#mass effect andromeda spoilers //

[virtualcamelselfies]

Pathfinding 🚀

[not-a-newt]

I just finished lost but not forgotten and Jesus christ I knew that we weren't going to find him alive, but god damn that was wretched

And my dumb ass really said, "it's up to you avitus :) " thinking he'd give me a resounding yes, but god damn I had to pull out the wiki to check my answer afterwards only to realize that I made the WRONG decision, so then I had to redo the entire mission just to change my response at the end to get him to agree to becoming the pathfinder and saving him from turning into a inconsolably depressed alcoholic jesus christ

[bruxbea]

How did that meeting go...at the ME: Andromeda office... casting Alec Ryder...BioWare’s Official Professional Anime War Dad Person A: Okay the plot for Alec is done, who can we get to inflict the most nostalgic, emotional, and possibly even physical damage in say...a tutorial levels amount of time...? Person B: .... Person B: Mr. Krabs? Person A: Mr. Krabs

[birdylion]

I still haven't really grasped the timeline of all of that, but YES! It's such an interesting concept. And then we learn in the game that their histories might not be true, or at least not complete? Give me more

Mass Effect Andromeda is, of course, an imperfect game, but I remain absolutely enchanted with a couple things they did with the Angara still to this day:

1. They’re not a monoculture. Most often in sci-fi when we encounter aliens they’re all one culture. Not so, the Angara. One species, sure, but they’ve got different national identities for want of a better word.

2. Their history of having been space farers, losing that technological capability, losing the historical record of such capability, rediscovering it, and then voyaging out into the stars only to find that the people on other planets in their galactic cluster were also… them is such a meaty concept I want so much more of that

[felassan]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard - Game Informer pages from issue 367 (the cover story from June 18th) [source, two]

Text reads: "Spotlight - Cover Story - Dragon Age: The Veilguard. It's been ten years since the last full-fledged game in the franchise, but BioWare is finally ready to pull back the curtain on what's next for the fantasy world of Thedas. We visited the studio, spoke to the game's creators, and discovered what's changed in the highly anticipated new installment."

[legionofpotatoes]

I know the discourse well is poisoned and no one hates bioware games more than bioware fans, but I am just 🫠 having so much fun with veilguard it's unreal. It is selfishly the dragon age game I always wanted. with less emphasis on cRPG, a more focused story, curated mission based design that spotlights the high fantasy stuff, slowburn structure with companions, significantly less sidequest bloat, and a fully real-time action-oriented combat system that isn't riddled with the growing pains of previous titles. when I first played origins I imagined something almost exactly like this as my ideal version of a sequel; and it was one of those dirty, selfish thoughts that I knew was disrespectful to the then-established DNA of the thing, but I can't help but feel giddy about having it here and now. like down to the shift away from the childishly dark tone and to something more inherently flexible with a baseline aspirational quality. I hate aesthetically depressing games so much. am I not alive right here and right now already

When I say "aesthetically" there though I do mean it. I'm fully on the opposite side when it comes to tone and positions expressed in the story itself. I am just not including that in my analysis because I am not done yet - so please no spoilers! I think I am where most people consider to be the second act, and I definitely have my gripes with the narrative framework and some of the optics, but I won't put the cart before the horse and will see how it wraps things up first. Above that level, in terms of how it presents itself, of how it plays, of how it balances its core pillars - it is such a bioware-ass game and I could not be any cozier in it. So grateful it exists

[quantumghosts]

mass effect andromeda first impressions (generally positive, i'm coming in with low expectations but an open mind):

family!! TWIN!!! canon siblings!!! now that's just fun. also it's cool that even if you make ryder a different ethnicity, you can choose to make ryder sr. his default design or have him look like you. it's really cool that we can create more nuanced or interesting backstories just from that decision alone

immediately noticed and greatly appreciated the drastic improvement in diversity among humans. i've been genuinely stoked about it and no matter how the game turns out i'll always have huge respect to andromeda for this. like the easian options don't look like absolute dogshit LOL it's incredible, and all the face shapes are so unique too without being overly conventionally attractive or anything. like they're all just People and it's really great

love the exploration mechanics - mobility, the scanning, and the jetpack (FINALLY, fucked up that cerberus gets them but shepard doesnt). really love the scanning especially, immediately captures the explorer vibe that i understand why it wasn't there in the trilogy, but still wished for a bit of it anyway so this is scratching that itch for sure

wow we're really kicking things off me2 style huh LOL

really cool to fight alongside ryder sr. and seeing him kick absolute ass, i'm in insanity mode and with him around i literally didn't even need to fire a single shot. it felt like being shepard's squadmate, and after having just replayed the trilogy it felt like a great homage

