Thread 714973434

>everyone says that ME: Andromeda was a flop
>check sales
>5 million copies sold
>check steam reviews
>mostly positive (74%)
someone explain, I haven't played the game but I've seen some clips of the combat and it looked good

>>714973434 (OP)
>game sucks
>only retards buy it
>retards give it positive reviews
not hard to understand

>>714973434 (OP)
It didn't sell giga units like EA wanted so they cancelled all future content immediately after launch. Plus people didn't like it because the plot got boring extremely fast, and the characters weren't as appealing as the trilogy.

Genuinely if the game had better writers who could've made a better story and characters it would have been amazing because the gameplay is the best of all ME games.

>>714973434 (OP)
>check steam reviews
>mostly positive (74%)

I bet all of those reviews are praising the combat(which is good), but the main point of the Mass Effect games is characters and story and Andromeda's are terrible.

>>714973434 (OP)
>Writing that's a mesh of Citadel and Veilguard that never holds off on the quipping
>Everything that would be a draw for space exploration narratives already happened, ie first contact or breaking ground for first colony
>Main planets are ugly shitholes with Ubisoft errands
>Reapers and collectors were essentially recycled
Literally only the combat was decent, and that's purely for the PC since companions were made mechanically worse

>>714973434 (OP)
>I haven't played the game
neck yourself, why do you contest a position you have no knowledge of yourself?
That being said, Andromeda's combat is the best in the series by the long shot, the gameplay feels nice and driving the nu-Mako around was fun.
However, the game suffers from an abysmal story that makes zero sense from a lore perspective, shitty writing, piss-poor character animations, and unimaginative cinematography.
The villain is terrible and their whole gimmick of turning the Angara into their own species is essentially what the Reapers do when they invade. Also the big bad literally says "I won't explain what you can't understand", when you question his motives.
It's just a very disappointing game.

>>714973434 (OP)
Andromeda was released on Steam in 2021, I think. Obviously, the only people that bought it on steam, after 4 years, are people that liked it, a number that is very low.
5 million copies sold as lifetime sales, for a game that is 8 years old, and has had an average sale price of close to $20 is barely enough to recoup development costs. The game had a $100m budget, and sold an estimated 1.5 million in its first quarter.
It performed Veilguard tier bad, saved by the fact that its budget was a couple hundred million less. Overall, it performed worse than ME2 did in 2010, at the tail end of the Great Recession, and with 40% the budget of Andromeda. At the time it was viewed as a catastrophic failure, that put the franchise on ice, and closed the entire Bioware Montreal studio.
The only thing that Andromeda did better, was the gunplay, which is the least it could do, since the progress made in shooters from the previous ME game, in 2012.

>>714973575
OP specifically says people were calling it a flop. A flop specifically means bad sales equivalent to a "bomb" at the box office, so it doesn't qualify.

>>714973434 (OP)
>B-BUT IT SOLD 5 MILLION UNITS!!
doesn't matter, games cost so fucking much to make now and so much is wasted on advertising and stupid shit nobody cares about that they need to be selling twice that just to be considered "breaking even," the sooner the industry stops acting like every game has to have some 200 million dollar budget and be a hollywood production the sooner pieces of shit like this will stop being made and inevitably flopping

>>714973434 (OP)
It's a mediocre game with bad characters bad story meh graphics.
Have fun I double dare you

>>714973434 (OP)
A chunk of those sales expected
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG8V9dRqSsw
Everyone got
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5HF5-ehoxQ

>>714973434 (OP)
Once you play it, you’re going to know why it’s a fat pile of shit. The biggest mistake I ever made in my life was pre-ordering this game. I pirated games ever since
>>714973575
This.
>>714973716
>>714974063
>>714974383
>le good combat even though the levels, enemies, and new combat system are horseshit
You’re shitskins and you all have horrible quality assessment skills. Ban brownoids from this website now

>>714973434 (OP)
It's not great and launched in a fucking state. That and a lot of small children were very attached to Bioware's dogshit writing when they were younger so experiencing a new game as an older person was a kick in their nuts.

>>714974872
It was a flop, critically and commercially, it didn't come close to breaking even financially and the only people who "loved" it were paid to by BioWare.

>>714974893
The game had the exact same budget that ME3 did lmfao, which was UNDER $100,000,000. So, no, 5,000,000 sales means it broke even and made a pretty good profit.

You are fat, gay, brown, black, and/or jewish.

>>714975174
You're assuming everybody bought it for full price.
They didn't.
Read.

>>714975029
>le good combat even though the levels, enemies, and new combat system are horseshit

I played on the hardest difficulty and it was great. I heard the launch version of the game was absolutely terrible; I played the game for the first time last year, so maybe the combat has been patched to be good?

>>714975098
As stated above, you're wrong, plain and simple. You are fat, gay, brown, black, and jewish.

Andromeda sold 5,000,000 copied and its budget was the exact same as ME3 which was under $100,000,000. It made up its budget, broke even, and made a decent profit.

An actual flop would be Faggon Age: The Failhard.

me 3 was already bad because almost every staff that was worth shit left after 1 and 2
what was left when they were working on adromeda were the new hires and useless old heads with no value

>>714975292
Nice cope, Jamal Ginsberg. Most of its sales were within the first month of its release when it was full retail. You lost at birth being born black and jewish, and you lost now with this debate (and for being gay, black, and jewish as well as fat).

