#not for exclusivity reasons but because i am soooo behind on story shit i need to be held gently like hamburger

[visionheld]

muse additions btw

um

[velynven]

Soooo my initial impressions of Andromeda (~10 hours of play, holy shit) before I forget to check back on tumblr because I’ve gotten lost in Mass Effect all over again. (Spoilers)

I am straight and I want to flirt with both Lexi and Vetra.  But Lexi is a little weird because it’s the name of my bf’s dog.  I love both their personalities and so far, I feel that they’re great additions if for no other reason than they’re different from the typical Asari and Turians of the trilogy.  Add PeeBee into that.  She’s awesome, too.  I did not expect her to be so geeked out on the Remnant stuff.  

Cora’s a bad ass.  I love the layers that they’ve added so far and I am particularly pleased that they’ve handled Ryder basically stealing her promotion.  Cora’s Alec’s second, so when he dies she should be taking over.  As she says, she’s trained for this for so long but when he hands the role to Ryder, she is graceful and respectful of Alec’s wishes.  She knows what’s best for everyone and she makes that decision, backs Ryder completely, and what I probably liked the most is that she’s honest with Ryder about her feelings in regards to the situation, or does a damn good job pretending to be.  And the Asari commando time results in some really nice dialogue moments in the get-to-know-you bits.

Drack and Liam are cool but neither particularly stand out to me yet.  I will say for sure that Liam is a beast in combat so he will be a mainstay while I experiment with the third slot for awhile.  His backstory is pretty cool and I do think I’m most interested in seeing how he changes through the story when compared to the other characters.  I think the strong front he puts on will either result in him becoming that strong person or he’ll crack and it won’t end well for him.  I hope for the better outcome, of course.

(Critical-ish for a couple of paragraphs) Combat is meh for me.  Still a little confusing and I am super pissed that the only sniper rifle I can use atm is the Viper.  Fuck that thing.  I want a sniper rifle that does sniper damage.  The Viper barely hits harder than the Carnifex (which I <3 and was the second thing I made). I’m not as happy with Incinerate as I was in the trilogy but we’ll see how that evolves.  I also need to look into if it’s possible to control your teammate’s actions as you could in the trilogy.  I am doing fine but I miss that dearly as I felt it was part of what separated this from other shooters when it came to gameplay.  

And then there’s cover.  It’s not bad but it could use a lot of improvement.  I feel like I get what they were trying to do and your open maneuverability in combat is definitely miles above where it was in the trilogy but I still am not comfortable in the new cover system.  It just doesn’t engage very well.  The other issue with it is that I can’t seem to turn around: as in Ryder’s facing to the right behind this wall, shooting around the right side, now I want to slide to the left side and shoot around that side.  Her backside just sticks out the left end of the wall and she shoots over/through it.  If someone knows the control that makes Ryder change direction, I’m all ears!

Annnnd just a few short thoughts:

As you’ll see by my Shepard, I’m pretty damn white so my thoughts are not as weighty as those from a POC on this matter but I would still like to share them because I feel that the situation is encouraging.  Please correct me if I’m wrong.  It’s pretty darn diverse, looking exclusively at the humans.  It’s not overwhelmingly white, the various names are ethnically diverse as well, and it feels much more in line with BioWare’s canon that most of the human species is mixed race at this point.

More female turians (yay) and a krogan so far, but no Salarians, which is to be expected without their Ark here.  There is a Quarian ark with Hanar and Drell possibly on the way but no one in-game really knows.

There has not yet been even an allusion to the Reapers or Shepard yet. :(

But overall I am liking the game so far, though at this exact moment I want to play more Horizon Zero Dawn.