Mass Effect: Andromeda

[gedierond]

Tricky...

1. Garrus
2. Mordin
3. Wrex
4. Tali
5. Legion
6. Liara
7. Jack
8. Grunt
9. Ashley
10. EDI
11. Samara
12. Thane
13. Miranda
14. Kaidan-Jacob-Vega (didn´t care much about either of them)

Didn´t get any DLC, so I wouldn´t know about those characters.

 

[Shavod]

Here's my list.

1. Garrus
2. Tali
3. Wrex
4. Mordin
5. Legion
6. Grunt
7. Thane
8. Samara
9. Kasumi
10. Ashley
11. Javik
12-18. People that I didn't care about in the slightest
19. Zaeed

 

[ApuLunas.211]

1. Mordin Solus
2. Thane
3. Javik
4. Legion
5. Grunt
6. EDI
7. Liara
rest
last. Jack & Ashley & Kaidan

 

[Luxorek]

Rumah time! Dude who does internet surveys for money posted this on Reddit. He is not a troll and a lot of this stuff aligns with info that NeoGAF insiders are privy to.

The Next Mass Effect Context:

The next Mass Effect game takes place in the Helius Cluster (a cluster of 100s of solar systems in the Andromeda Galaxy), far removed by time and space from Commander Shepard’s heroic acts and the final events of the Mass Effect trilogy. You are a pathfinder, a combat trained but un-tested explorer leading an expedition into the Helius cluster to establish a new home for humanity. As you explore this sprawling series of solar systems (over 4x the size of Mass Effect 3), collecting resources and building colonies, you will encounter the savagery of untamed lands in the form of cut-throat outlaws and warring alien races. To survive and colonize the wild reaches of space, you will need to grow your arsenal, your ship, your crew and make strategic (and often uneasy) alliances to fight against increasingly menacing foes. Along the way, you will encounter the remains of a once powerful and mysterious alien race, the Remnant, whose forgotten technology holds the key to gaining power in this region of the galaxy. As you uncover who the Remnant were, and the mysteries their ruins contain, you are drawn into a violent race to find the source of their forgotten technology that will determine the fate of humanity.

Collect Resources to Fuel your Growth:

Scour solar systems and planets within the Helius Cluster to find valuable resources and blueprints of long forgotten alien technology that will allow you to craft better equipment and weapons, such as improving your leg armor to allow you to jetpack jump, or upgrading your cryo-beam (laser cannon) to target enemies or do area damage around you to clear out close threats. As you build your arsenal and resource infrastructure, you will be able to explore deeper into the increasingly dangerous and resource-rich solar systems of the Helius Cluster.

A Capable Crew:

Throughout the story, you will recruit seven distinct crew members to fight by your side. Each crew member has a unique personality and specific abilities that open up strategic options as you choose which two of them to bring into each mission. For example, Cora has the ability to deploy a biotic shield that protects everyone in the bubble while still allowing you and your squad to fire out of it. Your crew will grow alongside you as you explore the Helius Cluster, and you can choose how you upgrade your crew’s weapons, gear and abilities to increase their individual combat effectiveness. Create the perfect squad to react to any situation and to support your preferred gameplay style.

Your Crew, Your Story:

Your crew members aren’t merely hired guns – they are part of the living universe in the Helius Cluster that develops in response to your actions and choices. Increase each crew member’s loyalty by pursuing missions that are important to that specific character. For example, when a Krogan colony ship has been stolen by one of the outlaw factions leaving the colonists stranded without resources to survive, your Krogan squad mate, Drack, is determined to strike out against them. If you take the mission and help him track down the outlaws’ hideout to return the ship to its rightful owners, Drack’s loyalty toward you and your squad will increase and Drack will unlock a brand new skill tree.

Explore each individual’s backstory and develop your relationship with them through conversations and unique missions. True to Mass Effect, what you choose to say will directly affect your crew’s loyalty and relationship with you, and will open up different conversations and narrative opportunities at the end of the game depending upon how you approach each encounter.