FEMALE KROGAN FEMALE KROGAN FEMALE KROGANNNN

i hate that i can only pick 3 skills to use, combat mechanics are my least favourite. can't tell how much of it is because i'm on insanity more, how much is because i'm playing an entirely different class than usual (playing scrapper instead of the infiltrator equivalent), and how much is the combat mechanics actually being clumsy lol. but also it genuinely is harder to take cover in this game

idc that they're hostile, the kett are so fuckin cute with their lil monkey faces lmfao can't wait to learn what their deal is

addison and tann can eat my whole ass LOL i just played three games of the council giving me absolute shit, what is with bioware always leaning on interpersonal conflicts that revolve around NPCs completely dismissing and looking down on you in the most actual infuriating and counterproductive ways, they're legit so fucking unprofessional no wonder the nexus went to shit lmfao

WHO DESIGNED THIS FUCKING CONSOLE LMFAO THIS IS THE WORST ERGONOMICS I'VE EVER SEEN, THIS POOR FUCKING TURIAN SOMEONE GET HER A CHAIR???? A CUSHION????? LITERALLY ANYTHING AT ALL???????

[jack-of-ash]

Alec Ryder's entire damn life was a series of fucked-up events

So... are we gonna talk about how fucked up it was for Alec to freeze his dying wife without telling her or their children?

[pani-artz]

Looking for moots/blogs to scream about Baldur's Gate 3

Other fandoms I like to scream about

Dragon Age

Mass Effect

Cyberpunk 2077

The Mandalorian

Bridgerton

Fourth Wing

The Witcher

and more

[thanes-krios]

I'm so excited about whatever Bellara has going on (we really needed more dalish elf companions) but I really hope they've written her to be very different from Merrill and also NOT made her personality to be just a dragon age version of peebee from andromeda

[pentaghast]

hey you just spent 60 to 70 hours getting to know these characters and possibly romancing them? well lets throw in a suicide mission for them where at LEAST one of them dies! teehee this is goooood gaming folks love a shock value death

[hellt00th]

Also I will say Andromeda did do some really awesome nuanced shit with Gil being gay and Jill wanting to have a kid with him. I LIVE for things that challenge the norm and that definitely is one of them that would make a lot of people on tumblr have a god damn aneurysm

[embryhallowed]

What I really need with all my heart is a mod that allows Avitus and Macen to live happily ever after and nothing bad happens to either of them :c

[not-a-newt]

PSA I'm going to be reading the first mass effect andromeda novel, Mass Effect: Nexus Uprising and will be posting spoilers in the form of excerpts and commentary, which will be tagged under #nexus uprising — so if you don't want to see spoilers, you should blacklist that now :)

[skyeknight-hyperfixations]

Personally, choosing 'Newbies' as Pathfinders when they all didn't get much of a formal training....

I like it.

It kinda makes me feel like Scott/Sara won't feel so left out as being the only Pathfinder who was appointed because the original perished.

If players chose to save Raeka and keep Sarissa as Pathfinder, it would pretty much only be Ryder and Macen as the suddenly appointed Pathfinders.

So, I kinda like all of them being newish.

Ryder. Avitus. Vederia. Hayjer.

My go-to Pathfinder squad.

