Mass Effect:Andromeda [SPOILERS]

[Civil War Man]

Getting away from the Mary Sue conversation for a sec, one of the Three Panel Soul people had a tweet about the ME:A character creator that I got a pretty good laugh out of.

Link

Some highlights:

"No matter what I do I look asian..."

"This hair color makes her look like she gets hate messages on twitter."

"Why do all these scars look so WET. These aren't scars, they're open head wounds."

"This scar looks like she's seen some shit. Or fought a waffle iron. Probably both."

"[Game begins. First NPC she meets looks exactly like her character.]"

[Crazedwraith]

But for my own lunch-rant because I semi-disagree: It depends on the definition really. For me at least, I pull the "young" out of the equation and stick with "a person who, having no decently explained reason to, shows a level of excellence (not just skill) at most (if not all) aspects of whatever he/she takes part in. No points awarded for plot coupons."

Well if you want to get super-geeky, the original definition of Mary Sue was in fanfiction. A self insert characer who was loved by all and was better than canon characters at their specialties. It doesn't apply to any genre aside from fanfic characters.

People do tend to use more or less the definition you stated though.

As to Shepard. I would say they have no decently explain reason to show their level of excellence. True we don't seem them gain that level of skill. But does every video game character have to a training level where they suck or they're a Mary Sue?

I wouldn't describe Shepard as celebrity even before they're a Spectre. Who knows about them? Anderson and Hackett? They're in their chain of command of course they know them. Likewise Khalisah Al Jilani only interviews Shepard after yjey become a Spectre and one person knows them because they tie into their backstory.

Maybe it's a paragon/Renegade thing but I don't remember Shepard making those grandiose threats either. Know the second game has the opening cut scene with Miranda praising Shepard to high heaven. And everyone knows Shepard in the third game but that's only after the first two games have established their bona fides.

I realise this is basically a highly subjective judgement though, which is why discussion of who is a Mary Sue or not tend to get messy. lol. I can't certainly the see unstoppable bad-ass thing, though. But I agree with Lord Revan that's the majority of video game protagonists. And Mass Effect is more an epic story line that a character study of Shepard.

[Civil War Man]

I wouldn't describe Shepard as celebrity even before they're a Spectre. Who knows about them? Anderson and Hackett? They're in their chain of command of course they know them. Likewise Khalisah Al Jilani only interviews Shepard after yjey become a Spectre and one person knows them because they tie into their backstory.

I do remember some NPCs outside the Alliance chain of command who recognize Shepard on sight and can immediately list off their accomplishments. The major example in this case is Conrad Verner, who is not only not in the Alliance chain of command, but is also outside the Citadel chain of command. Granted, he is a crazy stalker, but that just means Shepard was famous enough to attract a crazy stalker. That type is not prone to latch onto no-name mid-level commissioned officers.

I actually think the whole thing where Shepard is a celebrity soldier even before becoming a Spectre kind of interesting, since it is a glimpse into the weird militaristic undercurrents of the Mass Effect galactic society. Badass soldiers become celebrities, the most successful in-universe film franchise is about Spectres, and almost every major corporation in the setting is an arms manufacturer.

[TheFeniX]

That's why people generally go with "fan-fiction tier writing" rather than Mary Sue. Fan writers are much more likely to fall in love with their character and do everything they can to not only make them the very best, but also protect them from harm.

As to Shepard. I would say they have no decently explain reason to show their level of excellence. True we don't seem them gain that level of skill. But does every video game character have to a training level where they suck or they're a Mary Sue?

No. And there's plenty of middle ground. But walking 500 feet out of a vault and instantly knowing how to use Power Armor and a Minigun and using said PA and minigun to mow down shittons of raiders is pretty Mary Suish. Not losing your shit at the sight of your first Deathclaw, even with Power Armor on, is the same. Walking into a situation and immediately being put at the center of things where everyone is hanging on your every decision. These are what get you there.

Rey should know a bit about mechanics and piloting ground vehicles, but to instantly know how to jump-start the Falcon, fly it the way she did, and even school Solo in how to fix his heavily modified freighter? Beyond that, Leia hugs her and not Chewy near the end of the movie?

