If you’ve had problems with Mass Effect: Andromeda, all of them are probably contained in Dunkey’s latest video.
While opinions have been pretty mixed, we’ve been having fun for the most part – although I’m not a big fan of the transitions or the menus, which are in dire need of an editor. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg for Dunkey, who recorded waypoints flipping back and forth, enemies hovering mid-air, some of the glitchier animations outside of cut-scenes, and some of Andromeda‘s more frustrating elements.
I think the criticism against the voice actors is totally off-base, and I’m not hugely sold on the comparison of the female Ryder versus Maleshep. But the complaints about the animations and the limitations to combat are pretty fair.
I’m still determined to colonise every planet I can in Andromeda, but I think I’m probably going to skip the part where you build a model of the entire galaxy.
Comments
28 responses to “Mass Effect: Andromeda’s Problems In One Video”
Modern waaaambulances have a six wheel drive now for ease of access.
Dunkey fails to realise that there are female Krogan too
True, but the voice was still pretty high. Females can have growly voices too 🙂
True, but if you compare female krogan in ME:A to female krogan in ME3, the voice is miles apart. ME3’s Eve had a gravelly rough quality to it that you’d expect from a species with such a physiology. Kesh’s voice is completely off-base given everything we know about the krogan.
Seemed more like a winge that an actual breakdown of the games faults.
Im not denying that the game has faults but this wasnt the way to approach it
I think the complaint about the faces and the voices was spot on though. We went from a stellar cast in ME3 to a bunch of no-name rubes.
Dunkeys videos are literally all about showing this stuff in a comedic hyperbolic way. Hell you should see his videos where he reviews games he likes, at least half of those rip just as deep.
His criticism of Ryder is pretty fair regardless of Gender. Neither male Ryder nor Female Ryder are particularly impressive when compared to their Shepherd counterparts. They’re both just so generically positive about everything and their almost immediate upgrade to ‘Space Jesus’ feels so poorly justified and unearned. Shepherd felt like taking control of an experienced war hero who’d had a long career leading up to becoming a specter candidate. Ryder feels like taking control of a teenager daddy forced into an important job they don’t take nearly serious enough.
I disagree. I heart femshep as much as most, but female Ryder has been equal parts sassy, drily sarcastic and fun in the first 25 hours.
Very happy with the voice over work.
I guess it’s down to how you play it. My Shep was a mature, compassionate, but firm warrior who took no shit… and was very low on sass and glib retorts, keenly aware of what was at stake. The closest she got to joking was wry observations with a dry wit.
By comparison, the Ryders seem like they’re treating this as a big adventure road trip, with all the immaturity that comes from being barely into your twenties. The game so far as been Pathfinder’s Open Mike Night, no matter how professional and serious I try to play the dialogue options.
They’re simply just… not mature adults. They’re immature adults. With awesome responsibilities that they don’t take seriously enough. (Sara in particular sounds about 14yrs old.)
In one respect, I can appreciate that it’s intentional – you get to see it play out when Ryder flubs one of their first crew meetings, struggling to have people listen to them with any kind of respect for authority… but my GOD it’s irritating.
Then add in either dead pan “Bethesda Face” or overly happy “My Dads Dead” face and the voice acting get worse…. It’s like the ABC2 kids TV version of Mass Effect
Sounds like my Femshep…
The way I’m playing Ryder, the voice acting conveys a logically minded professional, making the best of a huge opportunity, but also prone to the occasional silly joke or bizarrely causal response.
Doesn’t sound like a kid to me.
I can’t speak for female Ryder, but male Ryder seems pretty capable of switching between serious, diplomatic and tongue-in-cheek, depending on what options you choose. Dunkey’s comparison is silly, of course Ryder and Shepard are different, they’re completely different characters with completely different upbringings. Shepard was always a hero, Ryder was a normal person forced into a spotlight he never wanted.
A kid, really. Hell, even Cora’s got loads of youthful immaturity compared to Shep. It’s different, not worse… but I really miss the competent and respected war hero Shep.
He’s a funny guy, but I’m officially an Andromeda apologist, so…
He tries too hard. Sometimes it works, a lot of the time it doesn’t. He riffs off Red Letter Media’s style but lacks the substance to back it up. Hell, even Angry Joe understands the ‘me so angry’ shtick has to be used in moderation and supported by substance, but Dunkey never really seems to get it.
Most of the things he complained about were in the previous games too (eg. the mini-cutscenes are there to hide loading screens the same way the long elevator trips in ME1 were), or was just dumb attempts at humour (eg. when Ryder asks ‘what do we have here’ she’s not talking about the door).
Look, of all the internet humour that skewers all my favourite stuffs, I still think he’s laugh out loud funny compared to others. But where I’ve felt there was some reverence, or even joy, derived from other vids, he just seems to straight up… not like it.
Which is fine, I guess.
I think those were reasonable complaints though. It’s stuff I thought the latest games should be able to leave behind. We shouldn’t need stupid long cutscenes to hide loads, and if we do then just give us a loading screen. Otherwise you’ll get situations as described where you’re like, “I’ve seen this, I’d like to skip please.” Which is frustrating, as the delay doesn’t look like a structural problem but instead as a design oversight. We shouldn’t always need to come to forums where someone will inform us to be patient because the game is loading (and those elevator trips were endlessly complained about.)
