as PB’s bloody personal quest and Liam’s personal quest, both of which should have ended in the player potentially kicking those characters out of the squad. But because Ryder and friends cannot do anything ‘wrong’, these mistakes have to played for laughs because this is Friends in space. I played Dragon Age Origins and was able to kick people off the team, let a demon go free for money and get an entire town killed by demons. My choices and mistakes had negative outcomes.
It's never too late to hate on Andromeda. It's evergreen.
Yeah, that disrespect from Addison would have gotten a backhand from my Femshep. XD
Mine would rip out her guts with her biotics.
@@adeptdamage3669 same 😂
Actually, the fact that Sheperd never took shit from anyone whether paragon or renegade, is the first thing that unnerved me about Andromeda. Ryder is a nobody, who acts like a nobody, talks like a nobody, and feels like a nobody.
"If God exists then why do you science?" I...what is that, a gotcha? That's dumb.
Why is it dumb? Why waste your life time learning something that death itself will naturally reveal? And you will be dead for eternity.
@@yzfool6639 because it's useful? And it's exciting to learn, believing in God gives it meaning.
@@forgetfulstranger so you can't find meaning unless its for the sake of god?
“My face is tired” is the best line in the game as it perfectly encapsulates the experience.
Dang, your plot idea would've actually made for a really interesting game with lots of moral and survival dilemmas.
You know, its possible to be emotional AND rational. At the same time. which is hilarious.
THIS IS THE ANSWER
[SLAM]
HERE'S MY WORK!
Teacher: .... In my frustration I called The Whole Class a bunch of imbeciles. I forgot you were back in class. I apologise.
[Exhale] Yes, ma'am. Thanks.
Joker...
I'm a passive cardboard standie in real life, so I found Ryder's characterization to be very immersive and refreshing.
Sorry, it was meant to be said that Ryder's characterization was found by me to be very immersive and refreshing.
Ryder acted in a way, that could be perceived, to be a bit on the swishy side.
Ryder acts like a pussy.
Personally I am a pussy/cardboard irl, so I don't want to play as one or have one as protagonist in other media. I want to escape my daily live, not have it follow me everywhere.
Ha-ha, i know that's not true because a real-life cardboard standie person always says "orange man bad" and "diversity is our strenght"
r u a Russian bot?
@@Bluehawk2008
o no, human person friend, why would you ask a fellow real person something like that? ha-ha. i am definately a real human person of flesh and proteins like yourself! breathe oxigen and decay, amirite? 😬
Personality system seems like someone in Bioware looked at Alpha Protocol's stance system, and proceeded to not understand why or how they worked the way they did.
This is a very common problems with "pandering" works/stories. There is no passions, no "real" consequences, no creativity, even more there is no logical & common sense plots/paths at times.
I disagree on a bit about Odo and momma Troi. Odo had no problem morphing into stuff in presence of others, true, but in that situation he needed to rest and to do that he needed to go full liquid, which makes him very vulnerable, and that's his whole character arc basically - he is afraid of appearing vulnerable, he is deeply insecure (and justly so taking his circumstance), thus acts like a major asshole most of the time. While yeah that particular episode was on the weaker side of the show, I never thought it was inconsistent with the characters. Not the best example to bring up before ME:A roast, I'd say.
Apart from that I agree with everything you said, great analysis as usual.
THANK YOU
How the hell do you think Odo was a major asshole most of the time?
Deep Space 9 is the best star trek though
Kira and Sisko butted heads constantly in the beginning
Yep, I agree. This critique really applies to TNG more than DS9, but DS9 had its share of those boring moments. After season one it's like a different show.
@@StratEdgyProductions Which itself is closer to Babylon 5... One of better Sci-Fi TV shows I say.
@@38procentkrytyk I want whatever drugs you all have. TNG is easily the best.
I think TNG was a bit boring in that department because of the setting. I mean, we are talking about professionals who grow to be friends over time, not the other way around and professionalism is someting Star Fleet members are good at, because they are trained to be.