This is the author, either intentionally or not, telling me (though this is more about Star Wars): "This character is super-special and has to have your undivided attention!" It's actually a LOT more forgivable in Video Games because you generally ARE the character, but even with that, I don't see it as often as I should.

We could blast Mass Effect for Mary Sue stuff if Jenkins had watched Shepard die then picked up his mantle and somehow got his Specte-hood by solving the Nihlus murder. Shepard OTOH already paid his dues, that's why he got the "try out" in the first place: he's already a badass before the game even starts. In fact, most of what was holding his tryout up wasn't based on performance, but politics. Humans were advancing too fast for many species taste.

But it's not just about just one thing, one thing the character is billie-badass at: it's about a culmination of multiple awesome-sauce factors that add up to this. You can't just be good at killin' doods. You also need to deal with being the center of attention at all (or nearly) times. And it doesn't hurt if members of both sexes are heaping tons of praise and googly eyes at you. In fact, that's nearly a requirement. This is why I feel Master Chief doesn't qualify, Shepard skirts a line, and a female Sole Survivor owns it.

But for Fallout 4, it's mostly poor writing: "My husband was murdered 5 minutes ago from my pespective, I need to find my son, but instead I want to have a lesbo sex-session with the writer of the Daily Wasteland."

I wouldn't describe Shepard as celebrity even before they're a Spectre. Who knows about them? Anderson and Hackett? They're in their chain of command of course they know them. Likewise Khalisah Al Jilani only interviews Shepard after yjey become a Spectre and one person knows them because they tie into their backstory.

There's a couple of "human only" interactions you have with various mercs and navy-related individuals where they know who you are. Never said Shepard was a celebrity, but there are renagade options that lean on his/her reputation for brutality instead of being the first human Spectre.

Getting away from the Mary Sue conversation for a sec, one of the Three Panel Soul people had a tweet about the ME:A character creator that I got a pretty good laugh out of.

How is it, in a game running an engine like Frostbite, Unreal, or any other number of licensed engines, there is no "character creator" module developers can just "plug-in?" They do it for shit like Havok and it's not like you can't just go buy optimized character models from a shop and apply facial morphs and texture maps through a GUI. Good god, Racemenu is leagues above this. Damn, in the quest for more cleavage, one guy even developed a slider application that can apply custom body morphs to properly rigged clothing meshes in batches.

This is ridiculous for the game we're seeing, especially when previous versions had multiple options to create nearly any human racial and/or facial type, that the customization is this limited. In 2017, any game where you can customize your character should have at least the ability to make near any face that has ever and will ever exist on a human head: the tech has already been here forever.

I laughed hard at the waffle iron comment though.

[Imperial528]

Getting away from the Mary Sue conversation for a sec, one of the Three Panel Soul people had a tweet about the ME:A character creator that I got a pretty good laugh out of.

Those are great.

At the start of my game, I did some experimenting with the character creator, and it seems that the sliders build off of the base head shape you pick. So if you start with one that has given features, you really can't break out of that, and the end result will always look similar to the preset.

Fallout 4 had this issue as well, but there was enough freedom and options with even the base character creator that you could break away from it if you know your way around facial structures. Naturally the modded version (I use Looks Menu) is far superior, but unfortunately BioWare games are notoriously hard to mod, so I doubt we'll see any major improvements over the base character creator. Maybe at least an eye and nose shape selector?
Still rather depressing that many modern games are so behind modders in the face and body creation department. As far as ME:A goes I'm honestly surprised they didn't just use the DAI head creator, that one was odd but it worked well at least.

Unfortunately I think my fooling around with the appearance for both Ryders bugged my game up; my character and the sibling are both white, but the parents are black. Now that's some pretty impressive genetics I suppose for that to occur, I mean it has happened in real life but it's still a bit jarring.

Haven't had many technical issues with the game except for occasional driver crashes (though I suspect that may be more Nvidia's fault) and one point where the game locked up after getting stuck in a kill animation. I think what happened is that I have the biotic ability where when you reach low health your shield gets recharged, which it did despite my health still hitting zero, but that prevented the kill animation from actually killing me, so my character couldn't do anything and the controls were locked out.

