The Art of Character Creation: A Discussion with PCGamer's Tom and James

Tom and James from PCGamer were joined by Max, who had been spending time in the Elite Dangerous 2.3 beta, to discuss their experiences with character creators in games. Max asked if either Tom or James would spend a significant amount of time customizing their characters, and Tom replied that he was terrible at recreating his own face and usually just made weird characters.

Tom described his experience with character creators, saying that he would often show them to others and receive the response that they didn't look like him. He joked that if you looked at the two of them, it would look like someone had moved a couple sliders around on their faces and put on some glasses. James chimed in, saying that he usually spends about 8 hours customizing his characters before starting a game, but admitted that this can vary depending on the type of game.

James explained that if he's going to play a long RPG, he'll spend a lot of time customizing his character, but if it's a shorter survival game like Arc, he won't bother. Max asked for advice on how long people should spend on character creators, and Tom replied that it depends on the type of game, but generally, 8 hours is a good amount of time to spend.

The conversation turned to the question of whether someone could only play one game for the rest of their life, with subscriber Gild asking if PCGamer's favorite would be Mass Effect Andromeda. Tom replied that his answer was not necessarily easy, and then jokingly suggested Audio Surfer as a good alternative. James chimed in, saying that he would also want to choose something competitive, but ultimately decided on Dwarf Fortress as his go-to game.

James explained why he chose Dwarf Fortress, saying that it's a game where you can create a fantasy life for yourself while your dwarves play video games. Max asked if PCGamer could get updates on Dwarf Fortress, and James replied that they might not, which would mean Tyler living a new life. The conversation ended with a lighthearted bet between Tom and James on whether League of Legends will still be played in 30 years.

The discussion highlights the importance of character creation in games and how much time players can spend customizing their characters. It also showcases the personalities of PCGamer's Tom and James, who are known for their humor and banter. The conversation was a fun and entertaining way to explore the world of gaming with PCGamer's community.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody and welcome to the PC Gamer show my name is Tom Marks associate editor here at PC Gamer and your host as always James teased me before the show with a high pitch nasly version of that so I decided to go a little lower today okay self-conscious a little bit he got me I am joined by the very mean J and staven Port not me how you doing James great was good I was pretty what is this is it all coming out now yes we're doing this now this is an intervention actually we're also joined by the the mean decider Tyler wild over on the internet Tyler you're joining us again thanks very much how you doing man pretty good I'm also mean but I I am excited that I have a new desk chair here that will hopefully make my back feel better make you better at gaming you know what kind of chair I have now Amazon Basics hey me too I have that I snapped my uh my arm rest in the first week it's it's awful yeah both of my both of my armrests are hanging off the side oh yeah you can't see for reason doesn't sound very restful for your arms at that point it's not it now it like pinches my arm and I get cuts on all the time wow but invest in a good chair or you'll have back problems like me well uh it's still in the box behind you though yeah I haven't had a chance to to open it up put it together the bo ched the chair assembly yes I have until Mass effects done okay well speaking of uh first we have a couple subscribers Nick Warrior 5 for three months skimble locked for four thank you very much guys for your continued support uh as Tyler mentioned today is a bit of a mass effect day we had Tyler on last week to talk briefly about Mass Effect but we were still under embargo for for the majority of the game at that point uh so we're back today to talk in depth about the The Good the Bad and the very very ugly of Mass Effect Andromeda um our review if you guys did not see it did go up you can find that at pcgamer.com slmd effect Das Andromeda Dash review uh and and you can see what Chris thiren our reviewer for that thought there but we're going to dive into it uh just in general here and and kind of take as much uh as much depth as we want with it the one thing I will say before anyone freaks out is we're going to try to avoid story spoilers as much as possible um obviously there's going to be some things to that but like we're not just going to like blow through it we're going to be talking about more how the game plays the systems the the likes and dislikes in that regard the wonky eyeballs everything like that um my character is beautiful Tom she looks great I just turned on in the settings I turned on keep helmet on at all times and now my character is beautiful you know Tyler all I can say is every everyone thinks that their child is the prettiest child in school so uh but we we are going to get into that but before we get into that we're going to talk about what we've been playing recently and of course we're going to take your guys's questions from twitch chat at the end I think we're actually going to try to make the twitch chat at the end of today's episode a bit longer I kept feeling bad about it being pushed to the end uh so come up with questions and hit us up at the end because we're going to hopefully have a lot of time for that this week uh so I want I want to hear from you guys basically is what I'm saying but let's start uh with what we've been playing recently I was going to do another kind of latest hot news section but there wasn't really a whole heck of a lot