>>714975029
t. hasn't played any of the original trilogy in forever
combat was absolutely an improvement and the talent tree was an objective upgrade

>>714973434 (OP)
it's so good that it shuttered its development studio

>>714975327
Mass Effect 3 had a budget of around 40 million dollars Canadian you dumb fuck. Andromeda was around 100 million.
Just in case you need help with your maths that's a 60 million dollar difference.
And again, it wasn't 5 million release copies, all bought at full price. It was 5 million copies over the course of 8 years since 2017, most of them bought on sale AFTER BioWare dropped support because it initially sold like dogshit.

>>714975312
>I played on the hardest difficulty and it was great.
That’s because you have shit taste, you retard. You’d eat Nikocado’s asshole if it was sprinkled with glitter

>>714975461
>Most of its sales were within the first month of its release when it was full retail.
Source? Andromeda never tracked on Sircana/NPD top 10. Bioware's Mark Darrah also gave an interview on Eurogamer about why Andromeda didn't sell, and blamed it on Horizon Zero Dawn and Zelda. So, if Mark Darrah agreed that it didn't sell, then it didn't sell. Which makes me very curious were you're getting that it did sell. Obviously, Mark Darrah wouldn't say his dev studio's game didn't sell, when it did.

>>714975502
That’s how I know you didn’t play the original trilogy. Your skin is the color of the shit I took. You are not even worth the penny in my pocket

>>714975593
and all its planned dlc was scrapped
i don't even know if the book to tie up the lose ends ever happened

>>714973434 (OP)
You have to remember the scale at which AAA video game development since the mid 00s takes place and especially the mismanagement Bioware was going through throughout the 2010s
>Mass Effect 3's infamous ending
>Shadow Realms cancelled
>then this
>constant changes in leadership
>troubled development
>then fucking Anthem
>live service obsession also fucked with Dragon Age until they realized it was untenable then tried to hammer it into a single player game and make half-assed attempts to make the writing more serious(yes what we got in Veilguard was more serious than the original script)
>Bioware now basically just a hundred people working on Mass Effect plus support staff for EA, probably their last hail mary before they're shut down for good

5 million is good for most series but considering how huge the past few Mass Effects were 5 million was enough to shutter them and fold them into other Bioware studios. It wasn't just bad, it was also symptomatic of Bioware's severe decline.

>>714975327
bloated budget and sales expectations. also there was a higher ratio of units moved at discount price compared to mass effect 3. I remember looking at the on release figures and andromeda was selling like 1/3 of mass effect 3. it made up the difference later with discounts. if you doubt me remember that andromeda had a full set of dlcs planned and they were all cancelled immediately. I personally liked the game. I got it cheap and played it with low expectations and ended up enjoying it. but commercially it did not do well

>>714975461
>being gay, black, and jewish as well as fat)
Why are you making fun of the people who made Andromeda?

>>714976046
nice try kike
only whites can make a game like andromeda

>>714973434 (OP)
It's extremely mid as a game, but it was insanely buggy on release and has a lot of stupid stuff

>>714976156
>only whites can make a game like andromeda
Who’s gonna tell this brown monkey the truth?

>>714974993
>Andromeda was 8 years ago
aaaaAAAAAAAAAAH

>>714973434 (OP)
I didn't play it until they had fixed most of the animation issues and it was fine. I liked exploring the giant alien architecture and the combat was fine and different builds I tried all felt great.

The companions just seemed really awful and boring.

>a black human guy called Liam
>a blonde white bimbo human called Cora
>a clearly self-insert of a gigglesquee so randum writer Asari called 'Peebee'

Can't even remember what the other ones were they were that forgetful. I can recall there was a Krogan but I'm not sure why they even bothered with a Krogan in 2 as he was equally as unforgettable as nothing could match Wrex in terms of being an iconic Krogan character.

>>714973575
So only the first 3 games are good?

>>714976272
Only the first one is good

>>714976270
Fuck you Grunt beats Wrex all day

>>714976156
Clearly.

>>714976320
Ok. I'm asking just to avoid wasting my money, even if they're on discounted sale.

>>714973434 (OP)
/v/ also calls starfield a flop despite it being extremely profitable for Bethesda and Microsoft, it's still a shit game though

>>714973434 (OP)
If it was so sucessful why did they cancel all the DLC?

Twileks but ugly
Stupid dialogs
Bad animation
Trannies

>>714976270
>Wrex
>iconic
after replaying 1 I'm convinced Wrex was memed into being a popular character
he just stands there all moody in the ship and does the meme, his whole thing is he's a krogan who doesn't sound functionally retarded which is such a low bar
Grunt is better in almost every way since he at least has some semblance of a character arc in his puberty mission
Shepard.

>>714976270
Oh yeah, cora the human asari huntress and liam the quirky sociopath. What the fuck where they thinking?
The krogan and turian were alright, and the game was better than i'd heard, but then again, i got it for €2 after years of patching. Still, not something i'd replay.

