Mass Effect Andromeda General Discussion

Some months ago, Mark Darrah floated the idea of one, gauging interest in a Twitter poll. To be clear, he was asked and clarified that it would NOT be a replacement of a full, normal DA game. They've also worked with Telltale Games before, on that DA Keep mini game thing, The Last Court.

I'll try and find the tweet.


The running theory is that, if this were to be developed, it would be by a third party as a way to maintain fan interest in the franchise while they're toiling away on DA4.



[edit] Here is the tweet thread. I do suggest reading most of the replies, as Mark Darrah answered quite a few questions.

Sadly, it's not something I would be interested in in the slightest. Like mrslothy , I want a full cinematic RPG experience. I dislike turn-based games. I am also worried by his responses that it would be canon, as that essentially means that I have to play it. I also hated The Last Court, and have never finished that to this day. If I could just breeze through it, I would blow it out in a few hours, but because I refuse to participate in the microtransactions, I would have to wait for the timer to reset for the freebies. The idea is just so tedious that I inwardly groan whenever I think about trying to play it.

What is more frustrating about it is that I basically feel that I have to buy it to support Dragon Age. But I don't want to play such a game, so I can't "vote with my dollars."


But it might all be moot, anyway. He did that Twitter poll in February 2016, so it's been over a year and there has been no peep about it whatsoever. That doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it might mean something.

When BioWare said their new IP was an Action Adventure but still story based, I assumed they meant something like Lara Croft or Uncharted. A story heavy game, with action sequences but little roleplaying. Still, a mistake in my view but EA don't really have anything like that at the moment and none of their other tries went very well (Mirrors Edge for example)

I thought their cancelled IP Shadow Realms was the always online one.

irony is that i like turn based games and i'm not longing for one in thedas setting. AT ALL.

oh, and the last court sucked, no way around it. kudos to developers for their fallen london IP but this "you have 10 moves and then wait your ass here staring at the wall" is annoying the shit out of me. i tried to play it twice and gave up after about 10 minutes of play. i think we all despise microtransactions and paywalls.

a mix of bioware stamp and action-adventure style might be interesting. for me, DAI already started to feel a bit action-adventury (especially with inclusion of jumping) and i LOVED it and i hope it continues to evolve. bioware already eliminated rpg heavy mechanical elements long ago, and nothing was filling this gap up until now.

i guess it MIGHT work if we have heavy story elements, branching decisions, actual romance options etc. for an action adventure game but i doubt bioware would really do that if this is something they hinge their existence on.  it would be an experiment and that is very very risky for a high budget games. they need to play it safe, which increases the odds we will get something very standard. but this is all beside the point. i think they stated something about "online only" well after shadow realms was cancelled

When thinking of a BioWare action adventure game, I think of something very story focused but with more RPG elements than the traditional Action Adventure, for example, no character creator but the option to choose from a male or female version of the protagonist of the game. I'd be on board with that.

Obviously, I need to see more of the game and I'm hoping they'll showcase something at this E3 (but we might not see anything until 2018 because it seems to have been punched out to 2019), but I've never played a BioWare game that I hated so I'm interested to see what they do in a different genera and since Action Adventure can sometimes offer a better story than an RPG since it can be more focused, I'll probably play it (unless it looks completely rubbish), plus their combat tends to be way more fun than Naughty Dog's, so at least this game will have that.

Always online doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me if the game is an Action Adventure so I'm not going to worry too much about that until I find out more about the game.

I also doubt DA4 relies on the success of their new IP. DA:I made a shed load of cash for EA and EA are all about the money, they'll want to milk the DA franchise for all it's worth. 

Agreed, so if you want a DA4 that plays like a Dragon Age game...best not to support the action online only game. 

I agree with you on that as well. I also hope the next games are going to be a bit shorter and smaller. At least if the open worlds of Bioware are going to be like MEA, they really should not continue on such a grand scale. 

Apparently we've also got some more numbers on the their sales of MEA; roughly 2,5 million sales. Not exactly stellar but that should at least be enough to break even on the costs right? 


Article 5 ETFs to Buy If You Love EA's Fourth-Quarter Earnings

Reddit According to an investor note estimate, Andromeda sold 2.5 million units

I am just making assumptions, but I feel like the trend toward more MP and streamlining RPG aspects of Bioware games has been happening for a while and will continue to happen regardless of MEA's reception and fiscal performance. Bio's recent games have all been watering down the heavy RPG mechanics and if MEA had been universally loved they would have taken that as a sign to continue streamlining (no companion customization or tactics, three active abilities, focus on crafting and resource collecting etc). So honestly I don't think it matters if current fans support the new IP or not, EA is going to mandate $X of microtransactions for DA4's multiplayer and make sure that the single player experience can easily transition a player into multiplayer gameplay mechanics.

I will be interested to learn about this hypothetical strategy game; I loved the Heroes of Might and Magic series when they first came out even though I'm rubbish at playing on harder difficulties. So if the mechanics were good and the setting and lore still feels like DA I would be willing to try it out. But since it would be handled by a separate studio I don't trust that it will feel the same as an actual DA game. So I'm on the fence until I learn more.

It could be cool if it depicted historical battles like the previous Blights, the fall of Arlathan, Emperor Drakon's conquests, and provide some additional lore that we would never be able to experience from an actual DA game. And if the Tevinter/Qunari war will be a big theme in DA4 then we could also see some of those initial battles that lead up to DA4. Not so that anyone playing DA4 without playing the strategy game would be missing information.

I actually liked the Last Court. I could play it at work, use up all of my turns and then check back in at the end of the work day and use the turns that had accumulated during the day. I played it a few times without paying anything and the game actually gives you plenty of time to accomplish everything and still get the "best" ending. I would have been pissed if it's impossible to get the ending I wanted without paying for it. But I understand that the time delay is annoying and gets old quickly. There wasn't tons of content, though, so without any form of time wall it could have been completed in a few hours.

They did more harm than good with all of their false promises on twitter and things they've stated during the course of their marketing campaign for Andromeda. I'd honestly be a bit surprised if the game itself even gets a mention of some sort at E3 (or EA Play). The wounds are still pretty much fresh and we dont even know when they're planning to release our patch