You don't want to have a crew were even the cadetts are constantly bickering at people with higher rank and where the higher ranked officers constantly have a go at each other or even vent their anger by _vaporising things with a phaser, while in the middle of a meeting of command level officers._
This might have resulted in a relatively small number of interpersonal conflicts amongst the crew, but _if_ there was a conflict, it usually hit much deeper, _because_ it was so ususual.
Voyager on the other hand had plenty of potential for conflict and they quite often used it. And again, it was fitting for _this_ scenario. A ragtag crew of people who once even were enemies, a ship far away from home and resources, constant threats from the outside *and* the inside.
And DS9 was somewhere in the middle and can, in my oppinion, not even really be compared with TNG. Because were the Enterprise is a "closed system", Deep Space 9 was not. A lot of internal conflict, let's say between Sisko and Kira were actually caused by something from _outside,_ by someone who was not part of the crew; but triggered conflict from outside.
Also, the way TNG worked was generally a "Wagon Trek" with the brave scouts facing the hungry wolf or the moral dilemma of the day and the internal cohesian was just a given. Because when you don't work together in a scenario like that, you will most likely soon have to face severe consequences.
Which is what keeps me wondering why those "Discovery" morons with their constant "Dawson's Creek" re-enacting are still alive.
@@Furzkampfbomber Interpersonal conflicts can be interesting for sure, but I find that - on the whole - moral, philosophical, and intellectual quandaries are far more interesting than people not getting along, or some external threat. TNG does this way better than other Star Trek series. Sure the main characters probably won't die, but if they do, it's going to hit harder. And sure they may not have loads of internal conflict that lasts more than an episode (notable exception being Ro and Riker and even that's fairly short-lived), but they lose nothing for it as the character growth outclasses any other series through the afore mentioned moral/philosophical conflicts. Hell, there is even a character whose primary character trait is their desire to grow as a person. I find the conflicts and characters from other series are not very memorable because they have no meaning besides "survive external threats, survive internal threats."
It's basically the same argument for KotOR II being infinitely better than KotOR.
To be honest Alec Ryder would have been a better character to be the main protagonist. Playing as an older character would have been a refreshing change.
This video makes me wanna play the trilogy for the 5th time. I got halfway through Andromeda and at some point I just stopped playing it. I don't even remember making that decision. It wasn't any bugs or lack of polish, but it was just so utterly uninteresting that I can't even name a memorable moment in that mess. It makes me realize that Shepard was a big reason for liking Mass Effect -- it had character -- and if you remove character from this kind of game, it becomes just the same old follow the waypoints until you're bored kind of game.
9:11 "....Why my face don't trust you. Forgive me. Forgive Andromeda."
Why I must purge you. DESTROY! DESTROY!
I love your sniveling impression of Ryder. It’s so painfully spot-on!
22:53 three halves?
That's also 6 quarters. Bet you didn't know that
I caught that too, yet oddly enough saying "half" instead of "portion" sounds acceptable. Perhaps it only works with 3 portions.
@@I_am_a_cat_ oh my god :O
I didn't know markus from Detroit become human was in this game
Havent been able to bring myself to finish this game its so shite.
I hadn't played since July... I just got back to it like three days ago.
Same. I reinstalled it - - downloaded 40 Gigs - - TWICE and uninstalled both times after 15 minutes of gameplay. I have over 60 hours over 3 Ryders, and only one of my Ryders got to the halfway point in the game.
Lol me too!
yes, the game is just bad. it is like they don't know how to make a story interresting anymore. I mean, there we are trying to colonize other worlds and it feels like nothing is happening... nothing... nothing... it feels just like a big... nothing.
This is the only game that bored me to the point I found myself switching off in favour of doing chores... It took me weeks to complete purely because I could only handle it's tedium in very small doses, certainly not going to replay it ever again.
Playing this, I thought Rider was only starting out as a pussy, and that as the game progressed, and you accomplished more and more, she/he would get more confident and less awkward.
I don't know how my expectations of Bioware's writing were still that high..