>>714976821
god they looks SO stupid
especially the women
The designs of the eyes just don't work

>>714976821
i wish i still had the sonic edits

>>714973434 (OP)
It has nice Adventure Gameplay when you're on the Nexus or on planet Aya. The two "Citadel" hubs in the game. I like the part where Pebee is found drunk and you can keep flirting with her.

>>714977785
>browncel latinx likes the game
Im not surprised

if you enjoy mass effect, andromeda is laughably terrible

if you are a retard and new to gaming, andromeda is mostly positive (74%)

>>714973716
I think the concept of running away to Andromeda was always doomed to fail.
People want more of the setting established in the trilogy, not lame discount versions of their characters and planets. There are zero interesting plot hooks or characters who would make players invested in their new setting. It's funny since the entire game is sequelbait.

>>714976821
People wouldn't hate them so much if they weren't the only new alien species.

>>714973434 (OP)
I bought it full price on day one.

>>714979023
It's funny because when I think of Shepard as a character I think he's terribly written and closer to an action figure than any believable human. But then I also realize this is the only way you could realistically write a protagonist who saves the galaxy without being too melodramatic and getting caught up in personal dispute which bog down the scale of the narrative.

I think Andromeda definitely suffered form that and it's why I think they're likely to pull the emergency Lazarus 2.0 to get Shepard back. Or a similar character who only exists to repeat things they just heard in the form of a question.

>>714979767
I liked the idea of Shepard having PTSD in 3. The nightmares focusing on one random kid were just a really dumb way to show it.

>>714979364
There are no Mass Relays in Andromeda, so you are stuck in a single cluster, that's why there are no other species.

>>714976821
They will return and you WILL be happy

>>714980206
It was so retarded it gave birth to the indoctrination theory, which was their only out to how clumsy it was. There's still people discussing this theory seriously in 2025. And of course the writers completely denied it because they're hacks.

Does Andromeda has sexy aliens?

Vetra my beloved.

>>714975029
dude the original trilogy was utter dogshit so its not really hard to improve on

>>714980607
>We weren't that smart
We know. The fact Shephard interacted so much with Reapers/Reaper tech and never got indoctrinated was stupid

>>714980815
combat, that is

>>714973434 (OP)
I just finished it this last weekend and I thought it was ok. Not near as good as the original trilogy (which I played right before Andromeda). The main problem I have with it is that its too much of a open world game, filled with bullshit disguised as "content". It wasn't even as woke as I thought it would be, I got surprised when I saw "choose Man or Woman" at the beginning, instead of "Body Type 1" and "Body Type 2". Than I thought, maybe Peebee or Cora will be insuferable bitches, which Cora kinda is, but Peebee is very sweet tho.

I liked a buch of things, the combat was awesome (despite clearly limited by the fact that console players had to play it too), I like the fact that feels like a PC game using the whole keyboard as a shortcut for something, I like the premisse of the game, I like the villain at first, I like the Angara and the general plot of the Heleus Cluster, I also like some of the teamates, Cora and the Nigger were kinda mid as per usual with the human companions, but the rest were pretty cool, specially Drack and Jaal.

The bad part is that it overstay its welcome, way too long with dumb quests that make you go back and forth having to watch unskippable cutscenes everytime you try to leave our arrive at a planet. The NPCs were AWFUL looking, like can't even tell wtf went wrong in development, I feel like the benefactor plot went nowhere, barely a mention to the reapers (to be fair most of the galaxy didn't believe the reapers up until one landed on top of his house), the Kett motivation fell flat at the ending, I also didn't like the fact that you can choose whatever class you want along the game (I much rather prefer to commit to something at the start and have 8 skills avaiable for use during combat), the dialogues felt like it didn't change much at all, they fucked up with the female Krogan design.
Overall? Decent game, don't deserve the hate it gets. 7/10.

>>714976272
3 is not good

>>714980832
Eh most of the tech he interacted with either proxy of the Reapers or dead Reapers. The field of indoctrinate only emit from alive reapers.

>>714980607
they went out of their way to create computer logs where indoctrination dreams are explained in detail

boils down to:
nightmare with "oily shadows" and reaper *BOOOM* noises. which is 1 by 1 whats happening to shepard.
still don't understand why they did this

>>714980775
>only cute turian girl romance is stuck in the worst ME
>only cute dwarf girl romance is stuck in the worst DA

>>714981334
IT'S NOT FAIR

>>714980354
Writers creating a new problem so they can excuse doing less work.
More likely they planned to do more aliens, but could only finish the angarans in time and decided to scrap/save the other species for a sequel.

>>714981334
I find DA to have mostly shit romance options
Only character I liked was Morrigan

>>714981454
Weren't Asari meant to be attractive due to mental fuckery?
Jesus

>>714981094
if TIM and Saren got indoctrinated it's not that far off for Shepard to be indoctrinated or at least have some psychic struggle against Sovereign during the final battle
it's just retarded that their genuine, honest to god intent with the ghost kid character was having it be an avatar of the crucible that also represents Shepard's....guilt? PTSD? who the fuck knows

oh btw here's an extended cut DLC with a new ending where that same kid has a reaper voice lol
unironically the most disappointment I've ever felt in a video game because I played the original ending and the "refuse" ending was just another kick in the balls

>>714981493
Yeah, I agree. Didn't like anyone in DAO. I kinda liked the guard lady in DA2 but she's not avaible for romance.
DAI at least had that hardass seeker woman, she was decent.

