A bit late, I know. But this is where things get interesting, as it goes over the “HOLY FUCK I want this game!!” hype. I shall leave my comments of this game at the bottom of this post.
(View the video here)
From what I’m getting at the end, this will be the end of the gameplay videos. Hopefully soon they’ll get more into the actual story behind the game. And if you last through the end, you’ll hear something of a ship dropping out of warp speed.
So what we know (as said before), the game takes place in the “Helios Cluster” of the Andromeda galaxy, and to get us from the Milky Way to this unexplored galaxy is called the “Tempest”; a ship capable of doing what no other ship in any other space game can do, which is leave the Milky Way.
I’ve gotten a real Elite: Dangerous vibe, as the player can command the ship and go to planets, moons and other places in the Helios Cluster (aka, they don’t need a pilot like Joker). The player can also stop the ship at any time and see the planet near them through windows on the bridge. *jaw drops to floor at those screens*
FUCKING HELL, FDev! You need to pick up the pace with ship interiors, or this game is going to beat you!!
It’s mentioned that “there are over 100 worlds to discover, and ‘a handful’ of worlds can be landed on”. How big a handful remains to be seen, though I imagine it’ll be similar to the number of landable planets in the entire Mass Effect series.
I do have a bit of a “I dunno…” feeling that shows when (I assume) you land on one of these planets. The player is given options on where they can go, with the onboard ship AI giving you Intel on that location. However, the narrator says “but the choice on where you want to go is ultimately yours”. So maybe these could be seen as Fast Travel points(and the player can choose to fast travel or just regularly travel there? There is more evidence to back this a bit later on.
It’s also strange that you don’t just send a shuttle down or something while your ship stays in orbit(like in the previous three games). Maybe the player’s ship isn’t as big as the Normandy, therefore can land on planets.
And how the player can traverse a planet, is the game’s version of the M-35 Mako; codenamed the “Nomad”. This all-terrain 6-wheeled rover, unlike Mass Effect 1, can be fully upgraded.
Now here’s the assumption that the “here’s where you can go” list could be Fast Travel points, as one of the purposes of exploring in the game is to “discover objectives to call down forward stations”. Once you discover a specific point, the player can call down a ‘Forward Station’. This device is said to serve as not only a Fast Travel point, but a place to change the player’s layout and to ‘call down the Nomad'(according to the ingame description) “if the Nomad is missing or destroyed”.
Since the info is pretty vague on just how the Nomad arrives on the planet surface(and if it’s possible to get infinite replacements of the rover without a resource cost), I’m neutral to this.
The Forward Station can also be used as a place to run to if low on health/ammo, and serves as a planetary hazard protection bubble.
*Cool scene of the player entering the Nomad, of the rover’s doors sliding open*
As what I saw in the first episode, all planets have hazards (levels of heat and cold). The Nomad serves as a place to avoid these hazards, but its resources of keeping the player protected aren’t infinite, requiring the player to locate either a resupply station or a Forward Station to fully recharge the Nomad.
Another reason to explore planets is to increase the planet’s “Viability”. Increasing the Viability allows for “the creation of an outpost”(player outposts, maybe?!), and “upgrade the ‘Nexus'”(the Andromeda Initiative’s Space Station).
The Viability of a planet needs to be (at the minimum) of 40% to support an outpost. To increase Viability, the player can eliminate hostiles, increase relationships with the local outposts, solving environmental problems(like Climate Change), and “accomplishing specific tasks related to that planet’s story”. So…it’s kind of like WoW’s rep grinding, but on other planets.
The rest of the video seems to completely lose its structure, but I believe it’s simply to show, what the player can do is pretty much endless in this game. It’s mentioned upgrading The Nexus can be used to “open up more cryopods”, which the person inside the player can use to boost one of their three skill trees.
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Right. Complaint/praise time!
And to start off, it’s still not explained just HOW in the fuck is this ship able to go faster than the speed of light to escape the Milky Way. For years, we’ve been wanting to escape Earth (and have in several of these space games)…and now we have the means of saying “ehh, screw you, Milky Way, we’re going to claim a new galaxy”??
How in the fuck did we get the technology, when if it wasn’t for the discovery of a frozen mass array around Pluto, we would still be stuck on Earth doing it the hard way (using gravity and inertia to get probes to other planets)!
Though I wonder, is it actually possible to hop back over to the Milky Way..or is the game ‘stuck’ in the Andromeda galaxy?
Next thing, the planet viability system feels…cheap to me. Is this their version of rep grinding? Then again it’s quite early, and these quests could be shockingly enjoyable. But I have my doubts.
And now I go to the praising. And oh my..GOD those images of the planets (and comets) of the ship’s windows! I think I would crap myself if I actually saw moons orbiting their host planets in real time. FUCK Elite Dangerous, then(until ship interiors become a thing)! I’m going to Andromeda and having “First discovered by Benie” ALL OVER THE PLACE!! 😀
Lastly, I pray we can land anywhere on a landable planet (instead of a specific linear spot on the planet). Hearing “the choice on where you want to go is ultimately yours” feels very promising.
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That’s all for now. Can’t wait to see the next video Bioware shows of this game.