[TheFeniX]

I keep forgetting to ask this because I just get to ranting: how much about Mass Effect do you need to know to not get lost with Andromeda? My wife has played ME1 once, but she passed on 2 and 3, though not for the same reasons I did. She has expressed interest in ME:A, so throwing everything else aside, how would she handle it? Because it sounds like you don't have to be a long-time fan to find your footing.

[Imperial528]

I keep forgetting to ask this because I just get to ranting: how much about Mass Effect do you need to know to not get lost with Andromeda? My wife has played ME1 once, but she passed on 2 and 3, though not for the same reasons I did. She has expressed interest in ME:A, so throwing everything else aside, how would she handle it? Because it sounds like you don't have to be a long-time fan to find your footing.

You don't, it seems to stay pretty separate from the events of ME2 and 3 especially, and hasn't explicitly mentioned even the events of ME1 so far.

It also has plenty of infodump interactions on the Nexus for new players.

[Civil War Man]

Yeah, I think she'll be fine having only played ME1. All of the Milky Way races in the game are the Council races and Krogan, so ME1 gives you all the background you need. ME3 definitely isn't required, since the Andromeda Initiative launched before the Reaper invasion started.

In fact, the only thing you have to specify about the original trilogy during character creation is if you want MaleShep or FemShep. Doesn't even care if your Shep was Paragon or Renegade.

[Anacronian]

This is a pretty funny vid of all the funniest bugs in Andromeda If you want a good laugh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KWkao73HuU

[TheFeniX]

"To whom." What is this, Archer? "Is that how you get Rachni? Yes it is other Ryder, yes it is."

Could you imagine being that guy/gal animating the scene where the woman is like "my face is tired because...." while her face animates nothing? What was the team(s) put through for this? Because I've always wondered how much of the ridiculously bad shit like this that gets through (what pass for these days) Q/A is just because "I'm overworked and underpaid: fuck 'em." I mean, they usually shitcan the guys at the end of the day and if everyone goes half-ass: they can't blacklist them all.

And like some suit at EA is going to play a video game rather than just demand top-notch bullshots and pre-rendered shit (or the best of the in-game they can muster) so they can sell whatever trash hits the shelves. It's not like Disney animators didn't find ways to fight the power and they had to hide it as best as possible because it's hard to blow off an hour movie watch for Q/A to instead get high on paint thinner.

I think it grates the most because this is a core concept Bioware has pushed for years and it at least used to be passable. Anyone remember "ZOMG DIALOG WHEEL! INNOVATION!" and how much they pushed the way the conversations worked in ME1. I mean, most was bullshit, but ME was pretty good. There were so few straight up failures of dialog and animating.

So, the bugs are dumb, but they don't chap my ass all that much (which is sad I've become so accustomed to it). But this NPC interaction is bad. This is what they sell their games on. If my wife still wants it, she can go pick it up: I'm not. I might bargain bin it at some point if she doesn't though.

[Civil War Man]

The mention of NPC interaction reminds me of what is, for me, the biggest flaw of the game, and that is the squad mates are not as interesting as in previous games. I mean, it is in an awkward position where it's going to be inevitably compared to the other ME games (since it's a sequel) and DA:I (since that was the last Bioware RPG), but there aren't any NPCs that I would place on the same level as Garrus, Tali, or Wrex in the former, or Dorian, Iron Bull, or Varric in the latter.

As a side note, I have heard some people mention that there are parts of the game that are tough for people who are prone to motion sickness, particularly the opening mission and the space exploration animations, so your wife may want to keep that in mind if she is in that group.

[White Haven]

That (companions) was something I was concerned about before release, but not once I actually got into the game. I found myself disliking Cora, but everyone else? Quite happy with them. Drack and Liam, especially, absolutely shine in their respective loyalty missions, but even under normal conditions I simply can't concur with a 'meh' on MEA's companions.

[Imperial528]

I found Jaal's loyalty mission to be one of the best in the series, easily on par with the original loyalty missions from ME2. Liam's was enjoyable but felt a bit contrived, overall was alright. His character develops nicely though, especially with his follow-up task. Peebee's loyalty mission is one of the weakest I think, since it forgets an essential part of her character resulting in the main dilemma of the mission seem contrived.