Deployed Strike Team Missions:

The Helius Cluster is 1000s of light years across, and you can’t be everywhere at once. As you develop more colonies, resource bases and settlements, you have to be able to keep them safe. Spend resources to recruit mercenaries and develop an AI controlled Strike Team that you can deploy to take on randomly generated, time-sensitive missions. Strike Team missions take many forms, including settlement defense and Remnant artifact recovery, which will take real-time to complete. Send your Strike Team out on a mission while you continue playing the main game and they will return, 20 – 30 minutes later, having gained rewards such as XP, currency and equipment based on the success of their mission. Spend money and resources to train your Strike Team and acquire better gear for them, which will increase their success rate and allow them to take on more difficult missions for greater rewards.

Active Strike Team Missions:

When you encounter a Strike Team mission in the Single-Player mode, you can leave your Strike Team at their base and decide to tackle the mission yourself with your Multiplayer roster of characters. You also have the option of tackling the mission by yourself, or recruiting up to three friends to play with you. The more friends you bring, the greater the challenge and the greater the reward. These missions will play out using the Next Mass Effect’s multiplayer Horde mode (more details on this later). These missions will include a variety of thematically appropriate objectives, like defending a Settlement against Khet attacks, or recovering a Remnant artifact off of a planet before an outlaw gang gets there first. By taking an active role in strike team missions, you can earn special Single-player rewards in addition to the usual multiplayer specific characters, weapons, weapon mods, and pieces of equipment which can be customized between missions. Additionally, players who join another person’s Strike Team mission will receive bonus in-game currency and multiplayer XP for helping others with their missions.

Multiplayer “Horde” Mode:

The next Mass Effect’s “Horde” multiplayer pits you and up to three of your friends against waves of enemy troops on various battlefields throughout the galaxy. Players fight together to survive increasingly difficult enemy attacks and accomplish objectives, like disabling a bomb near a colony base or assassinating a target. Progress through multiplayer missions to gain XP and earn new multiplayer specific weapons, characters, weapon mods, and pieces of equipment, which can be customized between matches. Multiplayer play will also earn you APEX funds (in-game currency), which can be used to purchase items and gear in the Single Player game.

Establish Settlements:

Search solar systems for rare habitable planets to establish a settlement that could serve as a base for humankind’s new home in the Helius Cluster. As you build permanent settlements, you will make strategic choices on where to focus your new base’s resources. For example: Recon Settlements will clear fog of war from the space map and give the player more strike team missions to choose from, while Mining Settlements will periodically supplement the player’s supply of crafting materials.

Dialogue:

Building upon the rich history of strategic dialogue that has defined the Mass Effect series, you can make meaningful choices in every conversation you have with characters that impact the way your game evolves. The next Mass Effect adds deeper control over your conversations through a greater ability to interrupt and change the course of the conversation as it is happening. During certain conversations, you will be able to take action based choices, such as the option to pull out your gun and force someone to open a door instead of convincing them to do it through conversational guile. Action based choices give you more options for how you approach dialogue with characters in the game and can lead to more extreme outcomes on the story as it evolves around the decisions you make when interacting with a huge cast of NPC characters.

Seamlessly Travel Through the Next Mass Effect Universe:

As you pilot your space ship, Tempest, across the 100s of solar systems that are seamlessly connected in the next Mass Effect, you will encounter new planets filled with valuable resources, intelligent life, conflict, and alien technology that all give you opportunities to increase the power of your character, your ship and your team so that you can build them into a force that perfectly suits your gameplay style. Transitions between activities, like flying your Tempest (space ship) across a solar system to land on a mineral rich planet, then jumping into your Mako (land vehicle) to explore the surface of planet, all happen smoothly without loading screens.

Customize and Share Your Experience:

Discover new things in Andromeda Galaxy, like alien artifacts and natural wonders, that serve as trophies and decorations that you can use to modify the look of your character, Tempest (Space Ship) and Mako (land vehicle). Customize the way your squad and your character look with clothes and aesthetic modifications that you unlock throughout the game. Photos you take from the far reaches of the galaxy can be used to decorate your starship or sold to certain characters.

