That's straight out of the game itself, actually. There's very little information. About how common specific augments will be once researched, though.
Printable View
But, why?
Usually, when you research how to make some sort of object, you don't suddenly lose the research only to randomly have it appear in the wilderness.
What's weirder is it's confusing gameplay. If an augment is enjoyable to use, why make them go through a bunch of hoops just to continue using it?
Okay, having seen Jim Sterling's Jimpressions. morbid curiosity causes to me ask (since he- by his own admission had not played since the first game)... From those of you who have played the first three... How bad is it?
(Bearing in mind I've not played a Bioware game since the ME3 entended ending came out (though I own DA2 but have not played it, nor DA:O's expansion). Jim's impression was that it didn't seem to have changed much from the first one, and watching his combat play footage... It reminded me more of 1 than 2 or 3. Maybe it was just him playing a soldier, but it didn't look... Interesting?
(Nevermind the prevalent graphical glitches and stuff I saw even in the just the ten minutes or so on contiguous footage (not even the stuff he'd saved after encountering on his playthrough at the start.))
The lead lady (at least I assume that's whose face is plastered over every review) looks a bit... Let's say uncanny valley and call it at that. (Is that just a default, or is there no protagonist customisation in this one? I find that somewhat hard to beleieve, but one never knows...?)
The gameplay experience I've had is mostly unchanged from 3. Can't say how different it is from 1 as I never got into that one, but your accuracy and such isn't stat-based.
The main thing is that the execution is very sloppy. I keep on running into things that take me out of the game, both glitches and just plain bad design decisions.
Like, I'm posting here because I deliberately crashed my game. Why? Because I triggered a timed quest without realizing it. I hit the trigger, and the dialogue explaining the quest started - but then, I took two steps forward and hit another conversation trigger for a separate quest. The dialogue for the timed quest was cut off and not repeated, and it was only a couple minutes later that I realized there was a countdown going in the top corner of my screen. With no way to reload without dying and only a few seconds left on the countdown, I killed the game in hopes of respawning from an earlier checkpoint.
Having dialogue get cut off happens a LOT, but this is the first time plot-critical dialogue got nixed.
1) It's not bad. Some graphical glitches and UI issues, but the combat is better than ever and the story is, if not groundbreaking, really no worse than the OT. You're the chosen one - standard fare for big-budget RPGs - so get out there and get to savin'.
2) The animation issues are most pronounced with default Sara Ryder. Yes, you can use a custom face instead, and I would go further and say you absolutely should, particularly if you plan on playing female.
3) I saw Jim's video and he rightfully dogpiled onto the animations. They're not great. As far as him saying the combat is no better than ME1, he's simply wrong about that, there's no two bones about it.
The gameplay is a perfectly competent third person shooter. I like it, because I really enjoy third person shooters, but it's not as good (at least so far) than something like the new Tomb Raiders or The Division. It's miles better than ME1 though, since gun sway/recoil control aren't character stats that start at basically zilch. Don't know about the various tech and biotic powers, those interest me very little, but the core shoot aliens gameplay is perfectly enjoyable if you like such things.
There is protagonist customization, though the system is... slightly odd. I think it works by choosing a preset, then tweaking a subset of that face's features, but honestly the menu was such a mess I could have easily missed a bunch of options. I'm pretty happy with the character I ended up with, though she ended up with rather unfortunate yellow eyes, instead of the green I was going for. I can't say I really care that much though.
Graphically I'd say it's acceptable. I'm not running it anywhere near max on my poor old video card, but then I've played lots of contemporary games at similarly low settings that look way better. It's weird too, the characters generally look fine, the backgrounds look pretty OK, but there's a lot of oddities at the edges of the characters, like the game's not really calculating how they're effected by environmental light right. I may try tweaking some settings, see if that helps. The animations are fine - maybe even better than usual for Bioware, but they're still pretty eh. It doesn't bother me hugely, but if your standard is set to Tomb Raider, it's way below that.
I think I'm starting to work out why my opinion is boomeranging so much. When talking to people and tooling around the Nexus, it feels like a Mass Effect game.
Out in the world though, it really feels like Granny's Original Ubisoft Game Recipe. Filler quests - I got one to get 3 components and put it into a research station to see what some colonists were working on before they got killed. That got me a "Well done!" from one of my companions and literally that was it - quest finished, no further description of what it did. Every time I drive around SAM reminds me "Mining zone!" The Nomad handles as badly as every open-world vehicle I've seen, making driving around a chore. And the first planet at least just feels very...empty. There's none of the sense of wonder and discovery I got from Horizon.
I'm honestly not sure if I'm going to continue. About the only place the game is better than Inquisition is the gameplay, and that's only because the gameplay there sucked. The gameplay is roughly Mass Effect 3 but with weird bugs thrown in (like an entire platoon of Kett deciding to hunger down under cover and not return fire while I sniped them one by one).