going on Mass Effect it's just Mass Effect consuming everything so uh we're gonna we're gonna skip that for now and go right into what we've been playing recently and I want to start with James because James you you and Tyler have been playing a lot of Mass Effect that's a given but uh you you've been playing some other stuff too you've been it in there yeah uh first things first I during my lunch breaks I've been playing stories Untold um which is a kind of episodic sci-fi horror game that uh each episode is centered around a kind of piece of old technology um the first episode and I won't spoil what exactly gets into but the first episode is a called a I don't know something about a haunted house and you're you're sat in front of this old CRT Monitor and this old keyboard it's all rendered with loving detail it's um I think one of the lead designers on that stuff is uh made the tech in Alien Isolation like the old retro futuristic Tech and uh you play an adventure game on this computer on your computer so it's it's I don't I don't want to say too much without uh uh spoiling the premise but it kind of plays into the idea of um playing a game within within a game and uh does some really cool stuff if you like fiddling around with old technology the effects and all the buttons and switches you eventually get to use um are really satisfying uh especially you know if that's if you have a lust for that kind of stuff um so you give that a look it's like 10 bucks and uh about four hours long um pretty pretty uh pretty cool stuff um otherwise I've been playing and I've had very little time to do this uh near automata automata autom automata automata I'm really not sure anymore I don't I don't know I have I think aoma is fine autom let's just go with that um LR meta there you go you wash you wash clothes and uh it's a cool RPG yeah yeah it's got a great spin cycle to be fair RPGs have been made about more mundane things than Wasing clo yeah so this game is Bonkers uh you guys it's it's uh how do I start uh it's it's a sequel sort of to near which I don't know if it was ever on PC or not I never played near you don't have to know anything about near but it's sort of like this cult classic RPG uh pretty flawed apparently um this takes place many many many years later I think centuries later in a sort of post-apocalyptic scenario where robots have taken over the Earth uh humans are forced to the moon and they build this Android Army to kind of reclaim the planet uh and yeah so it's an RPG in that sense you're sent down as this Android 2B and you explore this kind of semi-open world and uh get quests and talk to NPCs and you know there's side quests there's some really interesting environments um the key thing to note here is that the combat systems uh were designed by platinum and if you know Platinum games uh that's kind of their MO is combat Centric games I mean they've had a whole string of kind of smaller games like um the recent Transformers one I know they did an avatar one which was the combat was good but everything else was bad from what I hear pretty much it was really really really repetitive midle gear revengeance and and so on uh Bayonetta I think was their jam too uh so they know how to do combat Vanquish yeah yeah Vanquish they know how to do like wild over the toop combat and this game opens like with some of the most wild over-the-top combat you'll get uh it's it's really deep too I've seen a gif of like some Advanced player juggling a robot for like I don't know it didn't touch the ground for like 30 seconds or something um I'm not that advanced yet but it feels really good there's a lot of variability so you can equip a primary weapon and a heavy weapon and those can those can be interchanged among those slots so you can have um you know your heavy weapon and every weapon behaves differently in each slot so there's like you know they get different Combos and chains and it's wild and over the top and deep and I'm barely scratching the surface of that on top of that it's also a bullet hell shooter what yeah so um wait what yeah it's an open world RPG with Platinum like you know deep uh it's like real time action combat real time action combat with bullet hell elements like or it literally is like a bullet Hill game so okay the game opens like from the top down you're in a ship and you're just playing a bullet hell shooter like there's Ships coming at you it's like an old arcade classic looking thing and then slowly as the scene progresses you move to like free stick and free aim movement okay and you're like all right this is interesting and then you get thrown down onto the planet and you start doing some combat and then later you start uh some enemies start shooting at you and you realize you get taught to how to shoot you can shoot at any point and aim with the analog sticks or lock on uh to start shooting your bullet held gun that just is constant stream of fire and you can also combo and do like do your action moves while you're shooting um so it it throws a bunch at you at once and then eventually you face enemies that spray like these erratic patterns um of of bullets so you're weaving in out of these bullets while doing these Combos and yeah it's insane it's insane um it feels really good though you think it'd be like too much and at first it is but uh it doesn't feel quite like anything I've ever played before in that regard well Joe Donnelly yeah over in the UK uh wrote a piece today called why I love struggling to Define near atom which I I didn't really understand that headline and now that you explain it like I this game sounds like it's just doing a lot of weird stuff and that's like just systemically like the things you're doing like mechanically it's hard to Define but beyond that the story it's trying to tell I don't want to spoil it because I'm still like being surprised by it and I've only like four hours in but um I've heard comparisons to undertale in the morality of what you're doing and like the point like it constantly makes you think about and uh