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Post by simple on Feb 9, 2023 19:35:47 GMT
So far I’d say the human Tempest crew are mostly good company, Peebee too. I like how the crew interact with each other instead of all standing in their designated rooms and that there are personalities like Tann and the rest back on base.
Its a bit of a shame that the pilot, Krogan and Turian are basically like-for-like replacements of Mordin, Wrex and Garrus instead of getting to be their own people.
Overall I do like the crew but mainly because I find our voyage quite an immersive one.
On missed missions nothing stands out in particular - maybe on Voeld the poachers mission and exploring Eos post-radiation has a few cool locations and fun big base clearance. The Architect missions definitely worth finding too.
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Ulythium
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Post by Ulythium on Feb 9, 2023 20:18:49 GMT
Thanks, dude.
I really miss Joker's smartassery on the bridge; instead, all I get is "[X] wants to speak to you", as though all they do is pass along messages.
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Post by simple on Feb 9, 2023 20:38:20 GMT
If you’ve not done them yet the architect missions I’ve done are
Voeld - missing scientists from the human colony
Eos - its from the colony, something to do with seismic activity, water and placing hammers
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Post by The12thMonkey on Feb 9, 2023 22:46:30 GMT
But the NPCs... man, I just don't care.
In the Shepard trilogy, I became invested in the supporting cast, even though my original approach was, "Be an asshole to everyone you meet." It didn't take three games for that to happen, either - I started out by sassing Liara for the predicament in which I found her, but found myself seeking her out for a casual chat before ME1 had drawn to a close, for instance.
I just don't give the smallest of shits about chatting with Liam Gallag-huh, Fake Wrex, Wannabe Garrus, et al - they're too bloody boring, and that's a huge downside in a BioWare game.
Yeah, I found the cast almost entirely forgettable in ME:A, and I think it's down to tell, rather than show. They come with all these backstories and they tell you about their pasts at length (and in Liam's case, incomprehensibly). Would have been so much better to live those moments with the cast (even if that meant re-writing to spend time recruiting in the Milky Way prior to departure). |
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Post by simple on Feb 10, 2023 8:51:25 GMT
I kind of feel like Liam is one of the more naturally written voices on the crew. But that might be partly just down to him and Ryder looking so much sharper and more realistic than basically all the other humans.
But then in every game I’ve liked having a fairly generic soldier character in my squad when I’m out on fairly routine missions before mixing in the more exotic characters for the more fantastical or story quests. Makes it feel like we’re a professional crew doing a job and this huge event has hit us along the way.
My go-to squad so far has been Ryder, Cora and then a mission dependent 3rd. So Liam for generic Initiative business, Jaal with his people, Drack when mopping up on Eos etc. I feel like narratively it makes sense to keep Cora in the squad similar to how I almost always kept one of Garrus, Miranda or Liara alongside me as Shepard.
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Ulythium
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Post by Ulythium on Feb 10, 2023 9:18:48 GMT
I've stuck with Cora and Peebee throughout, as they're the ones I like (plus it can be quite amusing to listen to them bicker as I'm haphazardly driving the Nomad off precipices).
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Ulythium
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Post by Ulythium on Feb 10, 2023 9:22:15 GMT
I quite liked Liam until this part of the very first mission:
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Post by simple on Feb 10, 2023 9:44:58 GMT
Even as Shepard I always kept a very small core team and just had the others milling about outside of character specific quests and I can see that happening again here.
I seem to remember switching it up in the DA games a lot more regularly.
Maybe its just the difference in sci-fi shows following Star Trek in having a small group of leads where fantasy follows LOTR with larger ensembles and that trope has bled into my brain.
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Ulythium
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Post by Ulythium on Feb 10, 2023 9:53:41 GMT
In fairness to Andromeda, I stuck with my favourite characters throughout the first three Mass Effect games as well.
I was a bit more "tactical" about it in Inquisition, in terms of choosing a balanced party - me (melee rogue), Varric (ranged rogue), Cassandra (warrior), and Vivienne (mage) - but even then, it was a question of finding characters I liked and sticking with them.