>>714980363
According to Mark Darrah, that game is gone, and Bioware are scrambling to come up with what the new game is supposed to be. It's gonna be another year of pre-production most likely and even then ... 2028 is the earliest we'll see it, but it's unlikely it will actually hit shelves in 2028. My guess is Q4 2029.

>>714980985
Which reddit post did you steal that one from?

>>714981827
I hope to God DA:V was a wake up call
If not, ME and DA are dead, fucking dead

>>714981050
3 has a lot of problems but whenever it does something right it's peak Mass Effect.

>>714981050
It is, indeed, not good.

>>714981334
FemTurs need to hang next to FemQuars.
Harding is awful in Veilguard, she was a non-character in Inquisition.

>>714981587
Seren literally sat inside Sovereign and actually been with it longer. We can assume that MIT also spend a lot longer with active reapers tech than normal human should. Indoctrinate take time to actually work, not 5 minutes interaction.

I think it was just the writer bad attempt at characterization of Shepard

>>714981334
>worst ME
It's not 3.

>>714981664
DA2 romance is fun...if you play Rivalry romance since you and your love interest butt heads a lot.

>>714981573
They only sent the inbred asari to Andromeda as a joke.

>>714981924
The game was rebooted, because the previous one was inactive for 18 months. The idea that Veilguard of all games is going to be Bioware's wake up call, when they missed
>DA2
>ME3
>DA:I
>ME:A
>Anthem
is wishful thinking at best. Bioware will continue working as if nothing was ever wrong, and nothing ever affected them, and especially not you chuds that hate the gays and the minorities, because you're homophobes, and racists and nazis. In fact, they'll put even more of those, to spite you even harder. Because that's how Bioware thinks.

>>714982096
>Rivalry romance
The hell is that even, a hatefucking route?

>>714975327
if the company that made the game admits it didn't succeed financially, then it didn't and it doesn't matter how much cope you huff, it doesn't change the fact that it flopped

>>714982016
Considering how much of a threat Shephard poses, you'd think the Reapers would try as hard as possible to indoctrinate him...

I have tried to play Andromeda and I simply couldn't finish it. It is definitely a product of the 2010s. Feels like all those Young Adults movies/novels that were popular during those times. The dialogue is shit compared to the original trilogy.

>>714982267
Yes, the best is Isabella where Hawke keep bragging her into helping people until she snap and angrily told Hawke that she only return to help the city because of Hawke

>>714982016
yeah I get that I'm just pointing out that it's at least somewhat plausible and not that far fetched to assume Shepard can get indoctrinated or at least fights off an indoctrination attempt
compared to their intended narrative where Shepard has nightmares of a child that no one else interacts with in-game, that likely isn't real, and just comes out of nowhere
it really stands out as one of the all time fuck ups in writing that you have to attribute some ulterior motive to make any sense of it, just goes to illustrate how retarded the writers were that they were that lost when TNG and DS9 solved space operas decades ago

>>714982184
If that was canon, I would actually like Andromeda a bit more
lmao
>>714982203
I fully admit its wishful thinking, because thats all there is left until Bioware is shut down

>>714981827
When did this happen? Is the Human Revolution writer still there or should I abandon my last bit of hope?

>>714982309
I mean they did try to kill him in the 2nd games multiple times. The problem is that they haven't have a chance to come close to him. Even indoctrinate need prolong exposure

>>714981094
You literally go inside a dead one in 2, it's where you meet Legion

>>714982326
>We have Collectors at home.

>>714982524
I guess I just don't get why Bioware decided not to explore Shephard and indoctrination. Its only used as a tool for people to help the reapers. As far as I recall there isn't even much concern about it from Shephard or the Normandy crew
And the ending in general was just fucking lazy and shit

>>714982523
When did the reboot happen? When Veilguard launched, and after the "restructuring" of Bioware, at which point, what was left of the studio, gradually shifted to working on Mass Effect. By both Mike Gamble's and Mark Darrah's accounts, they went back to preproduction of the next Mass Effect, after the game had already been in pre-production since mid 2019 to mid 2023, at which point all of the ME team was shifted to work on Veilguard. Now they're expecting another year of pre-production, maybe 2, meaning that the previous iteration was entirely shitcanned, and now with a dedicated team they can work on the next ME. Mary DeMarle is still there, but she was a co-writer in HR, a lead in MD, which was not that well received, a lead in Guardians of the Galaxy, which tanked, and I don't really have much hope for this. Guardians of the Galaxy is very much like Veilguard in terms of writing. Even Veilguard has 2-3 scenes where you can kinda see that there was something, at some point, but it is buried under a mountain of the worst Whedon-isms known to man. Mary DeMarle is not the person to save Mass Effect. She can make a mid one, which is better than Andromeda's and Veilguard's shit. At best, you might get an Inquisition writing tier game, which is very mid.

>>714983104
I said alive Reaper and long exposure. That reaper was dead and they were in there like a hour.

>>714976774
Keep in mind that was STORY DLC as well. They ultimately had to try and salvage it with comics.