Ultimately, I think I might just abandon sidequesting and just stick to the main plot and anything that looks related to the companions.
Spoiler rant: Murder Sidequest
SpoilerOkay, Bioware, there is an objectively correct answer to this problem, and you are not providing it. The correct answer is to throw out the murder conviction and hold a new trial for attempted murder. I don't care how much time the leadership team doesn't think it has, they've been sitting on their asses getting picked off by aliens for 14 months, they can take an afternoon to hold what borderlines on a kangaroo court. As the director said, this is the Initiative's first capital crime and they are setting a precedent for their justice system for the rest of the project's duration, and the options I am being given do not contain "do it right", but instead letting me choose between a system that suppresses evidence for the convenience of the State and a system where attempted murder is not a crime. So, yeah, **** you whoever wrote this sidequest.
And this is why I asked. He admitted himself he hadn't played those; but my experience with 2 and 3 was with a sniper (I've played 1 three times, but while I have sort-of plans to do Evil Idiot Shepards through to 2 and 3, I've never gotten that far), and thus looking at that game play, it looked a bit lacking compared to ME3. But it's been a while since I last played that, and even in the multiplayer (the only game I ever actually have done multiplayer on), I didn't sue solider types. (And it's been a while since I even did that, between getting fed-up with the grind-for-maybe-new-character-classes and the MP being laggy and buggy when I last tried it.) If Jim was just playing a solder (and fairly early on, I think he only levelled to 6, I'm assuming you have about 10 or 20-sh levels, yes? (I forget the levelling systems of 2 and 3, actually, so might be miles out), he just might have not had a lot of gubbins to play with.
Did I see aright there appeared to be an... ammo counter? Please tell me they haven't even given up on the dubious heat-sink clips of 2 and 3...?
How does the RPG and story elements match up? Companions especially? (As that was the reason I largely put up with the shooter-elements of ME - I am not a shooter-person by nature.)
The combat I've played was fun if a bit samey between the tutorial and Eos. But the multiplayer was astounding so I know the single-player combat will get more frenetic and varied later as well.
You can do both ME3-style clips or ME1-style recharging if you want. You start out with clips.
I'm not far enough in to give an accurate comparison (since I would be comparing full-fledged character arcs in a familiar setting from the OT with characters I'm just barely getting to know in Andromeda.) What I've seen has made me curious to learn more; take that for what it's worth.
The full game is finally available to me. Andromeda, here I come. But not too quickly, since I need to wade through several layers of submenu hell. Argh. Does anyone know if it's at all possible to alter your squad's loadout? I'm kind of hoping it isn't, so I won't have to bother with crafting gear for them. Keeping my Ryder properly equipped looks like it'll be an adventure in itself.
Ok, so I pick up my copy of mass effect andromeda, get home and-
No disk.
I check, that's intended, despite the case it's just a digital copy code... Almost like the entire reason I go to EB games isn't for physical disks.
And then I'm told that I won't even be able to play until the 23rd in America, despite it being released over there on the 21st....
F*ck you EA.
Also, if anyone still cares, Nova is on a cooldown and doesn't use shields up (unless you pick the perk that does exactly the opposite, I guess).
You can't equip squadmates, they will just scale with you.
ok. This pisses me right the **** off. They are refusing to sell anything other than the "super deluxe" bull**** for 100 dollars on their digital store. What? Did Origin manage to **** up so bad that they managed to run out of digital stock?
EDIT: Nope. you can't buy it directly through origin, but if you go to the Mass Effect website, and then click the link to purchase the standard edition, it will open origin to buy the standard edition. What in the literal ****?
That's weird, I bought the Standard edition via Origin, day of release (so technically pre-order, but not really - by the time it downloaded, the game was available). It still shows Standard as an option when I go into the store, as well as Deluxe and Super Deluxe. Never touched the Mass Effect website.
I think he might have been implying the reverse: that he's a console player, and so actually gets to have the game on a disk, not as a download only. I've never heard of a console game being sold with a box as if it had a disk, but instead only having a download code - I think that's something that only happens on PCs. When console games are released as download-only, they simply don't get box releases that go to physical stores. And I don't think even that's ever happened with a big-name AAA game.
Looks like Bioware is working on some of the issues. Or at least buying time with PR-speak while they decide what to work on and how.
Topics include:
- The animations, obviously
- Saving during main story missions
- M/M romance content
- The character creator
You shouldn't bottle up your emotions like that, let them out once in awhile :smalltongue:
Kidding aside, on my Origin store page I still see all the options, so not sure what the problem is on your end.
By the Protheans is Naming the Dead annoying.
In other news I completed Eos's main quest for now and I have a bunch of research points. Unfortunately, I also have a lot of option paralysis. Darn you limited research budget.