"Ryder is a pussy" - Finally someone saying the truth :D
I cant even think of a single thing I enjoyed about this game even the characters I did like at the time sucked because they where one note 1 dimensional traits and nothing else I still think Allistair in origins is one of Bio ware's best characters because he isn't just "Comic relief" he has beliefs and opinions that clash with other opinions he has instead of just being "The good guy" he is also willing to execute mages,or okay with defiling an ancient relic. He has depths and sides to him that vary from situation to situation. instead of being the "Voice of reason" character at every turn
Honestly the only good thing about this game was Jaal and the few actually in-depth scenes we got with the Angara. The whole reveal that they were created by presumably the Remnant was well done and interesting, and Jaal as a character has a decent amount of depth to him. He still isn't the best Bioware NPC by FAR but by Andromeda's standards, he's phenomenal. Which... isn't saying much.
The gunplay was an upgrade too, I suppose, though we all know that was largely to push the multiplayer on people...
Quite possibly the worst means to squander an opportunity to tell a great story. The premise couldn't have been better. This game could have been one of the best and most memorable experiences in video game history, like the games before it. Instead it was a politically plagued and incompetently handled project that went south the moment it deployed. A damn shame.
Indeed, as long as the ME3 ending loomed over the series the premise for Andromeda could never be anything but a attempt to continue the franchise without having to address said ending. This doomed Andromeda from the get go as the hoops needed to jump through to make it work already broke the universe it was based in.
@@TheTriforceDragon This is sadly true.
I think a prequel would've been amazing or maybe the redemption story of a Mercenary? Even a ME4 direct sequel would've been cool. Driving around the galaxy, trying to mend the scars of war...
If it was politically plagued, we at least would have the opportunity to go "hm you're right, showing up unannounced and demanding the native population give us a place to live WAS a bad idea, we're sorry" but they didn't even have the balls to create any sort of narrative that could be at all criticised. It's all "uwu yes we're the hero, thank you!"
2:05 I'm not going to lie, I didn't even realize the first was using passive voice - like that. I actually thought you meant someone hit "you" with a tree branch when you started to run, as opposed to "you" running into a tree branch.
Edit: in the absence of the second statement, the first isn't just passive, it's ambiguous.
Yerp. One of the biggest issues with a beginner's writing is the passive voice because it feels wrong to read and is too ambiguous.
The passive voice can be useful for politicians and it's ok when you want to bluff your way through school work but it's generally very bad for any creative undertaking.
The modern "education" system. Don't teach reading and writing, no, teach FEELINGS and INCLUSION. Not ragging you man, but if you do any job that requires writing, you quickly get taught the diff between active and passive voice, even in scientific writing. NO PASSIVE VOICE, and also, never be a passive doormat pussy.
@@harryradley Mistakes were made.
@@BooDamnHoo Bullshit. Passive voice has an important role to play. Just because people abuse it doesn't mean we should just stop using it. Let me rephrase the above example:
I started running only to be hit by a tree branch.
In the absence of the second statement it's very clear what we mean. The narrator started to run and was shorty hit by a branch. Especially if we continue with something like:
I hurriedly stood up, desperate to discover the identity of my unseen attacker...only to see the monkey, grinning.
Passive has its place. But going as far as saying that one should never make use of the passive voice? That is going too far.
Mass Effect 2 realised how pointless the Mako was and at least that Malo had weapons so you didn't need to hop out every time someone fired a pistol at you.
That is some fiiiiiiiiiine handshaking going on in the beginning.
Shepard wouldn't take shit from anyone. But then again, these people tried to create a character that is SO NOT SHEPARD, that they actually forgot that they are supposed to create proper one, if they ever knew how to, in the first place. Moral of the story: never focus on bullshit too much.
Fanfiction in essay form doesn't sound too bad to display fanfiction in videogame form
Bioware games are total hugboxes now... DAI and MEA play it so safe, that you don't feel anything when playing them.
Serafion Agrippa yea they played it safe but at least as inquisitor you could actively grow into the role of a badass commander of a great fighting force.