why you're attacking these robots and and so on um I only what's I only played the beginning because I was testing the port which is sort of so so but uh I love that it starts with this quote about like uh God God created us to be mortal I can't wait to kill such a being or something like that I'm like it's it's definitely a very Bleak like it's I mean I found this Village of robots um and there was a robot named uh and I don't know if I'm saying the last name right John Paul SAR who's like this old French philosopher who basic he was an existentialist and um every robot in that Village is named after like an old French philosopher or something of like like that and or an existentialist and it's constantly making you think about what the the purpose of life is um not just like what the purpose of playing this game is it's very Bleak and and the Creator um the director I'm forgetting his name he's always wearing like this spooky ass Moon Helmet or whatever you can never see him he is known as you know being sort of a bleak existentialist himself um but yeah so I mean within the opening minutes or excuse me opening like couple hours uh you're dumped into this world and and I was expecting it to be like all post-apocalyptic but then like very early on like you enter an amusement park and the music is just is is very playful and silly and within the combat systems I don't want to spoil it God I can't really talk about things I love yet but uh Yoko Taro yeah yeah um there are things it does that are just outright hilarious like in the first boss battle the first real boss battle I encountered it you if you get hit by a certain thing in this battle it throws you into this other scenario that just is totally out of the out of left field and and really funny in the context of what you're doing um so I I think someone compared this I I saw a tweet I forgot who wrote it oh it was like one of the Steam Reviews one of the top rated Steam Reviews it's it's like uh if um hideo Kojima got really high and made it game about like existence um then this would you know it would be near uh uh so it's it's it's really got my attention and I'm I'm curious to see where it goes I did a side quest where I brought I went and um found a lost robot's robot sister um in the desert and the whole way back the robot was asking me about like the purpose of life and then in the end asked me how babies are made and wouldn't shut up the robot kept asking me how babies are made um yeah there's like a lot of really weird funny stuff the the the localization is really good too so game sounds great it's I I'm so I wish the port was a little better because I had to use a community fix to get the resolution running correctly I know some people have like better experience than others um sounds like there needs to be a bit of work done with it um but as far as the localization I thought it was cool that you can uh you can switch to the original Japanese dialogue and use subtitles which I've been doing that two too few games have that option and yeah the Japanese voice acting like it feels really great and it's the the lips of the characters are synced to that more naturally so yeah it feels better in that way um yeah it's just it's been one of the most exciting things I've played this year in terms of and inventive things I've played this year that's cool I hope more people give it a shot it's it feels like it might get lost in the the M too yeah well that's that's cool that's one that I honestly before this conversation did not have much interest in and now I'm at least interested in trying it you know yeah I think everyone should if you like action heavy games and you like weird hideo coima esque just you know surprising meta commentary and Bleak just uh you know give it a shot give it a shot it might surprise you so we should have a review up uh tomorrow tomorrow yeah likely yeah cool Andy Kelly is on that in the UK right on looking forward to his thoughts yeah that's he likes it well there you go spoiler yeah spiler review of the game well that's that's man that like I was not expecting you to say bullet hell like I was just kind of expecting standard Platinum sort of stuff but it's it's bizarre bizarre right well we can we can damn I I'll I'll find out the rest for myself I suppose but uh I want to go next I've been playing two games Zelda I wasn't even going to say the word today I was completely going to avoid it and then you did it James I did we know the truth Tom yes I've been playing that still but it's because I can play it on the train so shut up okay the two games I've really been playing more lately are um this one puzzle game that I've been really really enjoying um called Cosmic Express I I I played a game I think I might have mentioned this actually when post to GDC um there was a game that I really enjoyed a puzzle game I really enjoyed called a good snowman as hard to build oh yeah I know that game yeah and it's this really kind of underrated puzzle game and the creator of it now made this game which is called Cosmic express love the look um it's a really kind of cute very vibrant bright look um and it's one of the most like deceptively difficult puzzle games I've played in a long time like Snake Bird is the other thing that comes to mind in terms of like really cute simple visuals but damn is the game hard yeah how what's going on in there though yeah so like you it shows you like a track right or like a little like kind of space Dome bubble thing it's in like an isometric point of view um and there are little aliens along that path and you have to you you drive a train and you have to draw a track for the train and it can't overlap itself and it can't go backwards and you usually usually only have like one or two seats on the train so you have to like pick up an alien then deliver him to his matching colored home and then pick up another alien and deliver him and then get to a different exit so the the actual puzzle of the game is you're trying to draw a path that will pick up and drop off these