>>714983416
ME3 was good at closing the other major plot thread (Quarian/Geth conflict and the Genophage). But it seem like the writers couldn't come up with a satisfy way to end the Reaper threat. They also need to finally give an answer about the motivation of the Reapers. Really just stick with the "we need to breed and new reapers can only be make with organic juice" would be better,

>>714983636
I think indoctrination theory folks usually point to Arrival and the various reaper tech Shep interacts with across all 3 games, not just one event or another
It's just that as a plot device it makes much more sense and has more narrative buildup than MAGIC CRUCIBLE WITH A GHOST CHILD INSIDE wo00ooo00ooo

>>714983961
I always thought that the child is just the catalyst taking a form that Shepard can be comfortable with. Would be better if the Catalyst take the form of your squadmates or Anderson

>>714974872
Then why mention the reviews brainlet. You don't tell someone your toenail length when they asked for age. Mongo.

>>714983447
Thanks for putting this all together. Yeah I agree DeMarle won't magically save this franchise but I'd take a decent ME2 retread from her. Something small scale and focused on crime. That's the only path forward that isn't a complete reboot. I doubt they'll ever make a straight sequel to 3 with Shepard as the hero again.

>>714981094
>The field of indoctrinate only emit from alive reapers.
Did you miss the entire IFF mission in 2?
You should replay it, some of the best writing in the trilogy.
>Chandana said the ship was dead. We trusted him. He was right. But even a dead god can dream. A god — a real god — is a verb. Not some old man with magic powers. It's a force. It warps reality just by being there. It doesn't have to want to. It doesn't have to think about it. It just does. That's what Chandana didn't get. Not until it was too late. The god's mind is gone but it still dreams. He knows now. He's tuned in on our dreams.

>>714973434 (OP)
the combat and graphics are good but terrible writing

>>714973434 (OP)
>5 million sold
At least 3 million of those sales were for under $10. I picked it up for $5 last year.

>>714973575
>>only retards buy it
the implication here is that the people of /v/ are not retards, which is very funny

>>714973434 (OP)
a 300 million dollars game selling 5 millions is a flop anon. And consider that many of those millions were sold at a discount because the game was doing badly enough it got price drops within weeks of its release. The game is selling for 8 fucking dollars right now and when it was released it was completely broken, so also take into account the money it took to patch it too. The game was a mega flop.

>>714984276
The bigger issue is, even with Mary DeMarle writing it, the character design. None of these people look like anything you'd wanna hang out with. And what's worse is who are you going to use in 2029 to drum up interest? Jayde Rossi isn't selling your game. You can't have nobodies, and no face scans, when trying to do a realistic look won't work either. Bioware aren't CDPR to come out with Witcher 3 level faces that I don't even know if they had actual face models. Are we getting primarily Canadian Pajeets to model? We obviously aren't getting Natalie Dormer face scanned. I get not wanting Shepard and co. because fuck up potential is high, but am I really gonna give a shit about Bioware's new fanfic reject OCs? Am I expected to? And even if writing is passably good, but we end up with Taash level looking characters, do I even care to spend my time with these people? Do I want to get to know them, in the first place? Obviously not. So investment probability is below average. Bioware's gotta do something about all that.

>>714973434 (OP)
Is five million a lot? Does it cover game and marketing budget?

>>714973434 (OP)
5 million times $10 is only $50, Anon

>>714984843
Do any Star Wars games have alien protagonists? I can only remember a cancelled Darth Maul game.
Anyway, I'm very glad we got Cal instead of another girlboss protagonist.

>>714974993
fuck off Vrook, don't you have a padawan to radicalize or something?

>>714984843
The issue is that there isn't much of a potential for a non-human protagonist in a SW game.
Vast majority of people will play human, much like in BG3.
You can maybe get away with a cute Twi'lek or Togruta, maybe Miralukans, or a Zabrak, but it's gonna have some impact on sales.
Nobody's playing Wookies, Ewoks, Bothans, Rhodians, Sulustans or Gamorreans.

>>714985659
If EA had any braincells left they'd fire and replace their entire art and character modeling team.
The lack of quality control from the suits above really is baffling. You don't have to be a gamer to realize you're making an ugly looking product.

>>714986242
I mean a lot of people picked Qunari and elf in DAI. You just need to make the alternative race look cool and has unique experience

>>714986336
THe problem is that EA already fired/replace all of the people with experience. EA don't want long-term workers because they don't want seniority pay so they rotate the old guards out, recruit a bunch of new kids, let them make a game then rotate them out too for a new batch.

>>714986396
Yes, but very few compared to how many picked human male fighter. And even then, how many of those that picked elf or Qunari did so as their second playthrough, and not the first? And how many of those that picked Elf are Solawives? The lowest of the low of the DA playerbase.

>>714973434 (OP)
A lot of bad games don't flop, like Andromeda and Starfield. People on 4chan can't distinguish between financial success and quality; which is why they consider their favorite game, Deus Ex, to be the best selling game of all time; despite it taking 9 years to reach 1 million copies sold.

TL;DR /v/ishnu is retarded.

>>714986336
I've been saying for years now, Matt Rhodes needs to go. His art has regressed, and everything that comes out of the art department is shit, and he is Bioware's lead artist. He's still there, apparently.