16:57 I believe the (entirely skipped over) implication was that the Andromeda Initiative only picked that place because the ancient Adromedans had already terraformed so many worlds in that area; which they only saw because of that Geth FTL telescope. And turning the terraforming devices back on was more because the evil space energy cloud (forget what it was called) was causing them to malfunction.
After finishing TellTale’s Batman game just recently I came to a realization, the choices in andromeda aren’t just weak because they don’t show the effects, the original game was very similar, there was no reason to not for example ensure Kirrahe survives Virmire until the third game, it’s that there’s no implications, not to mention a lack of diverging paths of scenes, with the exception of some of the major quests to produce Outposts, what is the implication of killing or capturing Knight? Very little, they were a fringe group, comparing to a similar situation in Call if Duty: Black Ops 2, what’s is the implication of killing or capturing Menendez? Well in fact the game even shows you, and if it didn’t it would still tell you, his last line before you blow his brains out, if you do, is ‘Martyr me, for Cordis Die’ (the revolutionary organization he founded) and if you do blow his brains out, that’s what happens, Knight doesn’t have this, she’s just cut from anywhere and everywhere, no one mentions her after your decision to drop or drag her, the outpost prerequisite quests are much better and ask more questions, the power play of Kadara, while hilarious in its climatic scene in terms of how shit it is, brings different ideas to the table that are far more interesting that choice felt meaningful even if I don’t see anything too extravagant in terms of change
I enjoyed Andromeda, but this is the best critique video I've seen. If story and characterization had been stronger, the janky animations would have been less of an issue.
Andromeda was ok for one play through. I tried to play it again with a new character but quickly found that there was absolutely nothing interesting left. That's new in the Mass Effect series.
This and the writing of ME:A just makes me want to play ME2.
Is it bette rthan 1? Cos I tried playing 1 and its very bad. Tedius gameplay tedius story> I can't see 2 being any better.
@@kudosbudo ME 2 is a masterpiece
I thought that if we chose military or scientist outposts that maybe it would change how other races saw you. Like if you were an invading military force that could be pretty cool. But nope this game was shit
Or at least change the appearance of the colony. Like people doing military drills and such on a military one. But nope.
Logically and in reality as humans we would have set up a military outpost if other races existed out there with hostile intent.
But SJW Bioware dev team are anti military and anti masculine male.
@@sparhawk1228 I mean, I wouldn't go that far lol. It makes sense that a colonisation effort made primarily to escape the Reapers would be primarily focused on science and engineering since that would very quickly set up the basis for viable colonies. The issue is that the choice does not matter beyond how much shit Addison gives you about it afterwards. All things considered, both Ryders options are quite masculine in terms of the little character development we got being "I like to start shit and I like guns" which aren't typically feminine traits.
The issue is that your choices about the game world don't matter and your choices through Ryder do NOTHING to shape their personality.
Finally a video that hits the nail on the head. For all the flak that this game took for the facial animations, the glitches and the 'political correctness' BS, the lack of interesting things to do, and worse, lack of interesting end goals to achieve was what doomed the game for me. It felt like a combination of the worst PvE aspects of WoW (inconsequential fetch/kill/find random stuff sidequests, uneventful 'exploration', grinding, 'mobs' that are literally standing still or moving very slowly and can be easily avoided, etc... and the few mission hubs felt lifeless and not remotely the home of anyone, just places with people standing on them. But by far the worst was combination of an incredibly dull storyline and its ****** vaults, a milktoast hero I couldn't care less about, a stupid main antagonist that was laughable to say the least, and the worst anticlimactic conclusion to an RPG, both in level design and storytelling that I've seen in many years.
Everything else is just beating on a dead horse....
I'm starting to think people should put the written name on screen of whoever they're talking about, particularly after yesterday hearing someone mispronounce Albert Foucault as "Albert Faux-cul".
Faux-culs! That's comedy gold, my friend!
That's a good idea.
Faux-cut's Pen-doo-lem
A problem in Star Trek?
Bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish Thats the way we do things, lad, we're making shit up as we wish The Klingons and the Romulans pose no threat to us 'Cause if we find we're in a bind we just make some shit up
No no no.
We have to put some dylythium crystals in the in the energy core relay matrix.