Myself, I also dislike Cora, but I almost feel like it's intentional on the part of the writers: she was the rightful next in line to become the human pathfinder, but as the story progresses and you learn more about her, it becomes very clear that Cora wouldn't have been fit for purpose as pathfinder at the start of the story. That said her character after her loyalty mission is a significant improvement, though that may depend on choices you can make during and after the mission.

My favorite companions have been Vetra and Jaal.

An interesting thing is that they have combined the paragon/renegade interrupts into the same thing: the game will show you when you have a chance for an interrupt and tell you what it will be, but it doesn't assign moral weight to it the way the prior games did. Makes them more meaningful in my opinion, since you don't have any guarantee that you're making a "good" or "reckless" decision.

Technical gripe: The starmap movement is neat at first but becomes very annoying very quickly since it can't be skipped; compare this to ME1 where viewing planets and systems was instant after cluster travel, and ME2 and 3 where planets were viewed on click once you were in orbit. As is the fact that boarding the Tempest makes it take off.

[PREDATOR490]

I have tried to go through this game but it has so much annoying mechanics that it feels like an utter slog.

The equipment and loadout mechanics are disgusting. Having to backtrack to a ship to do your R&D and interact with the strike mission system is turned into a very clumsy system. This game has all sorts of time wasting cinematic movies that cannot be skipped. The interstellar travel on the map is by far the worst culprit for this.

The development of gear is pretty poor when the game seems to want players to have options but those options are poorly explained or defined. The quality system of common to Ultra rare makes this even worse.
Augmentations that change projectiles are especially bad because they provide little information on exactly how they change the weapon.

Overall, this games is very poorly implemented with a story that feels equally shallow. It has way too much padding with time being devoted to driving around empty areas with lots of random garbage encounters that serve no purpose. The maximum level is something like 130 so you can get all the skills but you can only really use 3 at a time. This seems pretty stupid.

[Starglider]

The combat is really quite bad, Mass Effect 1 level except worse if you're on consoles because Bioware have somehow forgotten how to do thumbstick FPS controls (there is no target pull or drag as far as I can tell). However there is one specific gun which seems hugely more effective than every other weapon I've tried; the Shadow 'sniper rifle'. It's actually the particle beam weapon from Mass Effect 2 except with infinite ammo and a scope (works fine firing from the hip though). I didn't bother carrying any other weapon once I found that and not having to care about running out of ammo or missing sniper shots is nice; plus it actually makes the game feel sci-fi as opposed to 'why am I cycling a bolt-action rifle in the 28th century, WTF is this WH40K crap'.

The usability is such a huge step backward from Dragon Age Inquisition, even while the quest and gathering mechanics are the same, it makes no sense. DA:I had the ability to fast travel directly to an outpost in a different area, and you needed that because of the huge number of scattered quests. ME:A forces you to check the (hard to navigate and buggy) quest list every time you visit somewhere to see what things you can progress in that area, and do everything you can because it's so tedious to come back later.

[Imperial528]

If you research the vintage clip augment you can make any crafted gun have regenerating ammo. There's also a particle beam assault rifle.

From what I can tell, sniper rifles have decreased damage when firing from the hip, or they have increased when firing through the scope. I didn't like the beam sniper, much more prefer the black widow. Though sadly on hardcore there's only a small sweet spot around level 43 where the highest available black widow design will one-shot enemies when going for the head, after that enemy health increases just slightly faster than the gun's damage. I would use the widow over the black widow but for some idiotic reason it's merely a rare rather than ultra-rare (compare to the revenant, another one of the ME2 special guns, which in ME:A is an ultra-rare), so it loses two augment slots.

Still can't figure out why in the world you only get three abilities at a time; yeah, you can swap them instantly in combat using the favorites set up (never bothered), but why not give us at least five or six?

They also didn't fix the quest system bugs from DA:I, namely that when you enter certain areas the notification/tracker UI bombs you with completed quest notifications from quests you completed in that area. Very noticeable on the Nexus.

Predator, I think this only works after putting down an outpost, but forward stations have research access as well as all outposts having it.

They really should patch in a way to board the Tempest without taking off though, or add AVP and strike team access to outposts and forward stations. Also patch in skipping the travel cinematics.