[felassan]

Some snippets from DA dev Luke Barrett on the unofficial BioWare forum, cut for length:

DA:I -

User: "I am still convinced that Bioware cut the healing spells and went with barriers instead because of the Multiplayer." Luke Barrett: I can't speak to any other games directly but I can give a bit of historic context for DAI. The game was initially a more dungeon/linear delving - see how far you can get - experience and there was no barrier of any kind. As a side note: healing has always been a hot topic in design because as soon as you include it there are many other conceits you now need take into consideration for the gameplay - one of which I will call 'the Anders problem'. Anyway, as DAI got the date moved and shifted more into the pseudo-openworld the concept of attrition (see how far you can get before having to return to camp) became less relevant and we needed to help the Players have more moment-to-moment agency around their survival. Unfortunately for various reasons (one of which is the sad reality of designing a game with a shifting timeline) the healing couldn't be re-added so we ended up with more of a mitigation strategy in the barrier system. It went through a lot of iterations but eventually landed on what it shipped with which I would call... acceptable (but just barely). Now, I will concede that a part of the reason it didn't return after that shift was an aversion to holy trinity gameplay specifically for MP but it wasn't the core reason. As a side story, trying to balance the game (as that was my job on DAI - and yes, it could be much better haha) we had to all but force Players to take barrier. It is intentionally the first skill in the first tree for the Mage and all the autolevel (I also handled that) is designed to get it right away." [source]

User: "Merry Christmas Luke! Sooo what was the hardest class you had to balance? [DA:I]" Luke Barrett: "I feel like anyone who was around for the post-launch content will already know the answer to this as it was the bane of my existence when I got put exclusively on MP after launch but the Knight-Enchanter barrier absorbing was a pain. Stuff like that is very challenging to feel good without being broken as they are relative to damage so scaling is fairly open-ended. Too little and the casual players won't get use out of it, too much and the character builders will be wildly OP. We actually had a 'no nerfing' guideline for the SP side so it was a hard battle to fix that silly thing 🙃." [source]

"As a fun fact, I did all the logic for autolevel on DAI and the guideline I was given was literally "make functional builds, but don't make something optimal that you'd play"." [source]

DA:TV -

User: "If you can, say thanks to the people making the no die option possible." Luke Barrett: "Done! My team handles this stuff so I let them know 😊" [source]

"Comically, I designed the majority of the items and skills and I am still finding it fun making awesome builds (been almost entirely doing playthroughs lately" [source]

"Was really important to the team that everyone could play the way that felt best to them." [source]

"Each specialization has a focus around a few specific mechanics, some of which are the weapons or damage types but you can go off script and make it work for sure (this was intentional in the designs)." [source]

"I designed all the skills and so they're each enjoyable to me to some extent. I have been playing through the game over and over the last couple months for balance purposes so I've played them all fairly extensively." [source]

User: "Necrotic sounds like it could be either Spirit or Nature." User: "For Rogue, it replace "poison". For Mage, it replace spirit (Spirit bomb). For Warrior, it's more spirit (especially Reaper), but some skills could work as poison too. So basically they merged spirit and nature." Luke Barrett: "Thats pretty close to spot on. They were actually heavily iterated on throughout development - I can't (at least currently) go into specifics as to why though." [source]

"the target for the progression vision is that you can make a viable build out of almost** any aspect of the gameplay." [source]

"As for timelines, We started DA4 in October of 2015 roughly. The entire team was moved to MEA for about 3-4 months to help it ship and I also spent all of 3 weeks helping out on Anthem. But otherwise I've been on some incarnation of DA4 for about 9 years now - pretty ready for it to release 😅." [source]

"yes, years of working on the same thing can cause some burnout but I've played through the full game probably about 8 times in the last few months and it's still fun (though some of the specific levels that haven't changed in a long time I've done 50+ times easily and I could do without ever seeing them again 😂)." [source]

User: "I do kind of feel that at this point the DA team has put so much work into creating and improving their tools and learning the ins and outs of Frostbite [...] But who knows what the devs in the trenches really feel" Luke Barrett: "I will say it does some things very well and some things poorly, relative to other engines. Personally I really enjoy Frostbite but I've been using it since 2012. In an ideal world, many engines would be viable and developers would make games suited to the strengths of a specific engine." [source]

User: "Since this game is much more stat heavy than prior titles, specifically when it comes to skills and gear, there's likely a need for some balance changes to be made post-launch. Does the game being playable completely offline hinder the data capture side for your team (in terms of analytics), or is this a non-factor?" Luke Barrett: "Generally speaking, most people leave data analytics on so we get more than enough data coming in. Additionally, I'll personally be watching several channels for things that are underperforming (relatively speaking) and not have to nerf anything. The rpg side is vast though and I'm sure people will find OP combinations/synergies that might need 'adjustments' but as long as it's fun and not an "I win" button that trivializes combat I'm pretty cool with it." [source]