Remnant Vault Raids:

Find and activate Remnant Monoliths to unlock Remnant vaults. Explore abandoned Remnant ruins to find and locate a powerful artifact, but once you remove it you will trigger the vault defenses that will arm traps, activate defense robots and even change the architecture of the vault itself to stop you from escaping. Fight your way out of the vault and you will be rewarded with valuable loot, including powerful gear, crafting resources and Star Keys that can be used to unlock massive orbital facilities in space that grant permanent stat bonuses.

Optional Elite Remnant Vault Raids are scattered around the Helius Cluster located in special orbital facilities that are unlocked by Star Keys. Similar to the standard Remnant Vaults, you enter them to retrieve a special artifact which will trigger the vault defenses that arm traps, activate defense robots and change the architecture of the vault itself to stop you from escaping. However, Elite vaults ratchet up the difficulty of the encounter with increasingly powerful defense robots and traps, as well as roaming outlaws and deadly Khet patrols that are also in search of the elite artifacts. Elite Remnant vaults will test the limits of your combat and puzzle solving acumen, but with greater difficulty comes greater rewards. Gain rare loot, narrative acclaim and huge rewards for completing these daunting challenges.

Khet Outposts:

As you explore planets throughout the Helius Cluster, you will encounter Khet Outposts. These outposts are optional combat experiences where you enter the outpost and fight off waves of enemies. Destroy Khet outposts to earn XP, rewards and thwart their growing power in the region. Your allies will reward you with praise and increased narrative options as you fight to remove the Khet presence from the region.

Drive and upgrade your Mako (land vehicle):

Explore the surfaces of 100s of planets in the Helius Cluster in your versatile land vehicle, the Mako. Whether you are looking for a place to set up a colony, searching for a Remnant vault or attacking a Khet Outpost, you will enjoy getting there in your Mako. Equip and upgrade your Mako in dozens of ways, like adding turbo boosters, upgrading your shield generator or adding a Hostile Detector to your radar to create the ultimate planetary exploration vehicle. Finally, get your Mako looking the way you want with a custom paintjob.

 

[CostinRaz]

That's interesting actually.

 

[octavian123]

Sounds cool. Time will tell.

 

[Garrison72]

They're clearly rehashing a few mechanics from ME3 and the core idea of the Reapers, but it does sound promising. Has more of a Star Trek vibe to it, which is a good thing.

 

[Shavod]

I read the description of the story and my only reaction is: Nope, not interested. Just the same old plot like in every Bioware game with the same (not literally) characters and probably with the same MMO-like gameplay mechanics from Inquistion. Sorry, but Bioware will not win me over by singing the same tired song over and over and over again. I don't even have any benefit of the doubt left for them. I'm just going to wait until they finally start putting some actual effort into their stories.

 

[CostinRaz]

MMO-like gameplay mechanics from Inquistion.

Managing strategic holdings is not an MMO-like mechanic in any game.

 

[Giovanni1983]

Didn't like a few but i will not nitpick. If these are true, then it sounds quite interesting.

 

[Shavod]

Managing strategic holdings is not an MMO-like mechanic in any game.

But boring, endless fetch quests certainly are.

 

[Luxorek]

One of the t-shirts given to Bioware Montreal employees, I think. Anyway, it's legit. This t-shirt and the leaked survey - pretty much anybody with some Bioware connections on NeoGAF has confirmed it by now.

The game will take place in the Andromeda galaxy decades, if not hundred of years after ME3. Basically, the civilized races sent a massive colony ship with thousands on-board during the early stages of the Reaper invasion. This will allow Bioware to avoid choosing a canon ending and basically dealing with ME3 baggage. So... I wouldn't be surprised if Krogans were still infected with genophage, Geth and AIs still existed and all that.

 

[octavian123]

I like the setup of sending colony ships but this event really should have been referenced in ME3. It could even have been a quest where you are supposed to handpick suitable people for the operation...That would have been interesting. It could even be DLC but I suppose it's too late for that now.

Our cycle is probably not the only one that came up with this idea. It would be very interesting to see colonists from other cycles. Some species should be struggling and slowly fading out.

 

[Garrison72]

I really want this to succeed. ME1 and 2 were very impactful games for me at the time, although they haven't aged that well. The dialog summaries in conversations are pretty iffy. I can see now why people were bitching at the time Shepard would say unexpected things and it hurt the role play. I particularly like that we can seamlessly land on planets and explore, but I see copy/paste environments in our future. I found a lovely concept art. The series always had solid art direction. Much better than DA has ever had.