Especially for Kadara. God, I hate that planet. First system travel time sink, then you need to land, then you need to access the elevator, then you need to walk outside of the slums area to even fast travel to the forward stations.

They should add a fast travel map directly from the main galaxy map so you can spawn at a forward station or other fast travel point directly after landing, and only do the travel cinematic when first approaching a major world unless specified in settings (because you know someone will complain that they were removed). They're frankly useless for the minor locations.

[White Haven]

...The Shadow? Really? That pile of garbage? Out of every Remnant weapon, you settled on the Targeting Beam For Other Peoples' Real Attacks rifle? No bust damage, low sustained damage, necessity to hang your ass out in the breeze for long periods of time-on-target to accumulate damage over time...I can't think of a single thing the Shadow does well, especially when it's right next to the Inferno.

[Starglider]

I'm sure it's less useful if you're playing with a mouse. On console the combination of bad controls and glitchy animation makes the slow firing weapons frustrating. I did try the regenerating clip, homing plasma and grenade launcher mods but they didn't put out the predictable consistent damage that the beams do,

[White Haven]

Ah, so you're using a bad weapon in an attempt to compensate for a bad control choice. Makes sense. Don't you have more than enough money to not be gimping yourself?

[Mr Bean]

In other news I keep getting surprised by bad suddenly interrupted by very good writing, for example keeping it spoiler free you find Liam talking with REDACTED as they try and puzzle out how to offend each other.

Or rather Liam is doing his best to be as human as possible and find which bits are offensive as he explains "Some things are so deeply ingrained we don't even think about them". AKA when dealing with an alien spieces both sides have habits and behaviors that are natural to one that may offend the other and not the kind of thing that comes up in any setting till you've offended someone. Very clever little side bit there but Liam is constantly surprising me like two different people wrote him, one very clever one who phoned it in from Holleywood secondary lead character 101.

[Executor32]

I find the Isharay (angaran for "goodbye", a well-earned moniker) to be the best sniper rifle, personally. You only get one shot per clip, but each shot does massive damage; for almost all regular enemies you encounter, a shot to the head/weakpoint is an instakill. Crafting it with a Vintage Heatsink aug makes the single-shot thing less annoying, plus you don't have to worry about ammo, and adding the barrel and receiver mods for more damage and cover penetration makes it practically unstoppable.

As for the Shadow, I didn't even bother with that piece of hot garbage, and I'm playing with a controller (Xbone on PC) myself.

[White Haven]

The Isharay is a violent lance of hot death, big fan. The Inferno is a nice alternative; nothing like the single armageddon-in-a-shell-casing of the Ishy, but with reasonable punch and rarely a need to even vaguely slow down. I spent a good chunk of the game carrying both, as they're well-suited for different situations. I found the Inferno did a fairly good job of eating assault rifles' lunch while still servicing the sniper space well enough.

Isharay all the way if you're cloaking for the damage bonus, of course. Only downside vis-a-vis the Widow is that it lacks the Widow's built-in penetration.

[PREDATOR490]

I gave up on this game and just used a trainer to make this game less tedious.

Leveling up in this game actually screws you up heavily because enemy scaling gets ramped up and weapons do not. At 130, the game turns every fight into a horrific mess because enemies scale based on level but the equipment falls off very badly.
The 'Grunts' are taking 2 - 3 Headshots from an Isharay - Maxed out with Tactical Cloak damage boost and Turbocharge
It only gets worse with the tougher enemies.

Research & Development: Whoever designed that system needs to be kicked in the nuts. You can research augmentations, you can build guns but you cannot build augmentations. When you research an augment you seem to be only given ONE augment - Player has to go around scrounging up more which is completely immersion breaking and really stupid. I can build an arsenal of weapons and gear but the game has decided I should only have a single vintage heat sink... ???

Carrying multiples of the same weapons screws up the weapon mod system. I wanted to carry an Isharay and a Raptor. The mod system would not allow me to equip mods of the same type on both weapons even if you have multiples. Even if you have two heavy barrels the game would only let you put one on one of the weapons.

