The reason I see for people hating it is two fold. First a group of people were still hurt over how ME3 turned out and thus had zero desire to give any break to MEA when it came out. The second reason I see, is that people are comparing MEA to the ENTIRE 1-3 series and all the development that was in them. By the second point, people don't compare MEA to ME1 and say look at the similar character development, but instead look at the entire series and say how shallow the new peeps are compared to Ashley, Liara, Tali, or Garrus of ME3. I also happen to think that Bioware itself fell into the second category as well, forgetting that you don't need to bring EVERYTHING into the game including world building, all in one game.
@mcsupersport wrote:The reason I see for people hating it is two fold. First a group of people were still hurt over how ME3 turned out and thus had zero desire to give any break to MEA when it came out. The second reason I see, is that people are comparing MEA to the ENTIRE 1-3 series and all the development that was in them. By the second point, people don't compare MEA to ME1 and say look at the similar character development, but instead look at the entire series and say how shallow the new peeps are compared to Ashley, Liara, Tali, or Garrus of ME3. I also happen to think that Bioware itself fell into the second category as well, forgetting that you don't need to bring EVERYTHING into the game including world building, all in one game.
I think this sums it up pretty well; I was a big original trilogy fan, but felt burned by the ending (though mostly by how easily it could have been made better with a little more planning), so I was a little skeptical of Andromeda, but was cautiously optimistic about the concept, as exploration was something I always wanted more of from Mass Effect.
However, as I prefer to play on PC i wasn't an early adopter as I was in need of upgrades which got delayed, and delayed some more, to the point that I only finally completed the game for the first time this week, so I have the benefit of having missed all the early technical difficulties, which probably made those who preordered the game more critical of what else was wrong with it.
I on the other hand, really enjoyed it.
I kind of get some of the criticism of the characters, in that a few of them feel very derivative within the series itself, while others didn't grow on me right away; for example I found Liam a bit annoying, and Cora's backstory felt very gimmicky, but then I would actually say they had two of the best loyalty missions (and the loyalty missions were all good). Drack didn't really feel much different from Wrex, but but that's both a good and bad thing, as he was one of my favourites, alongside Vetra.
I do feel like the cast lacked any "normal" characters, as everyone has some kind of hook to them; in ME1 Garrus is basically just a frustrated space-cop (albeit an alien one) while Ash is pretty much just a soldier, which meant she grew as a character because of what happened to her, which is something Andromeda doesn't really have. I often feel like in big, high stakes stories it's good to have a character in a similar situation that you can compare yourself to.
Related to this is that there was also a slight issue with Andromeda opting for the "chosen one" trope; in the original trilogy Shepard is a solider, an N7 sure, but there's nothing otherwise special about them as such, they're just stubborn and refuses to die, whereas being a pathfinder you often feel like you're only special because of SAM. This is further compounded a bit by most of your achievements being based on Remnant tech, so a lot of what you do doesn't feel like you deserved it, because really it was all the work of mysteriously absent old yet advanced aliens whose stuff you could only use because of SAM.
None of these are reasons to hate the game though; when you look back honestly at Mass Effect 1, it's actually a pretty rough game. What it does, it does really well, but it was far from perfect, and it seems strange that some fans of the series couldn't give Andromeda a bit of leeway in order to recognise what it does do well, especially given the mammoth task it had to achieve in transplanting as much as possible of what we loved about Mass Effect into a setting free from the burden of the original trilogy's irreconcilable story.
I thoroughly enjoyed the game; was there stuff I wished they'd done differently? Sure, but I could say that about the other games as well.
@Haravikk wrote:
Related to this is that there was also a slight issue with Andromeda opting for the "chosen one" trope; in the original trilogy Shepard is a solider, an N7 sure, but there's nothing otherwise special about them as such, they're just stubborn and refuses to die, whereas being a pathfinder you often feel like you're only special because of SAM. This is further compounded a bit by most of your achievements being based on Remnant tech, so a lot of what you do doesn't feel like you deserved it, because really it was all the work of mysteriously absent old yet advanced aliens whose stuff you could only use because of SAM.
That's exactly the issue I had with the narrative. Ryder's accomplishments were actually SAM's accomplishments. That's why my favorite part of the game is the final mission, where SAM is almost entirely absent.
Fred_vdp wrote:
Haravikk wrote:Related to this is that there was also a slight issue with Andromeda opting for the "chosen one" trope; in the original trilogy Shepard is a solider, an N7 sure, but there's nothing otherwise special about them as such, they're just stubborn and refuses to die, whereas being a pathfinder you often feel like you're only special because of SAM. This is further compounded a bit by most of your achievements being based on Remnant tech, so a lot of what you do doesn't feel like you deserved it, because really it was all the work of mysteriously absent old yet advanced aliens whose stuff you could only use because of SAM.
That's exactly the issue I had with the narrative. Ryder's accomplishments were actually SAM's accomplishments. That's why my favorite part of the game is the final mission, where SAM is almost entirely absent.
You could argue that this last mission proves that it is indeed Ryder that makes all the difference. 😉
Besides that, there is a reason that this thread is named "This game is a clear example of WTF is wrong with Gamers Today....". (And rightly so.)
Imho the hate train against Andromeda had little to do with fans don't giving it some leeway, there were many other reasons for it and some are more political than game related.
It starts with this ridicules claim that Bioware bowed to the Feminist movement because the Women don't look like supermodels but like normal human (or other 😉 ) beings.
There are some other reasons, but I listen them already more than one time.
So in my opinion, the title of the thread is spot on.
@holger1405 wrote:
It starts with this ridicules claim that Bioware bowed to the Feminist movement because the Women don't look like supermodels but like normal human (or other 😉 ) beings.
Yeah, I didn't understand those kinds of criticisms; I saw various complaints like that before playing, but man, did you see that outfit Vetra wears? That scarf, rawr!
Or more seriously, the armour Cora and Sarissa wear; someone did not want those curves to go unnoticed! Then there's the romance scene with PeeBee. I sometimes wonder if those complaints were solely down to director Adisson having too much rouge on her cheeks. Such a weird complaint to make though.
Other than the technical issues, I haven't really seen any criticisms that I wouldn't consider minor; sure, I hate the "chosen one" trope, but it's never actually spoiled my enjoyment of a game. They could have fully deus ex machina'd the ending like in ME3 and had actual bra burning sequences, but with the same basic gameplay and exploration I'd still have had a blast playing it.
It's easy to focus on the negatives, and I often do, but in the hopes of informing future improvements rather than just to vent. Plus ultimately negatives are only bad if they outweigh the positives.
Anyone legitimately willing to give the game a chance should be able to accept that they don't. It's a good game, it's more Mass Effect, and that's all I wanted (and want).