Someone get in the Jeffries tube and find intersection J-52. There's a random box there, with a convenient countdown timer on it.
It's super dangerous, so one of the most important officers on the ship should probably go do it.
The Captain, maybe...
22:57 "3 halves of a continent"
what
I do not pussyfoot around any topics. Ever.
Directness is a virtue that is much needed in this day and age.
Thanks for the video. Keep making them and I'll keep referencing them and guiding people to your channel. :)
Always appreciate the shares :)
Great essay, as I've come to expect from Strat Edgy productions. One minor disagreement...
A lot of nerds - including myself - have the exact opposite tastes to the OP when it comes to Star Trek. I hated most episodes that focused on two characters bitching about each other. It's the politics and intrigue that I find the most fascinating. Episodes like "Balance of Terror" from TOS or "In the Pale Moonlight" from DS9. One of the lead writers from Star Trek TNG described how he loved eschewing 'soap opera plots' in favor of portraying a psychologically healthy crew that worked together smoothly. (I can hunt down the video if anyone wants it.)
I hoped andromeda would be happening after the original trilogy (it is not so difficult to do) with "the legend of the Shepard" almost turned into a religion, all the species going to andromeda with an actual good reason to do so, and all the story being about "what happens when we are the reapers"
Best dialogue wheel was in Alpha Protocol
Andromeda's premise is brilliant, but as a game it's just outright dull. Even the combat lacks anything really interesting other than charge & cloak. "Passive" is right. It's a none entity.
its premise is shit as well tho.
I mean, the premise is at least slightly inconsistent with previously established lore, but it's not bad by itself.
Without the Mass Effect name attached to it, it could've been a great new sci-fi IP.
The problem is that it was basically put together with an inexperienced team with not enough time to actually think things through. It was a corporate project led by completely delusional paper pushers that just wanted to bank in on the Mass Effect name.
Agree for most of what op said but the combats are good. Try vangard shootgun or tech.
I recall being dreamy of having mass effect character interactions mixed in with colony/city building, exploring brand new space and technology and alien and all that. It all seemed perfect. Too perfect, I suppose.
This is very well put together. Im very glad you're on here (:
What is interesting in the setting:
- New galaxy, completely alien to the explorers so likely very incompatible for them (undercut by finding same stuff as in our galaxy - aliens which are basically almost races of humans),
- Entire fleet is just a small group, how can they deal if they arrive at even a single fully industrialized planet with their thousands to their billions (just lost in translation, that puny fleet is somehow immediately becomes a power in relation to war with Ket),
- Frontier feel, space faring civ needs so much and you only have your ships to start with, so much effort and organization is ahead (forget that, terraformers are just waiting in the ground for player to push a button).
I'm a simple man. I see Mass Effect content (regardless of what it is) and I click as soon as I am able.
Andromeda is a game written and developed by what amounts to a team of wet blankets. Not entirely their fault, the project was too big, the team too inexperienced, and the label 'Mass Effect' had too much hype associated with it for them to have matched the previous games barring some kind of miracle.
O. The. Facial. Animation. Still. Hurts. Me. So. Badly.
Better writing would absolutely be necessary to make it worthwhile. However, no matter what the dialogue choices, plotlines, character motivations, this is a heavily visual medium and the creepy, uncanny animations overshadow everything else to the extent that even with the best story it would not feel right.... And also the voice acting.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion. Mine's the complete opposite: this game could have had the best graphics, facial animations and voice overs in the market and it would have made absolutely no difference to me. It would still have been one of the most disappointing games I've played in the last 5 years or more. I wholeheartledly agree with the points made in this video: this game felt like everything was phoned in... the design of the side missions, the new races that I couldn't care less about, the dialogs, the exploration, the main story line, the stupid vaults, the overall sense of mediocrity in anything related to the creativity necessary to pull off a project like this.
The difference between playing ME 2/3 and this... thing was more or less the difference between feeling immersed in an epic interactive story, and feeling like you're a little kid being bored to death by his parent, who's desperately trying to make up a shitty bedtime story on the fly.