Also picking on the dialogue there was reasonable, as it highlights the games narrative limits when not picking from a dialogue wheel. It’s a tired old cliché catch-all term for the character noticing a ‘thing’ with no other useful information for the player, and becomes dissonant for its overuse with too specific of a ‘thing’ – in this case it’s another door that needs hacking through.
Animation issues, rooms not being rendered (pb’s room is a void for me), at one point I had four draks walking around the kitchen after talking to him multiple times (Korgan reproduction 2 stronk), map markers being incorrect or not updating.
What is QA.
My only complaints thus far have been cosmetic. Most notably, that the leader of the Nexus looks like she had her makeup done by Homer Simpson’s shotgun. Otherwise, enjoying it so far.
I’m a big fan of Dunkey’s videos, he’s made some amazing and hilarious content over the years.
Mostly due to the terrible delivery, this felt like a giant whinge.
Some very fair point are raised, and some unfair ones too; complaining about a lack of a star-studded VA cast is weird. Plus, Kumail Nanjiani and Clancy Brown are hardly unknowns and their voices and characters are great.
I THOUGHT that was Nanjiani beneath the Salarian vocal effects. Awesome 😀
It’s all about comparability: ME 1-3 did all this stuff so now the latest should bear the torch. If this was the first ME then nobody would care so much.
Thoughts:
– It’s *not* a downgrade from Mass Effect 1. That’s just bullshit.
– Female Ryder default face being weird is accurate. Character creation tool is shit too.
– Most of the “big name” actors in Mass Effect were fairly minor parts, and when they came out a lot of the main characters were not that well-known. You could make this exact argument about someone like Brandon Keener for example – not a household name. Yet Garrus is one of the best characters in the whole franchise. As long as the voice acting is good (and it generally is) and the writing is good (it generally is) I’m not sure why having or not having celebrity actors would be an issue.
– I haven’t heard Liam make that ‘shot him in the face’ line more than once and he’s spent many hours in my party. It was lame, but it was also in the utterly terrible opening sequence of the game. The characters aren’t as well-realized as ME2 & 3 but some of them are interesting enough. It’s very much a re-tread of ME1 – Pair of humans, one male one female. One’s a soldier the other’s a biotic. Asari who’s interested in ancient alien ruins. Exotic alien. Cool Turian. Grizzled Krogan. They subvert each one (this time the male human is the soldier, the Asari is extroverted, the Krogan is much less angry and the Turian is a girl) but it’s clear that’s what they’re aiming at.
– Amazingly enough, some Krogan are female.
– Only three skills at a time is really annoying later in the game when you can have a ton that you’d like to use. Don’t know why they needed to do this. Same for squad abilities. It’s a big issue IMO. The cover system is broken as hell too, and the lack of a minimap means stuff can flank you and you don’t know it. Combat’s gone backward from ME3.
– The UI is a hot fucking mess. It’s just terrible. Navigation as well. Stupid shit like the lack of a minimap, that you can only track one quest at a time and if it has multiple parts all the locations are tracked at once and you can’t make a specific one more obvious. The exploration menus are terrible too. They replaced moving the ship between worlds with a canned animation of you transitioning between each planet but it takes way too long to actually do that animation. Really wish you could skip those transitional animations. Oh and how about the fact you *can’t change your equipment when you pick up a better one*. Have to go to the loadout screen on a forward base thing.
– It’s an open world game because that’s what Frostbite engine does best, and it’s what everyone is making nowadays because linearity is bad. ME2 and 3 were going this way, it’s really a logical conclusion. Also the dev team is largely made up of SWTOR people I believe, which is why this feels a bit MMO-like. There’s definitely a lot of SWTOR in it. I don’t mind the driving but I wish the Nomad had a gun on it like the Mako did. I miss the Mako still. 🙁
– I have no idea what he’s going on about with the complaints about Ryder. Maybe picking bad choices early on? Mine is snarky as fuck and has had some pretty great lines. Don’t feel disconnected from the story or anything?
The game’s not perfect by any means, but I’m finding I don’t care about the warts, I’ve dropped >40 hours in it already. The style and structure and everything feels a bit regressive, reminds me of earlier Bioware stuff and SWTOR a lot. But people are also remembering the original games with rose-tinted glasses and I feel like also deliberately hunting for things to dislike.
This is far more apparent than the issues in the game. After about 30 hours no assessment I’ve read or seen of the game has really been reflective of my experience. I’m curious why people keep talking about “writing” quality when it’s pretty clear they just share different preferences. It isn’t always someone’s fault when we don’t like something.
Good call.
I agree on almost all points, except for Ryder’s personality. I’m trying to go for a mature, professional Ryder, but they keep cracking wise. The snark isn’t something you actually get to choose, it’s hard-wired in. I’m not a fan.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to distract myself with work until it’s time to go home and immediately get back into sinking every free hour of my life into Mass Effect.
I had to close and reopen the game last night because I was killed during a dialogue section. It wanted me to respond which I obviously couldn’t and it couldn’t load a previous save or enter any menus because it was trying to finish the dialogue.
I’ve also had two instances where it just loads forever and the game has to be closed and reopened.
I do miss the persuasion system and manually activating ally abilities, but overall I’m having fun. I like how the strike teams work with multiplayer and I’m enjoying my Ryder so far.