Mass Effect: Andromeda - Comparison with The Witcher 3

PC Gamer compares Mass Effect: Andromeda with The Witcher 3:

How The Witcher 3 succeeds where Mass Effect: Andromeda falls short

Comparing quests from the RPGs reveals remarkable design similarities, so why is one revered and the other divisive?

Fairly or unfairly, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has become a yardstick to measure other open-world RPGs against. It certainly manages to get some important things right—it balances a central storyline with sidequests that mostly seem important enough to engage with on the way, has characters and subplots who weave in and out of both, and reuses locations in a way that adds significance to them. I helped someone track down a lost goat over here, and won a round of cards over there.

But as well as being a useful yardstick for comparing games, The Witcher 3 is a convenient stick for beating them with. In comment sections it's a weapon of choice for whacking games that were created in different circumstances and lineages, as well as with very different aims. However, when it comes to Mass Effect: Andromeda there are a surprising number of things in common.

Both games involve a learning period early on during which players have to decipher which icons on the map point to things they'll find worthwhile, and which are distractions for completists. (Clearing monster nests in Velen is as boring as scanning more rare minerals on Eos; swimming out to every salvage point in Skellige as redundant as climbing to every mountaintop cache in Kadara.) And both games have similar quest design, the way they lead you from scene to scene by making you examine the environment, keep you updated with logs written in-character by an NPC, and have dialogue scenes that either alter how you portray the protagonist or become morality plays with unexpected outcomes.

[...]

Click to expand...

Thank you for the info, henriquejr!

More information.

comparing that piece of with witcher 3

It is an interesting article but let me just point out (no offence to henriquejr meant) that joxer posted a link to it yesterday
https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36122&page=6

Every day we get our little recall bell about Andromeda. They probably have an article ready about how the fight does not remind someone about Pacman or why it is unfair to compare the animations of Andromeda to the ones of Bomberman in the 80.

First week sales of ME:A were apparently down compared to ME2 & ME3. The critical reception appears to be having at least some impact. It's still doing relatively well though.

I have yet to read fully well the article, but it is better and more fair than I thought.

Yeah TW3 writing is better on every aspect to MEA writing but for companions.

For companions MEA is widely superior from any point of view, despite it's far to be perfect and for Bioware games the quality is lower beside for most companions quests.

Yeah both games have boring MMO like parts that players should know filter themselves according to their tastes and current mood, well seen.

His analysis on Witcher sense versus MEA walk scanning is just looking at the writing point of view, weak analysis. Firstly both borrowed the idea to a console game. Secondly in term of mechanics TW3 use it for create movie like quest evolution, which was for me quite boring and artificial. MEA just use it as a system for having tiny tricks like some 3D analysis, a secondary collecting system, sometimes for a quest progression, for set up small puzzling, for being used during a combat or at least before, and some more. The result is MEA design is much more fluid and much better merged to the overall gameplay when in TW3 it's just artificial and an obvious attempt to make games as movies.

The writer cautiously avoid compare:
- Combats, just because obviously MEA is hugely superior.
- Character building, MEA isn't better but feels more old school by highlighting long scale building instead of level up.
- Path finding and path progressing tricks where MEA is many levels above TW3.
- Collecting which is lame in TW3, and less lame in MEA with better design and no collect respawn destroying all.

He didn't forget quote that only MEA doesn't has the infamous radar and is fully playable without. But he obviously forgot all those major aspects because nowadays it's just impossible to say anything negative about TW3.

Yeah TW3 writing is superior, other than that, that's another debate.

Yeah you forgot to mention than MEA is also vastly superior in terms of spaceship and alien races.
They compare Quests because that is the only thing those 2 games have in common. How can you compare pew pew my gun is bigger than yours to Sword fight?
Character Building is non existent in TW3 because you get one already with 6 or 7 books behind.
The comparison is pointless in this article. Games are widely different and have only "RPG" descriptive term in common.
The idea to compare MEA to anything which has been published those last 10 years is tiring and marketing tied.

TW3 has companions, and it's not bad job, ok usually they don't follow in exploring and combats, but still it's perfectly comparable and MEA burry deep TW3.