Well said Guillermo St ! I do agree with the points in the video and what you are saying about the plot elements. I simply meant that even with better writing they would need to have fixed the animations and acting in order for the game not to feel so... odd? Empty? Anyway, nice reply! The game was a serious disappointment. I edited my post a bit to try to clarify.
5 arks, 4 docking stations on nexus....
It's almost like the quarian ark was shoehorned in last minute to have a plot for a potential dlc.
Two girls, one cup. Nature finds a way.
Quarian Ark.
But yea I agree that shit was definitely shoehorned in.
It shows a glaring intent, they intended to recreate Mass Effect in Andromeda, by giving themselves a way of moving as many if not all the milky way races to Andromeda, & completely ignore the trilogy by the clusterfuck way they ended it.
They wrote themselves into a wall & have no way to undo that or proceed from it without a complete and utter retcon of ME3.
Very happy to hear that Camus is favored by you. It makes sense.
Have never played a Mass Effect game but I really enjoy your editing, hats off
Highly recommend the legendary edition and just a have a blast with it 💯🔥🔥
Nah, man. Nah.
If Shepard was Clint Eastwood?
Ryder is like some Jimmy Fallon / Ben Stiller / Dane Cook lookin ass.
I always believed that rpgs should be like choose your own adventure books. Each choice shifting the story, leading to a different outcome. I think dragon age origins does this well. For every subplot, you make big choices and they have unique consequences. Do you side with the elves? Side with the spirit and set her free? Or savagely destroy the elves? The consequences of the choices change who supports you in the last battle and how your companions feel about you. And it also makes it interesting! But when there’s fake choices, like the one in andromeda, it just feels like your reading a linear book from beginning to end, and that’s fine, but that’s not why I play rpgs. If it wanted to be a game that had a linear plot it should have committed to that, developed a really complex main character, and had us play them. Instead, it gave us false hope of character creation, when in actuality we got a floppy puppet man who says dumb things without us being able to control them.
Just discovered your channel, first view. Worth a sub. I am really digging this video essay style of content on various media topics that I either agree with, change my mind on or learn about.
Your voice makes me feel like I've overdosed on Zoloft and my brain is slowing down.
i was gonna say what but i watch vids on 1.5x speed. on 1x speed yeah hes kinda slow
It's that good sleepy time shit bruh
Right? None of the bad side effects and for free
Once you get over the jump jet exploration there's not much left.
I always hated Star Trek. And loved Mass Effect 1 and 2, even 3 (who didn`t feel like a deity when his Shepard jumps out the boogey, right in front of a Reaper, and says "Sync the entire space fleets weaponry up to my laser and I`ll paint the weak spot, I`m fucking this thing up right here and right now!")
Andromeda? Jesus christ...
Lol, you hate Star Trek? Did you watch it?
😂 That’s what I told my brother when he ask me how it was playing Andromeda.
I told him, “Only if you like playing as a push-over pussy.” I didn’t finish the game.
honestly the thing that kinda pissed me off with this game is the utter lack of a actual defense fleet for andromeda because "reasons" anybody else, and for ryder his attitude was annoying vs. shep at least at least have him/her grow a frelling backbone
"If everything was set in place by some mysterious creator why even be a scientist?" ---- Why play video games then?
Possible troubleshooting
Dialogue: Ryder has the 4 personality types but the one(s) you pick most often will be referenced by the people that know you and might even influence non-optional dialogue or combat quips. Ryder speaks with the authority that he/she has been granted but uncertainty in some situations early on. If you find this comment and scroll through others, you'll see other people pitching the very valid idea to make Ryder a panzy at first or at least a fish out of water who isn't used to this level of responsibility but grows into the role of pathfinder over time. The dialogue choices stick around but are delivered with more confidence as Ryder experiences more on his/her journey.