>>714986604
It helped in DAO that picking your race led to a different introduction act

>>714986790
Nobody takes the time, or resources to go through that anymore. You'd think that would help with each DA having a new protagonist, so they'd put the effort for Origins, but no. So fuck them.

>>714986947
DA2 was rushed by EA while DAI make every origin has a reason to be at the temple when it blew up and let you fill in the background later. IDK about Veilguard

>>714986549
But where is the quality control? They'll see characters who look like this become laughingstocks tanking the sales of their games, but will just keep doubling down and hiring bad artists.
Unironically the "We want the Call of Duty audience!" days were better for BioWare.

>>714987132
>DAI make every origin has a reason to be at the temple when it blew up
Oh, you got some flavor text?
That's AAA production values for you.

>>714987169
Veilguard production was a shitshow EA basically sent it out to die so why bother with quality control. They want the project they had so much trouble with to end and at least get back some money.

>>714987132
Veilguard had factions you can choose and there is text about it. The game starts the same, AFTER Varric already met you and recruited you to help against Solas so you can go right to the action (dumb). So depending on your faction people comment about your past. Really tired of the modern trope of instead of experiencing backstory its just told to you later

>>714987169
See >>714982203
>Bioware will continue working as if nothing was ever wrong, and nothing ever affected them, and especially not you chuds that hate the gays and the minorities, because you're homophobes, and racists and nazis. In fact, they'll put even more of those, to spite you even harder. Because that's how Bioware thinks.

>>714987382
From the POV of the out-of-touch project managers and the CEOs, it make perfect sense for them to do so. Why bother wasting resource on things that only a small portion of players will see?

>>714983636
It indoctrinated the cerberus guys in like a week or less so clearly it's still able to

>>714987337
Seems like they will do the same thing with the next Mass Effect though. Maybe they will try a little harder this time since they care more about the i.p. and want to tie it into the upcoming Amazon show? But the executives seem too afraid of looking like the the bad guy to really whip Bioware back into shape.

>>714987132
veilguard gives characters backgrounds but then waters them down
antivan crows became freedom fighters loved by their city, the only tevinter faction is working to free slaves, the mercenary origin only takes moralfag jobs, etc

>>714987843
It's not that the execs don't meddle and don't send mandates, but other than that, they don't deal with the specifics. Like, they will tell Bioware to make a Live Service game, or an MP game, or an MMO, or a cosmetic monetization store, etc. But they won't tell Bioware to put a tranny in the game, and make her look like the Greek PM.

>>714988035
Not to mention the Lords of Fortune, that "liberate" cultural artifacts and give them back to their people. So they can sit in a cave, somewhere, where nobody will ever see them.
They belong in a museum!

>>714988052
No, they focus test to see what is "hip" with the kids these days and made mandate for the dev to add in those things.

>>714973434 (OP)
It's not bad. Not Great but it's good for a playthrough. Characters are more grounded than ME1-3 and the combat system is more mobile but fundamentally the same.

>>714988052
We already know that's not true, Thane was added to ME2 specifically because execs wanted a new alien that Femshep could romance.

>>714988178
>"hip" with the kids these days
Veilguard is rated M, for whatever reason.
It's not for kids.
College dudes won't be playing an aggressively mid action game, to fuck a dude.
College girls are busy fucking the football team.
People with disposable income don't care what's hip with the kids, because they're not kids anymore.

>>714973434 (OP)
The biggest problem with ME: Andromeda is the writing. The character development is just terrible. It's as though Bioware hired dopey high school kids to do the writing. The characters are so dumb, shallow, and juvenile. It's like a "High School Musical 5: The Saviors of the Universe". The game is set in a time of existential war and yet at no point do you ever feel like these dingbat characters are capable of any kind of heroics. Visually, the textures are gorgeous and some of the landscapes are beautiful. The combat is okay but the whole game is ruined by the horrendously amateur and childish writing.

>>714988261
>execs
That was the ME team. John Ricciotelo didn't pass the ME team a note saying give this bitch another LI or you're fired. It didn't come from above, or outside the studio. It's like saying that Baldur's Gate needed a villain, so Sarevok was an executive decision.

>>714988381
Anon, those are out-of-touch CEO who like to watch the line go up, do you think they actually know what is "hip" with the kids?

>>714988381
The script is written like it's for kids with awkward swearing and sex jokes randomly inserted. Everyone is best friends and there is never any personal conflict or edge.

>>714973434 (OP)
It killed the development studio. There’s no argument against it being a bomb.

>>714988450
>>The biggest problem with ME: Andromeda is the writing
While I do agree, and there is not a single line of worthwhile dialogue in the entire game, other than the pew pew, nothing works in Andromeda's favor. Character design is shit, level design is shit, encounter design is shit, the QA is shit, everything is shit in this game. Andromeda is a catastrophic failure for the franchise. It is a wonder how another one is even being made at all, and who the fuck had the bright idea of greenlighting in the first place? But, according to Mark Darrah, it is quite likely that, while EA won't outright kill it, it can starve it to death.