 

[octavian123]

I agree. ME1 looked a bit bland but starting with ME2 and especially ME3 the game looked really good on an artistic level. The moon of Palaven was quite a sight.

 

[Rawls]

1. Garrus
2. Wrex
3. Mordin
4. Zaeed
5. Samara
6. Tali
7. Grunt
8. Jack
9. Legion
10. Liara
11. Kasumi
12. Miranda
13. Javik
14. James
15. EDI
16. Ashley
17. Thane
18. Jacob
19. Kaidan

Hard making a list. It's not as definitive as I made it out to be. I like many of them in equal level, really.

1. Garrus, Tali & Wrex are all amazing and I cannot pick between them.
4. Mordin
5. Liara
6. Legion
7. Samara
8. Miranda (it's amazing how much more I like her when I take her with me on the Suicide Run Finale and she hangs up on the Illusive Man).
9. EDI
10. Thane
11. Kasumi
12. Javik
13. Ashley
14. James
15. Grunt
16. Jack
17. Zaeed, Jacob & Kaidan are my least favorites.

 

[CostinRaz]

I like the setup of sending colony ships but this event really should have been referenced in ME3

People are saying that the Asari councilor mentioned it.

 

[Mr. Newmark]

I really hope this turns out good. But some of the stuff mentioned reminds me of Inquisition or Destiny - like the raids who will get more challenging.

The fresh start sounds like the best approach. But what I really hoped for after the Shepard Trilogy, was a race choice for the protagonist, and it seems we are still stuck with human. I guess that he will have a title again and some preset personality.

What I get from the scenario is a bit like the time jump between Starlancer and Freelancer. I like the general idea. When the info was scarce I thought the exploration aspect would be set during the time where the humans found the Prothean ruins on Mars. So I am glad they take a different way.

 

[octavian123]

People are saying that the Asari councilor mentioned it.

It still would have made a very cool quest. Still hoping for an Arrival style DLC.

 

[EliHarel]

Ah, this is an elegant solution to not dealing with the various endings. I like it. And it opens up a lot of new routes - like @octavian123 said, maybe there are other cycles who did the same. And it's a good way to insert new races. I like the general direction. But there was that uneasy similar Reaper vibe with the Remnants, and the whole "fate of humanity" line. I was hoping BioWare would keep the scale a bit less epic for a change, see them try another local story. It doesn't seem that way, though, neither with the premise nor with the mechanics. But it's no biggie - if it's fun, what the hell. And it sounds like it has the potential to be, what with colonizing a new galaxy, or infiltrating it, rather, and stepping on some toes of the locals on the way. Or tentacles. Or hooves. Whatever.

I haven't played Inquisition yet, but I keep hearing that one of its biggest problems is the amount of dull quests, and that they don't make sense for the position of Inquisitor. So I hope that ME4 will learn from that. Another thing I hope they do is give a better antagonist or threat than the Reapers. I think Saren did ME1 a lot of good, and in contrast the lack of a single and clear antagonist in the next two games harmed them a bit. Sometimes an antagonist can contribute more to a story than the protagonist, and ME2+3 lacked that. I find it less exciting to face some God-like foe such as Harbinger. There can never be any direct engagement between the protagonist and such an antagonist.

Another thing I'm happy about is that you're limited to playing a human. Many people like customization, but I believe that the more you allow the player to customize, the less in depth you can go. The more options there are, the more shallow and aesthetic they tend to be. So with a relatively focused protagonist you can create a better story. I think Shepard was a nice middle ground that BioWare found. Not entirely a blank slate, not completely fleshed out, letting players who enjoy the customization of their character iron out the details. I hope for the same in ME4. Also, when you allow customization and compromise a bit with how deep a protagonist you can create, it becomes even more important to have a good antagonist.

Edit: +1 to ME's art style. I like it. A real ship has curves.

People are saying that the Asari councilor mentioned it.

That'll be cool to hear. I like when those small hints are found in previous games (like the comet or trail of the wild hunt in TW2). I'll be happy to be updated if someone finds that dialogue.