Gameplay: ME:2 with verticality and ME:3 weapon choices (balance weight with ability cooldowns/stamina)
Story: They straight up retconned the Krogan character who saw both the first contact war AND the genophage. He doesn't harbor ill will towards anyone and just bitches about being old instead of dead. If you're gonna write an entire section of lore around genocide and warfare, even addressing it in other titles, why in the crispy crunchy Kentucky-fried fuck would you just shrug that off later on? The Krogan on the journey to Andromeda would still be sterile from the genophage meaning they're likely to die off in Andromeda making they're entire journey pointless in the first place. Have some balls, say the bad shit that happened before actually happened and at least address it in conversation instead of 2 throw away lines about your entire race having fewer odds of survival than a chimp on the moon.
TL;DR: watch the video
TL:DW: fuck EA
Okay the fact you started out not only with DS9 but with best Star Trek tsundere Odo (don't @ me), immediately got me hooked.
Love what you did there with cosplaying Markus
That's all fine and dandy, but isn't this mainly a localization issue? I don't remember Rider being passive in German.
you got a sub bro! Quality quality edits
That hand rubbing animation was so distracting that I had to rewind the video a bit to understand what you was saying LOL
The correct way to play first three games is to hack paragon and renegade meters so that you can pick any option you want. Save someone here, bash someone's face in there, then pick a neutral option without being afraid to lose points, like that.
Never forget Marauder Shields. He died trying to save us from the ending. Honor his sacrifice. (No, I'm not give it up just yet. :D)
This whole planet viability really just sounds like another name for XP.
They could have made some of these missions take away from the viability, meaning you have to choose which are better for you, or better for the colony
I probably shouldn’t have started with Andromeda
1:10 "Ooooh yeah baby, just like that"
Hard stop. That's one of my most memorable conflicts in DS9. My boy Brodo has some seriously thin skin when it comes to displaying inadequacy and vulnerability with his true self. The dude is body dysmorphia personified. He'd have Chadded up a 13 inch magnum dong for Kira, but at the end of they day he knows he's just a puddle of goo pretending to be a man. Displaying that level of vulnerability to anyone when you've been alone for so long and don't even know who you are isn't easy for the guy who has to regularly bounce drunk Nossicans off the Promenade for a living.
I've always heard about passive tense and passive actions for character and how active is almost always better, but I never thought of passive "writing" on a story-scale. Interesting food for thought!
I'm surprised you didn't think of the choice in ME1 about which of your companions to leave on the exploding base.
I played renegade throughout my first playthrough of mass effect
boy did i miss those options
I tried playing a Ryder who embodied the essence of a vanguard. In combat, she zoomed towards things and punched them in the face. In dialog, I wanted her to zoom towards conflict and punch it in the face, with the downside being screwing things up due to brashness. In my mind, the entire reason Ryder went on the initiative was to zoom towards an entire galaxy and punch it in the face. My ideal Ryder was someone who lived to complete the biggest, longest, most badass zoom-and-punch in human history.
All of the "I'm unsure of myself" scenes really put a damper on that notion.
Your version of the story is basically James Cameron's Avatar! :D Great video, I liked it! :)
You probably don't remember the episode of DS9 in particular, but even though Odo's shy about his fluid form and finds dealing with Troi's mother an awkward situation, that's not why he holds onto his solid form longer than usual. In the episode the elevator the two of them are in gets stuck, and the way Cardassian elevators are designed means that if he were to revert to a fluid form without a container, he'd leak out of the bottom and get electrocuted on the exposed power conduits underneath (Cardassians apparently don't have an OSHA equivalent).
Him holding onto solid form when he'd normally 'sleep' in fluid form isn't out of politeness or sociality; it was literally a matter of life and death.
You can't accidentally commit suicide with an overdose, that's just being killed by an overdose of drugs.
I did everything there was to do in this game and don't recall a single stand out moment. I had to force myself to beat this game because it carried the Mass Effect title and I had already spent my cash. It was a painful experience
The first sentence is more interesting. To be "hit by a tree branch" means that something swung the tree branch at the speaker. There's more drama. The second sentence resolves all the drama and just reveals the speaker as a klutz.
there were more choices then just Paragon and Renegade in the Mass effect 1 and 2, there were decisions and actions that if taken or not taken would ultimately change not only the ending but also the build up to the ending.