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Post by docrob on Feb 10, 2023 12:39:27 GMT
I have completed ME1 and almost completed ME2 in the past (I can’t recall why I didn’t complete 2, though I do have a terrible habit of stopping an RPG just before the final mission because I’m not sure whether I have done EVERYTHING)
Got the Legendary package as a free Amazon offer last year. I need to find time to play through it. Somehow! Will be as FemShep because I always went male before.
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Blue_Mike
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Post by Blue_Mike on Feb 10, 2023 14:27:46 GMT
I mixed up the characters I took out on my last playthrough, and the results were quite different in terms of their dialogue with each other. Drack ended up telling Jaal a knock-knock joke that made me laugh quite loudly, while Vetra and Liam entered into a quite vicious argument.
These never ended up actually affecting outcomes in the game in any way though, unlike in Inquisition where having heard various squad banters through to the end of their cycles actually gets you different ending slides, like the Iron Bull/Dorian one.
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Post by simple on Feb 10, 2023 14:34:30 GMT
I have completed ME1 and almost completed ME2 in the past (I can’t recall why I didn’t complete 2, though I do have a terrible habit of stopping an RPG just before the final mission because I’m not sure whether I have done EVERYTHING) Got the Legendary package as a free Amazon offer last year. I need to find time to play through it. Somehow! Will be as FemShep because I always went male before. Legendary Edition is a fantastic package - and because they went back and added the ME3 Femshep to 1 and 2 same as Himshep it means your character is consistent the whole way through instead of the character customisation options trying to approximate your imported character with varying degrees of success. I remember when I did the trilogy on 360 every other character was getting increasingly hi-res and photo realistic as the series progressed while my Femshep was regressing and looked like a Playmobil character in comparison by the end. Admittedly some human npcs who got left behind in the 4k upscaling do still look like that but none of the ones that really matter. |
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Ulythium
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Post by Ulythium on Feb 10, 2023 16:10:17 GMT
docrobWhat Simple said, really. If you can find the time to play through Legendary Edition, I encourage - nay, *exhort* - you to do so.
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KD
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Post by KD on Feb 10, 2023 18:16:51 GMT
I'm on a break between 1 and 2, decided to pick up Marvels Midnight Sun's and now disappointed my character can't fuck Blade.
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Post by baihu1983 on Feb 13, 2023 21:51:40 GMT
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aubergine
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Post by aubergine on Feb 14, 2023 11:06:39 GMT
One thing I thought was really under-served in this series was the concept of Spectres. I really liked the notion of James Bond in Space, and was let down by the early exit for Nihlus and general abandonment of the Spectre idea at the end of game one. If they put out a game called “Mass Effect: Spectre” and it was just a bunch of secret agent / Hitman-esque missions I’d be into that.
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Post by simple on Feb 14, 2023 12:54:15 GMT
Yeah, they never settle on what a Spectre really is or what their role or powers are supposed to be. Are they cops? Military? Spies?
I always thought that because the Reapers sounded like the threat Revan was preparing for in KOTOR2 that Spectres were just a placeholder for Jedi when the plot was repurposed from the Star Wars universe into an original one. I’ve no evidence for that though.
An espionage game playing as one with Hitman or Deus Ex influences could be very cool. Its such a rich universe, its a pity they never investigated the possibilities to explore the lore more. Playing Andromeda now I think it would have been good to maybe continue the Andromeda story in its own series (trilogy?) and add a second title or series as a smaller scale story in the Milkyway like your Spectre idea.
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Post by baihu1983 on Feb 14, 2023 13:06:41 GMT
Didn't help they took it away from you in 2 then can half arsed give it back but it doesn't mean anything.
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deekyfun
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Post by deekyfun on Feb 14, 2023 13:52:00 GMT
I think its just an agent of the citadel council that has complete autonomy to police Alliance space however they deem necessary. I always took it as a plot-badge to allow you to do whatever, whenever.
I guess in ME2, Shepherd spends the majority of her time moonlighting for Cerberus and outside of Alliance Space, so it doesn't come up too much. Then in ME3 its all a bit 'End of the Universe-y' and they're probably not worrying too much about Spectre rules and all that jazz.