>>714973434 (OP)
There are no official sales figures released for the game. The google AI telling you 5 million is not accurate.
The game was also a critical failure on launch. It was panned by critics and players alike.
The game didn't release on steam until years after its launch, so those steam reviews are not relevant. The game was put on ice long before it released on steam.

>>714988582
If you're not making a game for kids, it shouldn't matter what's hip with the kids.

>>714988669
The game is still rated M, which means it isn't for kids.

>>714988941
>If you're not making a game for kids, it shouldn't matter what's hip with the kids.
That not how the CEO thing, it not just "hip" for the kids but "hip" for the target audiences. (i just you the hip for kid as an example). CEO like to chase trends because they think that they can make a lot of money chasing trends and negate any responsible on their part ("it not my fault, I was just chasing the trend")

>>714973716
>It didn't sell giga units like EA wanted
Maybe if they stopped making bloated budget games it wouldn't flop with five million sales.

>>714988941
Neither is Call of Duty but we all played it as kids.

>>714989352
The ultimate example of this is GTA

>>714988450
One of the writers said they wanted the same tone as a C.W. show.

>>714989297
But...but...bigger numbers mean bigger profit...right?

>>714989505
really???

>>714973434 (OP)
is it better than ME1,2,3? no? its a flop

>>714989201
30 year old men don't care about LGBTQ representation.
At the very least, if the point was to make it an action game, they should have made sure the action part was worthwhile, and not a fucking chore.

>>714989352
I am not responsible for bad parenting, and companies shouldn't try and base income for their M rated games on it.

>>714989590
It's real, son.

>>714973434 (OP)
The combat is fun but the rpg part is bad. I hate the humor, millennial writing, characters, and its a worse retread of ME1.

>>714989297
Again, selling 3.5 million out of those 5 million copies at an average sale price of $10, storefront share not withstanding, isn't a smart tactic. Veilguard will likely reach those numbers, by 2028, at an average sale price of $5.

>>714973434 (OP)
Beep Boop
Andromeda EA tranny shill thread

>>714973434 (OP)
No choice, bad dialog options 9/10 times, 80% of the games content is just boring busy work.
Crew mostly sucks, Ryder is a little nepo baby bitch

>>714973434 (OP)
I call this the FF8 effect, incredible sales due to previous entry, but ultimately tarnishes the franchise permanently and its effects are felt in the next entry (or lack thereof), this one is a bit special since 3 was shit but the series had enough goodwill by that point that it managed to do well

>>714989742
>Ryder is the protagonist from an action movie from the 2000s
???????

>>714973434 (OP)
Disregard all other answers, these faggots weren't there.
The game was insanely buggy on launch but even with all the bugs fixed it was underwhelming. Characters and dialogue and plot are garbage compared to the OT, it's like Joss Whedon writing teens in space instead of military navy exploration drama from before. The combat, though slick, is surprisingly shallow (I can write a whole post about this). The new galaxy is incredibly uninteresting, the angara/kett feel like they're right out of Starfield with how bland they are.
The only truly cool thing about Andromeda was the driving. The Mako 2.0 was great. Game also has one of the best HDR implementations ever. But other than that it was a failure that sucked out ALL excitement for future Mass Effects, and it ended up shuttering the studio.

>>714990073
But I like FF8...

>>714985925
Jedi Academy if you play as one

>>714985925
Jedi Academy let you choose between Human, Twi'lek and a few other races.

>>714976272
That is accurate. Best gaming trilogy, with each game having its unique strengths and weaknesses. Avoid anything that came/will come after (the people pretending to be Bioware are apparently making a new ME skinsuit which I hope people will not support).

>>714976272
Yeah.

>>714979023
Andromeda also made the mistake of going to another galaxy and having only two new species, one of which were the bad guys. Could have just shipped the arks through an unexplored relay instead and have the game set during the two years Shep was dead.

>>714982016
Shepard did the following
>literally converse with sovereign
>come across dozens of reaper worship sites
>been inside a dead reaper
>fought a reaper embryo
>slept at the foot of object rho for over an hour
>talked to Harbinger psychically
>been on several worlds full of reapers, fighting at least one face to face
>stood face to face with a leviathan that also indoctrinates
>stood in the presence of the reaper supra intelligence or whatever the fuck star child was
Theres plenty of encounters for him to be indoctrinated but not yet a slave

>>714991716
>stood face to face with a leviathan that also indoctrinates
Can't they indoctrinate someone instantly? Or am I misremembering

>>714992098
We know reapers flare their indoctrination feild when approaching organics. The Dock workers on eden prime say the heard screaming coming from inside their mind as Sovereign entered atmosphere. The Leviathans were indoctrinating through their artifacts from across the galaxy, so Shepard should have been getting Bombarded with indoctrination waves from the moment he entered that lab on the citadel.

>>714973434 (OP)
>5 million copies sold
lifetime after sales and such, not near launch
>check steam reviews
>mostly positive (74%)
those people self selected over the years so of course they're going to be happy with their decision

>>714973434 (OP)

How come no one has modded the game to be fun? Something like story and characters should be an easy fix no?

>>714980607
>ending so awful that fans come up with a retarded theory just to pretend the ending never happend and was just a dream/hallucinaton
I can't think of anything more damning than that

>>714992506
Because a game needs something to make people want to play more of it to make a mod. Andromeda's best aspect is the MP which can't really be modded.