Armor - If anyone is interested in getting a full set of the Maverick Armor at endgame. Do not bother, the game only seems to have the Head and Chest piece. The Arms piece is actually mislabelled and I could not find the leg piece.
Even if this is intentional, that seems really silly. Armor seems to follow a 'set' pattern with a Chest, Helmet, Arms and Legs but they decided to skip completing the Maverick.

Helios - It appears this armor is intended to be the best Quality in the game but due to an unmentioned feature it actually seems sub-par. The Chest comes with arms and legs automatically. That might seem good but that means you miss out on a boost from individual arms and legs from a full set. That translates to up to 6 augments and whatever stat boost being lost.
The Helios Chest does not make up for that loss as far as I am concerned.

The "Quality" System for armor seems really silly as well. - Higher quality means you get more augment slots for weapons but armour does not.

Weapons - I tried them all and found them underwhelming. It might be different at lower levels and on lower difficulty but Insanity + Level 130 turns enemies into horrific HP Meat Sacks with weapons that nibble away.

Powers - This game has so many powers but the ability to only use 3 at a time boggles my mind at the wastage.
You can switch in the field - So the player has to jump through menus playing with powers and profiles during firefights. That really destroys the tensions and this games UI system is abysmal making more interactions with it tedious.

Game Mechanics -
Forward Stations should have let the player research and develop by default. Instead, you can only R & D at specific points.
Picked up a nice new toy - If you want to add it to your stuff you will end up having to backtrack to a specific point to get it and to equip it you have to backtrack to another unless you are very lucky to have a Forward Station that lets you R & D + Loadout option.

This also runs into an issue with equipment mechanics. You can dismantle equipment to get the mods and augments back out of it but to do so you need to unequip the item with the augments. You can only unequp at specific stations AND if you have something to take the place.
Want to take off your helmet and get a new one ? - You need to waste time finding a placeholder to switch to just so you can dismantle the one you want then build a new one to replace the worthless placeholder.
Really fucking tedious when you can have R&D and Loadout switching are separated. Even worse when they are separated to different consoles that are placed far away from each other.

Loading Screens + Transitions - This is by far the worst aspect of this game. The cinematic are nice to watch and transitions on the galaxy map were cool a few times. That really wears off when you realise how much fucking time is being wasted on these things and you cannot skip them.

The game has even made space travel tedious by making things take way too long for no reason. I hear bullshit that it is 'loading screen' to which I find that even more damning of the game. This game is very poorly made to the point a loading screen is required to travel from planet to planet even with the planets that are basically pointless.
Taking 15 Seconds to travel to a planet only to realise it has nothing of value is tedious which only further gets multiplied by how many times you have to do it just for the quests. If your an 'explorer' that wants to jump to each planet you are pissing your life away jumping from planet to planet across multiple systems.

Mechanics - Frankly, this game seems like way too much effort was wasted on making it look pretty and cool at the expense of everything else.

I find it really criminal they decided to give players an APC with no weapons. Sure, I understand WHY they did not do it from a game play aspect perspective. Logically, if the situation in this game is so bad that the player is getting into firefights across an entire planet then I would be putting weapons on the NOMAD very quickly. The game even seems to have vehicles with weapons on them but they end up sitting around as decoration.

Seems like R&D would have been an excellent way to boost the NOMAD with shit that is actually useful. Instead you get paint jobs, switch gears and allow the vehicle to drift... really ?

AI companions - Yet again, completely worthless. You cannot even control how they use their powers now and the selection of powers they have is shit. The player can have everything in the game due to the 'god' factor - fair enough but it would have been sensible to at least give the companions a buffed up selection of abilities or simply just passives.
As it is, they get 3 powers, 2 Passives and a fixed weapon. You cannot change their armor or weapons which kinda fucks you when the game enemies are scaling to points where the companions cannot do anything even if the AI was reasonably competent.

