#I saw way too many edits on youtube and kinda went ham

[screamn-robo-drawin]

Here he is! Created SubUwU for a specific meme I saw and it would not leave my head. Very enegetic, he will be paired with a Yugo (Zastava 101) who helps him with directing his focus on the matter at hand, that is rally races.

[rahkshirock]

Andromeda thoughts: midnight edition

mass effect is an interesting topic because it is a lot of people’s formative game series. i can respect that

personally I grew up with educational homeschool games like leapfrog, reading rabbit, cluefinders and fucking zoombinis

I got pretty deep into bionicle too but my folks wouldn't buy the games for me.

my first experience with a real plot was starcraft, which was pitch black toned sci-fi with a straight up villain victory at the end

in highschool i finally got some freedom and got portal 2, deus ex: human revolution and a little later, dishonored. throw in a little bioshock mass effect and halo, but only the first of each. mostly i watched let’s plays

so recently, since i’m not financially or educationally drowning, I am catching up on the series i kinda missed. most recently, Mass Effect.

I first played Mass Effect 1 in freshman year of college while procrastinating. I didn’t have a lot of fun, and it was the steam version that doesn’t have any dlc, so I stopped a few missions into 2, since the draw of the series is porting your character and decisions into the next game

3 years later, I finally acquired the entire mass effect series, including all dlc, and played through beginning to end, 100% completion of all quests, all side content, romancing garrus with femshep

and it was good. I enjoyed it. objectively speaking however, it has some issues. there are a few series retrospectives on youtube that explain this better than I can, but to put it simply:

mass effect 1′s intro is ham-fisted and frontloads you with 3 bad guys (including the reapers with no setup) in the first 30 minutes, before you even take control of the Normandy. structurally however, it was sound. the mako sections broke up the main missions, and so the pacing was alright despite only having 5 main missions (getting liara, stopping the thorian, stopping benezia, virmire, illos/citadel) and most people didn’t like the mako levels because the levels didn't like the mako and its stupid physics model. the ending was solid however, and ended on a fun optimistic note

mass effect 2 managed to have at once a more realistic, down to earth setting, a more personal story, and the most highlights of the series. Most people consider this to be the best one, and for some of the game, it is! however, the main plot and the suicide mission broke down for me because 1. you only fight the collectors 3 times, 2. legion, an intensely interesting squad member was locked behind the threat of losing my crew by getting him before 2 missions from the end, and 3. I put zaeed as the secondary squad leader in the protect the engineer part, and tali got shot in the face with a fucking rocket launcher. it took me out of the whole experience because I had to load a previous save, and looking it up, the assignments feel arbitrary. Miranda can lead the mission despite jack JUST saying she’s a horrible leader? but the founder of the blue suns can’t? what? what clues did I have to sniff out to prevent a VERY IMPORTANT CHARACTER from dying?

all I'm saying is, me2 is great, but it’s structured badly. it is a series of short stories, not all of which are even tangentially related to the existing universe.

also Jacob Taylor “I didn't think the alliance was doing enough to help people so I quit and joined a FUCKING TERRORIST ORGANIZATION EXPLICITLY FOR HUMAN SUPREMACY” “also if you romance me I cheat on you in the 3rd game” is the worst character in the game and I had to LOOK UP how not to trip into accidentally romancing him because just being nice can trigger that flag and his loyalty mission is FUCKED as far as implications go.

and ME3, while having the highest hights in the series (Tuchunka, Rannock) also undeniably has the lowest, with an ending that will be recorded as the worst ending to a good series of all time, and its main plot is inconsistent and generally poorly written before it completely breaks down in the 3rd act.

all of this proves that good games don't have to be perfect, and that a game can still be fun even if you hate the way its written (ME3)

so then I saw that Andromeda was only 20 dollars, and even though I had heard it was a tire fire of a game, I picked it up

after 115 hours, I can say that I do not understand gamers. this is not only a worthy mass effect game, it is the best one in its entirety. the volume of joy I’ve gotten from this game is equivalent to what I got from the ENTIRE original trilogy. the space you explore is tightly focused, and yet deep and richly detailed.

after 2 games, they finally reintroduced a working vehicle and designed levels around it. they tightened the cast and made your entire crew, not just your squadmates, interactable and fun. gone is the pseudo-military backdrop of the first game: npcs and squadmates come from a variety of backgrounds, from rescuing people from natural disasters, a human who trained with asari commandoes, or a turian smuggler who you would EXPECT to be the new Garrus, but instead puts on a minigun and tech armor. drack and peebe are definitely archetypal of the asari adepts and krogan battlemasters weve had through the series but heres the thing

tropes are not bad

take one facet of the new villain: the kett. they like to make more kett by injecting other species with a serum that causes them to mutate into them borg stile

now mass effect has had this as a plot point since minute 3 of the first mission of the first game: humans are turned into husks. 

however, how do characters react to these revelations?

just joking. in the original mass effect there is exactly one asari who is scarred mentally after she was attacked by a banshee that used to be part of her squad.

1 character, at the end of the series reacts to the tech zombies in a meaningful way.

1.

meanwhile, every squad member has thoughts on this revelation. jaal, the Angaaran squad mate, who has been fighting kett for decades French resistance style, grapples with the revelation for the rest of the game. you see many other resistance fighters give up, unable to kill those who used to be Angaarans, others you find are galvanized by the atrocity. every plot point has people in-game debating the implications. every party member of course gives you a personal loyalty mission, but they also ask for small favors, ask stupid questions, go on their own with big plans and need to be helped out of sticky situations. even if you think that the characters are cliché (which they aren’t) they have such a volume of interactions that each is fully fleshed out only a third of the way through the game, and continued to grow and change perspectives, arguing and falling in love. the loyalty missions are often main-plot relevant and sometimes wacky one-offs that bring in minor characters. I heard that if you want, you can steamroll through the game without stepping foot on 3 different planets, but that's not my style, and the final battle incorporates the allies you’ve made into gameplay seamlessly, tying off nearly every single combat capable person from the story’s plotline, in a sequence that puts HALO to shame.

on hard difficulty with 100 percent completion, I got the golden ending, and saw a LOT of people come to help me. even so, it was excruciatingly difficult, and I had to utilize every bit of skill and preparation I had to make it through

so to people who said that there are no consequences in this game for your actions? its the first entry in a new series so sure they can only kill minor characters. I get that. 

so they went for pure gameplay effect on said final battle. you can have very few people assist you at all.

I at least would not have made it without my effort, and so it was worthwhile and necessary to have done those sidequests. in my book, THAT is what ME3′s ending should have beenlike in the first place.

I don't really have a conclusion other than that yes, Andromeda adds just a few new ideas into the series, and more than a few recycled ones

but iT does it with skill, style, and occasional subtlety. it is, I’d say a GOOD FUCKING GAME, better than the original trilogy except for the very best of 2 and 3.

except for the inventory and weapons crafting system, that can go straight to hell

good night!