I don't get the character building thing, both are equally average, but nothing half has good than some PoE or any DA.

I don't think the games are so different, the result is pretty different, but the origin blueprints have many links involving similar difficulties and potential. Myself I would compare MEA to Skyrim, DAI, certainly not any other ME, DA, new wave RPG from DOS to PoE.

To put 'em in the same sentence is an insult to CDPR and to the Witcher franchise

Another article about MEA if you want to go on reading about it:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/296319/Opinion_Why_does_Mass_Effect_Andromedas_open_world_feel_so_closed.php

Aerth said:

Another article about MEA if you want to go on reading about it:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/296319/Opinion_Why_does_Mass_Effect_Andromedas_open_world_feel_so_closed.php

Click to expand...

"Natural environments are rich in character; theirs is a visceral beauty that can collapse eternity into a vista." Lol, sure real life is a lot more fun. Why buy games just live isn't it? Sigh, the absurdities people can write. I stopped bother after my eyes jumped to this sentence almost instantly, gee I feel like a human google.

While the author of the article does make a valid point, he also misses an important one: You could do a similar comparison between TW3 and just about every AAA RPG released in a decade, and it would come out in favor of TW3.

It basically just means that TW3 is the new benchmark. It doesn't really explain the MEA bashing, as losing to TW3 in terms of writing in an open world RPG means that FO4, DAI and so on should get the same treatment.

Well, MEA is the first big AAA RPG to come out since TW3 so of course it gets compared. Kingdom Come will be next and Vampyr after that and people will compare those too, because it is fun as well as good flamebait.

While I agree with you Maylander it's worth mentioning that DAI and FO4 received their fair share of bashing. But, since they were released a while ago, people said what they did have to say and moved on.
Still, if some simple soul tries to say something positive about DAI or FO4, all hell breaks loose again.
MEA is simply a brand new release and that's the cause of all the Sturm und Drang

Maylander said:

While the author of the article does make a valid point, he also misses an important one: You could do a similar comparison between TW3 and just about every AAA RPG released in a decade, and it would come out in favor of TW3.

It basically just means that TW3 is the new benchmark. It doesn't really explain the MEA bashing, as losing to TW3 in terms of writing in an open world RPG means that FO4, DAI and so on should get the same treatment.

Click to expand...

Lots of truth in your comment. But release date of the various games is also relevant. For example, one could also include Witcher 2 in the comparison. And Witcher 3 would still win hands down. CDPR came a long way in a short time, even compared to their own prior work, That's something that can't be said any other studio (AFAIK).

Witcher 3 is the new platinum standard. And well deserved..

__

The nice thing is that they were able to release this DRM free and with generous support and still made a bucket load of money. The DRM free part is important because modern DRM has a noticeable negative impact on the game for various reasons (perf, reliability, ...). In fact when witcher-2 came out it had drm and caused CDPR so much grief with crashes they immediately removed it.
-
We compare this to EA's big releases and (such as DA:I) and support was anemic (comparatively) esp on the PC; major story elements were added as DLC extra to milk the customers. Quite frankly not only was witcher 3 a very well done game (but not flawless by any means) it was also consumer friendly.

zahratustra said:

Still, if some simple soul tries to say something positive about DAI or FO4, all hell breaks loose again.

Click to expand...

Just your believing, I don't know for FO4 but for DAI it's pretty obvious it does some stuff better than MEA even if overall MEA is more coherent. And no way a game as The Witcher 3 no matter how good is TW3 can be a substitute to a smart (non completionist) play of DAI. It's simple there's no equivalent to DAI, Elder Scroll and FO has their own styles very different. And there's a lot of fun to get from a DAI play. It can't vanish in history like Oblivion I hate never vanished from history.

you said:

We compare this to EA's big releases and (such as DA:I) and support was anemic (comparatively) esp on the PC; major story elements were added as DLC extra to milk the customers. Quite frankly not only was witcher 3 a very well done game (but not flawless by any means) it was also consumer friendly.

Click to expand...

Consumer friendly isn't the game, it's just explaining the hypes. I read but didn't bother counter check that TW3 budget was 70M+ eventually DAI budget didn't get that high.