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Post by RadicalRex on Feb 14, 2023 16:51:37 GMT
But it's funny how a one-sentence voice recording that sounds like you is undeniable proof you've gone rogue and your Spectre status is rescinded. Yeah... ok
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Post by simple on Feb 14, 2023 17:14:53 GMT
How many others do you meet in the trilogy? 5? Two of which are villains. Then one in Andromeda who gave up his post to leave the galaxy?
Is that it?
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aubergine
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Post by aubergine on Feb 14, 2023 18:39:21 GMT
I don’t remember any other than Nihlus and Saren.
Should have been an Elcor spectre. Grim determination. Do you expect me to talk?
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Post by simple on Feb 14, 2023 19:35:30 GMT
Nihilus and Saren in 1, another in ME2, and two in ME3 The one in 2 is a corrupt Asari working for the Shadowbroker
There’s a Silurian one with a short side-quest in the Citadel Embassy in 3
and whichever one of Kaidan or Ashley is still alive gets made once they’re out of hospital In Andromeda you meet a Turian deserter one protecting refugees who gives you a vague pointer toward a lost ark |
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Post by simple on Feb 18, 2023 14:07:59 GMT
50 hours in now Got the main quest on pause after discovering exultation and loyalty missions populating the galaxy map. Done Liam’s, lining up either Cara’s or Jaal’s next as I still need to get Kadara to 100% viability before moving on with any top tier missions. Will probably wrap that up between one of those loyalty ones. Liam’s having the gravity shifts was a nice twist after spending so much time on planets for the normal missions, hopefully there’s more fun stuff in the other loyalty missions. Still enjoying it a lot. Treating it more like a Bethesda game than a Bioware one; its about the world, just living in the setting and doing the quests that feel like they’ve got some decent character to them. Rather than Shepards games which were very plot driven even with all their character content. Slightly surprised that the SAM memory mission seems like such an optional side activity when the benefactor (presumably) having the director killed feels like it should be more important. Just seen the memory of Ryder’s mum dying so guessing any more from here will go back to the conspiracy. I honestly thought it would turn out that my SAM is Ryder’s mum having had her consciousness uploaded. It could still come back to that with future memories I suppose but it’ll probably just be some inspiring goodbye message. Would be a bit creepy having your dead mum look after your email inbox and watch you space-bone hot alien babes with your own eyes. I’m not doing all the additional tasks though as a lot of them seem to involve looking for unmarked items in enemy camps and there’s no way to keep track of which you’ve found or where the others might be. That the camps are reoccupied almost as soon as you clear them means you can’t even manually track the quests based on which have been cleared or not. Having a jetpack, rocket car and decent fast travel system has definitely helped avoid open world fatigue so far. |
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Blue_Mike
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Post by Blue_Mike on Feb 18, 2023 14:29:05 GMT
I’m not doing all the additional tasks though as a lot of them seem to involve looking for unmarked items in enemy camps and there’s no way to keep track of which you’ve found or where the others might be. That the camps are reoccupied almost as soon as you clear them means you can’t even manually track the quests based on which have been cleared or not. They are a bit of a nightmare for completionists, as they are randomised and the datapads/surveillance devices/cores/cereal box prizes etc. can be found in the same places again later on once you think you've cleared the one in that area. |
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Post by simple on Feb 18, 2023 14:37:38 GMT
Yeah fuck that, waypoints and story quests only for me
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lukasz
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Post by lukasz on Feb 19, 2023 21:29:51 GMT
I skipped those as well even though I completed everything else.
Had better things to do lol!
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Tuffty
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Post by Tuffty on Feb 20, 2023 9:13:46 GMT
It's an idea I've seen repeated over time, but a story of Garrus doing some C-Sec investigations into some intergalactic crime ring is a great idea
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Post by simple on Feb 20, 2023 13:51:45 GMT
Its the perfect universe for an anthology of smaller scale titles. After the opening trilogy was the extinction of all sentient life anything else is going to feel like less if you try going up against that so embrace it instead.
For me at least, coming to it five years after launch and with the most dire bugs patched out, I think Andromeda gets away with it because exploring the new map is the game not the main quest and antagonist but future entries in the series need to double down on character and be careful about trying to blow up the scale.
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Post by technoish on Feb 20, 2023 14:18:42 GMT
I'm there for a game based on the mining mini game in 2.
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