Luke Barrett: "I can safely say there are many builds for each class that will feel very powerful if you're not on the highest difficulty 😉. What I'm really excited for is when the guides comes out that show people the fastest way to get some of the uniques that unlock 'special' gameplay 😊. Let's just say I love the feeling of rushing to Patches in DS1 and kicking him off the bridge for the Crescent Axe (iykyk)." [source] User: "Speaking of guides. Will there be a guidebook like there was for DAI? " Luke Barrett: "Not that I'm aware of but I'm happy to help feed info to somewhere like fextralife or the dragon age wiki after a week or so to help with those pursuits. Have to leave some time for exploration and discovery before the optimizers streamline the experience 😉" [source]

"Effectively, at least until the game launches (and likely a week or so after), you won't get anything interesting out of any of the devs save Mike Gamble or John Epler. Longer term I hope to be very active, at least for build mechanics and all the combat/rpg nuts and bolts conversations." [source]

"I started "da4" in October 2015 and so after 9 years of effort (minus 3 months on Andromeda) I'm quite excited for tomorrow and the launch week. I don't know if I'd say nervous, I feel pretty confident in the product, but definitely that eager kid before Christmas feeling 😊" [source]

"As the person who did all the balance, I will say that if you are comprehending how to make a cohesive build and understand the combat mechanics, you should play on Underdog. One of the downsides to having a lot of power growth vectors is the difference between people who engage vs those that don't becomes a chasm quite quickly. If you start blowing enemies up rapidly, turn up the difficulty (or play on nightmare where that will not be the case) - basically if it ever feels super easy or like enemies are health sponges you're probably on the wrong setting for your skill level. The custom difficulty settings are there to make the gameplay enjoyable (for whatever that means to you)." [source]

"As a tip from me, the balance is subtly tipped in the players favor until the last fight of the 3rd combat mission. Be warned if it's feeling too easy you may want to wait until after that to decide." [source]

[on DA MP] Luke Barrett: "It was actually pretty fun but very much not what most people wanted us to make (including internally). Also we had, let's say, limited staff who had a passion and background in MP so it was definitely the right call to go SP only. Now, it would have been nice had we just started that way but so it goes sometimes." [source] User: "You still play it yourself from time to time (DA MP), or have you left it be?" Luke Barrett: "After playing variations of DA4 for so many years (9!!!) it's hard to go back to anything with DAI controls/gameplay speed. Even the initial Joplin prototypes I was doing were much more snappy/twitchy - for everything good about DAI the combat was definitely in the middle of two different styles." [source]

[on aiming bows] "we actually used to have separate buttons for ADS and ranged attack but it was wildly overloading the controller. These RPG games need controllers with at least 2 more buttons (fingers crossed for the next gen)" [source]

User: "After the last few games, I'm really surprised by the current skill... tree?" Luke Barrett: "I call it a skill graph - aside from the beginning where you have 3 choices the entirety of it is 2 choice splits and it'll essentially make a build for you. Just go a little at a time and aim for whatever specialization seems most fun to you 😄" [source]

"Loot is not random so theoretically guides with drop locations should appear pretty soon." [source]

"Yep, Spellblade is the only spec that directly impacts fire damage but you can get benefits from most of them and still go fire. As for the specs, yes it would have been nice to support all of them but just wasn't in scope unfortunately. Mage has Mourn-Watch, Shadow Dragons, and Antivan Crows specializations - only the Rogue has a Veiljumper one. Deathcaller left side you can go beam based and use a Fire weapon. Evoker you'd likely need to do a hybrid ice/fire build." [source]

User: "Bit of a side question, but for those who intend to make more characters, is BioWare considering upping the amount of playable character slots you can have (currently at 3)? Or is there a hardware restriction here given the game is offline playable?" Luke Barrett: "Don't quote me as I don't handle the technical side of this but my understanding is we have to allocate a specific amount of HD space on the consoles so we basically have to pick a limit, relative to our save file sizes, and then divide that by number of careers. I'll inquire if this is something we can increase with an optional download or something but I suspect consoles are stuck that way, unfortunately." [source]