>>714973434 (OP)
>normies invade gaming
>reward shitty game devs
>normies invade internet
>immediately start grooming kids and enforcing social justice

>>714992098

I don’t think so. The speed at which they do indoctrinate someone determines how useful that person is, though. Given that they wanted Shepard at near-full capacity as ME2 would indicate, they would have tried to slowly indoctrinate him.

You now remember ME3 had a year if development time cut, and the ending was so bad fans had to make a achizo theory that none of it was real to explain how horribly executed it was.

MARAUDER SHIELDS

>>714975461
who's coping? you're the one making a thread trying to shill andromeda lol

>>714982307
But EA literally said the sales numbers were good?

>>714973434 (OP)
It was honestly just ok, not amazing but not bad either.

>>714982326
Can't help feel that the plot would have been far more satisfying if these guys had been the ones to peacefully welcome the Andromada initiative in 'exhalted harmony', whilst the Angara guys initially fight and resist them as outsiders. THEN LATER we find that the worlds of the cluster were initially Angaran, and the 'welcome' the Kett want for us is to become Kett too. It's not the most subtle of plot-twists, but still better then the morality plot we got.

>>714973434 (OP)
You must have missed the recent article where EA said they expect the next Battlefield to do 100 million concurrent. The people running that company are utterly and completely disconnected from reality. I wouldn't even hazard a guess as to what their sales expectations were for Mass Effect 4.

>>714974063
>improve the combat
>make the multiplayer worse
I don't know how they did it. I put like 40 extra hours into ME3 just enjoying the multiplayer.

>>714973434 (OP)
anon 5 mil is pocket change.for a vidya that costed shy of 80 mil usd thats nothing. dont forget EA killed dead space just because the third one sold only 6-7 mil saying it wasnt enough and that was like 10 years ago

>>714983884
dark energy plot unironically fixes this
>reapers are the least energy consuming state of matter and they can house an entire species in one unit like Legion
>the relays are the most efficient energy consuming means for interstellar travel so they can prevent organics from using less efficient means they would develop on their own
>reapers want to delay the heat death of the universe which is accelerated by FTL travel and curious organics
>they keep genociding organics every 50k years but they keep coming back
>you can keep all the shit from leviathan but make this their motive
>now "salvation through destruction" and all the other cryptic bullshit makes some sense
you now also have actual tension in the story and a real moral choice outside of RGB

>>714976442
You shouldn't give money to EA, it doesn't matter if it's five or 50 dollars.

What's with gamers overly hating games

>>714992506
Not worth the effort learning how to mod Frostbite.

Why were they stupid enough to double down on the cringe for Failguard? Trannies?

>>714975312
Yeah, before the final patch, the enemies would continuously scale but your weapons were stuck at intervals. So when you were level 29, the enemy was 30. But your guns were 21. It made Insanity kind of a slog.

>>714993218
So good that they shutdown Bioware Montreal!

>>714993218
So good that they shutdown Bioware Montreal!

>>714993570
I think the dark energy ending would have been shit on too, just for different reasons. Most people still would have chosen to destroy the Reapers and complained about the game punishing you for it and not taking into account any past choices.

>>714994129
Bioware Montreal was created in 2009 (during development of ME2) to support Bioware Edmonton; they did DLC for ME2 and ME3. They were always meant to be a support team, both in Bioware's roadmap and in EA's roadmap, never meant to be a primary developing team. Especially after losing so many human assets (most of the people who cared about ME bailed after ME3) and, in a related circumstance, having a newbie team switch all of their digital assets over to Frostbite because EA requires all of their teams to use the same tools so devs can be shuffled around as needed... not the kind of atmosphere for devs who care deeply about their projects, as the Andromeda team has learned.
EA has always been upfront about stripping Montreal assets after Andromeda, which makes all of the recent "no sequel because Andromeda did not do well" talk doubly BS... they've been saying this would happen since at least as far back as 2014, and their recent financials show that ME:A was a strong economic success with "record Q1 profits". EA just used the rocky reception as an excuse to do what they have been saying they would do all along, but this way it wasn't evil EA who killed a beloved franchise, it was bad press and you and me.
Bioware Edmonton will be working on the Anthem series for almost a decade, if things go as planned. Bioware Austin and EA Motive are developing Star Wars IP for Disney for the foreseeable future. And EA has been saying, since at least 2014, that they want Bioware to work on new IP. Which was mentioned at the same time they announced ME:A, which should have made more fans of ME nervous.

For fans, ME:A looked like a new beginning. For EA, it was a training exercise to get their support team up to speed on how EA works. And now that the team is up to speed on EA's workflow, EA did what they've been saying they would do all along and absorbed the team to work on other projects.

>>714994606
I think a not-small number of fans choosing to think "and then Shepard woke up" was the true ending tells you something about RGB. Dark energy plot would have been infinitely better, and opens up the possibility to continue the franchise past the reaper threat. They literally wrote themselves into a corner for absolutely no reason. Wasted 3 games of potential for a magic mcguffin beam. No further elaboration, no ulterior motives, no moral choices. Just big black robutts who spout lovecraftian bullshit for no reason.