Story - This game is brain dead on a whole new level. The player character is a lifeless log who comes across as a complete moron. In a universe where nothing happens unless the Pathfinder gets involved that is just just hilarious.
At best, this entire game seems like the lamest attempt to create an origin story / reset to get away from the franchise history which has resulted in a shit show of a story and game.
Spoiler

56 hours into the game and I have still really confused about the premise -

Somehow the Milky Way decided to launch multiple gigantic spaceships carrying 20,000 individuals in stasis for 600 years during Mass Effect 2. From what I have seen so far, the time frame puts the launch at the end of ME2.
Cerberus is mentioned
Project Overlord is mentioned
Project Lazarus is mentioned
The Shadow Broker is mentioned - I am concluding that this is Liara

One ark might have been sensible but this game has essentially decided that 20,000 individuals from EVERY species was launched in an individual ark.
So far: Humans, Turians, Krogan, Salarian, Asari
The game mentioned Drell, Hanar and Quarian coming as well but I am bit hazy on that. It mentioned an ark was built for them but got delayed. This feels like a 'plug' for the next game to bring in more species.

Ultimately, it seems extremely silly that a mission of this nature was able to occur without ever being mentioned in ME2 or 3. The intermission between M2 and 3 is something like 6 months so it is implausible all of this was assembled in that kind of timeframe. It gets even more silly that the game is taking a deliberate attempt to distance itself from the ME history and then mentions they should have contact with the Milky Way.

So... the game is telling me they should be able to communicate between galaxies and noone in the Milky Way took the time to relay a message to any of these arks about what happened in ME3 in 600 years ?

It goes one step further in stupidity when the whole premise is the Andromeda Galaxy is surrounded by the magical death cloud that has been in place for 600 years. Apparently, the arks decided not to have emergency protocols for any kind of warning system or wake up of the crew to do status checks on the trip.
Even a VI scanning system that wakes someone up when weird shit is detected would have been sensible and avoided the issue with the death cloud.

Decisions - So far, a lot of the dialogue and story decisions have been disgustingly predictable and the game telegraphs them badly.
Most of the characters are poorly developed and lame. Even the companions are fairly limited to standard cliche stereotypes.

[bilateralrope]

Forward Stations should have let the player research and develop by default. Instead, you can only R & D at specific points.

Do the forward stations have any use beyond "we ignored the lore of how our weapons work and now need to leave ammo lying around everywhere" ?

[Adam Reynolds]

At best, this entire game seems like the lamest attempt to create an origin story / reset to get away from the franchise history which has resulted in a shit show of a story and game.

I haven't actually played it and don't know if I ever will, but from what I have seen in a fair number of Youtube clips, this seems to be the case. Liara gets a vocal appearance, both when she corresponds with Alec Ryder, and later when she sends a transmission during the early events of ME3. It is a nice sign off, as she leaves things with the question of whether Shepard and company can succeed, but it also creates the obvious question of why no transmissions were sent after the events of ME3 assuming you are going with a successful playthrough. It also begs the question as to why Liara never mentioned that she knew there was an extragalactic mission that would survive the Reaper War regardless of what happened. As borderline defeatist as she was in that game, it seems very odd that she never mentioned it.

Another related note is that Liara is one of several characters trilogy characters that get similar mentions, most of are similarly problematic in that they create plot holes. At one point Ryder runs into a group of ex-Cerberus scientists that abandoned the group during the events of ME2. They mention both the Lazarus project and Miranda Lawson, despite the fact that Cerberus cells are supposed to be compartmentalized such that no one cell knows about others. Even Miranda and EDI didn't seem to know much about other cells, why does a random fired researcher know about Lazarus?

Having said all of that, there were also some highlights. The characters are solid enough, and loyalty missions are back. The asari, krogan, and turian squadmates are all interesting contrasts to Liara, Wrex, and Garrus, and the Andromeda native Jaal is also fairly good as well. I don't quite like the human squadmates as much, but they are still probably better overall than Ashley and Kaiden.

The endgame is also rather improved from ME3 as well, in which you actually see the direct consequences of your actions throughout the game.

Forward Stations should have let the player research and develop by default. Instead, you can only R & D at specific points.

Do the forward stations have any use beyond "we ignored the lore of how our weapons work and now need to leave ammo lying around everywhere" ?

That was actually a trend started with the second game, when it added "thermal clips" that made ammo limited. It would have been both more logical and more interesting if you could either wait for the weapon to cool naturally as in ME1, but it would have also been a great deal more work.

In any case, there is nothing new about this in Andromeda.