[on Patch 1] "It's been awhile since I actually did the content for this patch so I'd have to check but I have a pretty anti-nerf policy for SP games. I know I fixed up a couple enemies that weren't as hard as they were supposed to be and definitely boosted a bunch of synergistic things though. I'll take a look tomorrow but for those that don't know, the turnaround time on these things is about a month of it's not an emergency due to certification process with consoles. Longer term my goal is to keep an eye in telemetry of any underused abilities and items (or enemies with too many kills under their belt) and audit them just to double check if they need a boost or if people just haven't figured them out yet 😉." [source]

"The equippable items are all predetermined with a minor exception*. Some items are class specific (all the weapons, a small amount of armors and accessories, 2 runes) so when you play a different class you'll see your classes 'version' of that item. Things that are random (from a table/pool) are valuables. Exception: Near the very end of the game we do a few checks on what equipment you haven't acquired. A bunch of those final drops, and inventory on the final merchant, simply find stuff you don't have and give it to you. That's basically the only major RNG we have with loot. If you notice even 99% of the skills and item mods employ an effect after a condition is met X times rather than a more traditional 'proc chance'." [source]

[on modding] "Once this starts to pick up, feel free to PM me if anyone needs help 'finding' assets or has questions about how one might mod something. We don't officially support mods buuuuut we don't have any kind of anti-modding stance either" [source]

"To give the high level gist of the resource economy: - each class starts off with minimal ability usage, this is intentional to force people to learn the other combat mechanics as they're a necessary skill and it's easy to lean on a crutch like ability spam and kiting - abilities are designed to feel powerful on use, thus they all have a decent cost and can't be spammed* - weapon attacks generate your resource - in the bottom right of the center skills area is a node to make each class's resource easier to manage - halfway down all starting segments (N, SW, SE) there is always a node that boosts generation - there are +max nodes on all sides of the skill graph for each class, this is particularly important for the Mage as they start each fight at max - each class can build into being ability focused but starts intentionally rounded - loastly, the first ability is always a resource spender and 1 or 2 of the next available ones will be cooldown gated. It is recommended to have at least one cooldown based ability slotted" [source]

"So loosely the rogue momentum works like this: - each ability costs 50 momentum - hitting enemies generates ~2 momentum per hit (base), you get extra for bow weakpoints - when you are directly hit, you lose 15% of your current momentum, this means the more you hold the more you will lose (this loss has a small cooldown so you don't lose a whole bar when you get hit rapidly) - momentum carries forward between combats (compared to warrior rage which decays when out of combat) If youre having issues, make sure you get that skill in the middle section that reduces momentum loss when hit. As a helpful tip, the Quicken buff generates small amounts of momentum each second so it's a good way to get more if you're having issues." [source]

"I highly recommend using the belt that grants Quicken early game until you can generate momentum faster yourself. And yes, the time dilation affects everything in the world except the Player so all your buffs and things still tick at normal speed" [source]

User: "If I knock an enemy off an edge, if they were supposed to drop something will it appear on the edge, or is it lost for good?" Luke Barrett: "It should appear on the ledge. I will say the 'real' loot from enemy drops are all hand placed. The actual random stuff is just valuables and materials." [source]

" The way it actually works is very complicated with a lot of necessary exceptions but loosely - each ability has a base damage and ones that hit multiple times have an offset multiplier. - That value is multiplied by the sum of all your stat bonuses, conditional bonuses, resist and layer modifiers. - We then subtract enemy defense and multiply by 1-resist (with penetration being calculated here). - this new damage then gets multiplied by 1+crit+weakpointpoint (so those bonuses always feel meaty) and then multiplied by a random number between .95 and 1.05 just to give a little range to the floaties (basically just a presentation thing) - we then multiply again for buffs and debuffs so they, again, always feel meaningful - lastly, we take all added damage and add it flat on top" [source]

"Specific enhancements make enemies immune to the matching affliction. For example, Fire Enchanted enemies are immune to burning. Juggernaut enemies are immune to being staggered but otherwise it should work in everything." [source]