I was IMing Qhue on PS4. I'm curious what he has to say after playing passed the Xbox one trial I played where I decided a hard no.
That will decide if I get it on sale for 10 bucks in three years when I am bored out of my mind. Used as well. I don't want these idiots at EA Bioware to see a dime of royalties.
So I finally got past the point I stopped the Xbox trial and went a bit further before deciding that this wasn't worth losing sleep over and shutting down for the night. Here are my additional observations.
1) Character Builder -- I had, naively, assumed that since at the end of customizing my character on Xbox it said "uploading to archive" that I would be able to easily download my character on launch day even though I was playing on a different system. Nope! In fact the site in question (
https://masseffectarchives.com/en_US/ ) is still in beta! This is the sort of thing that is ONLY used when first starting the game so of course you don't actually have it working on launch day. There isn't even a convenient way to determine what settings you used for Ryder. I guess I should have used the same method I did in 2007 and handwritten out all the slider positions when I was making my character.
2) Due to the issue with #1 above I ended up with a Ryder that isn't quite what I had in the trial and whose face actively annoys me. It seems it is impossible to change this once you start the game so I am left with either sucking it up and playing with a sub-par Ryder or having to start the damn thing all over again. Having done Habitat 7 a few times in the past week I can't stomach the idea of doing it again so I guess I'll suck it up and deal. If they were going to lock in the characters appearance they should have included an "interview" segment or something as part of the character builder so that you could see your character move and speak in proper lighting and thus give you a chance to revise before starting the real game.
3) The Tempest is pretty damn nice. I enjoy how they are able to take advantage of the technology improvements to showcase a very open and window-intensive new ship that just looks awesome when you are walking around and can see what is going on outside. The woman who was the principle creator / artist / everything for the Tempest was at PAX East and mentioned that she had lived and breathed the ship for the last several years and that effort shows. Really quite remarkable.
4) Whoever decided that we needed a mini cut-scene everytime we move from one planet in a system to another is a moron. Sure it looks nice, but if you are trying to max out your exploration of a system by moving from planet to planet it takes waaaaay too long to do.
5) The inventory / Research and Development UI is a nightmare. I am a person who actually LIKED the Mass Effect 1 customization and inventory system. This thing is... I don't even know where to begin when looking at items that I have which I can sell. I am pretty sure I want to keep all my raw materials so I can build things, but it looks like I need those to research as well AND even researching something isn't enough as you then have to incorporate that new technology into a product through some mechanism I was unable to figure out before my face grew too tired to care.
6) The mood / atmosphere is all over the place. One minute its all gloom n doom and everyone is starving with the entirely of civilization functioning as destitute refugees caught in a civil war and then the next the Nexus is looking all bright and shiny and we have this badass ship and one of your crew is chattering away about getting a couch for the lounge.
7) Finally got to the first real planet (which others did do during the 10 hour preview on EA Access) and rapidly found myself not caring once it looked like it was going to be a repeat of the same plot line as Habitat 7 and then discovering that the drive controls for the MAKO cause it to handle like a pregnant whale in a hedge maze.
8) I actually downloaded the APEX app for my phone yesterday and have been using it to send out teams on missions ala DA:I table / WoW-Garrison. The idea that you can play through the mission yourself in multiplayer is cool, but no one is playing multiplayer yet so trying to do that in practice was a fail last night. I am, however, getting some useful materials coming my way in game for the price of clicking an app every few hours so that's something.
I'll play more tonight and maybe it picks up once I get past this next bit, which honestly still feels like a tutorial. This is, however, entirely the wrong way to go about kicking off a new segment of your A-list franchise.