aliens in the right sequence before you then leave okay um and the reason it's so deceptively hard is because like you'll get just a pretty much blank you know maybe 8x6 Square grid to draw on um and there will be two aliens and two drop off points in this big Square grid um and so there's just like a lot of empty space and you're like okay this is going to be simple I just got to do two dudes and draw a line and it's easy but the the actual work that goes into planning that route is surprisingly complex and surprisingly like limited in what you can do so it's it's a really really good game in in just like making you be like oh yeah this is going to be fine and then really kicking your ass instead like uh the guy I was playing when I did play it at GDC I'm playing at home now but when I did play it at GDC the guy who I was first watching and then I ended up having to take over for him um because he he was playing the first he played the first level and he was like oh this is easy and like looked over the developer and I was like so does it like does it get hard like how did I this is this is super simple p and she was like yeah well just just wait and he did the second level and he was like this is so this is so easy and then he got to the next level and he had to walk away he couldn't do it and it was like I've never seen somebody get shut up so quickly when like dissing a developer's game in front of them but yeah he he had to walk away and it was like yeah it's just a very very cool game if you're a puzzle game fan Cosmic Express is is a good one now you say yeah it's already out um it's on Steam it's very good oh also I missed I totally forgot this crazy kuk re subscribers thank you very much um but yeah I I'm a I'm a big fan of cosmic Express the other game that I've been playing I'm a little mad at Wes for and I'm a little upset at myself for playing what um so we ran an article today uh about a new card game hey called faia or FIA it's f a r i a it's a terrible name but it's like a a board based hex based tactics card game um which as people know because I don't shut up about du I'm like a big fan go here we go yeah um and and all Wes had to do yesterday Jody wrote this great article just kind of breaking down why it's a good game um and all Wes had to do yesterday was say to me hey we're does anybody want to edit an article about a new like board-based card game it's pretty fun and I read it and I was like I'm downloading this game right now like it was it I I'm so predictable but I was playing this yesterday and I played it a ton last excuse me last night and some earlier and yeah you could say you're an easy marks an easy Mark oh God I'll give you that one thank you I'll I'll close Skype now but yeah it's it's actually really really fun um and I'm is it yes or is it no I no no no no no let's let's talk about this how many times can you make a goddamn card game with with the hearts and the Shields and and then also just like throw in hex's and say oh good strategy yeah you can make decisions that are that are strategic and you and you have car like I don't I don't understand like make sell this because it looks generic it looks bad it looks I don't know why should I care why should I care okay so without like you know was mean I swinging no cuz you're you're you're right and the truth of the matter is if I show you this screenshot here I'm going to show you some screenshots from from the the steam page real quick if I show you this screenshot you don't care and you don't care about this either and this this looks gross right like honestly the game in screenshots looks incredibly generic it looks really bad and I don't think it it pitches well is the funny thing but in motion and when you're playing it I think it actually is a pretty Charming game d is okay um and and this is why you should care yeah nobody cares about the beta download Steam trailer that that part you don't care about this is why you should care though or this is why I care is I I'm still a huge fan of dualist I've been playing the newest expansion but the something that's been happening with dualist lately is that it's been focusing less and less the new cards have been focusing less and less on the board they've been focusing less and less on making interacting with the actual tiles and more and more on like making cool cards and like weird cards um and this game scratches the board itch for me in a way that doesn't and so the way it works is for anyone familiar with magic or Hearthstone or anything when you play a Mana there's like colored Mana basically but the way it works is that you're actually the board starts completely blank and you can't step on any of it um and then you actually place the board down so you place land tiles that you can then play your units on and move them on that's interesting cuz I I don't know like if you just say a hex based card or board game with card element you know yeah it's I I kind of know what that looks like or just like no know what to expect but but the the more interesting thing about this is like the board since it starts blank like it actually is formed every time and like where you can move is different every time see that's interesting to me and and yeah and it affects tactics that way and I so I like I still love dualist and I still think dualist like has better like pixel art than this cuz this doesn't have pixel art it's just kind of more traditional and honestly it just looks like they kind of took they stole League of Legends color palette and we're like we'll just make a game that looks like that which is like fine but also makes it look very generic um yeah it's it's a really surprisingly good game though it's very very it doesn't feel like Hearthstone in the way that duelist and Elder Scrolls Legends and eternal all feel like some variant of hearthstone or magic okay um which is important I think I apologize for no no no no no we know for yelling at the video game I yelled at the video game again I'm going to yell at another one here in a bit I think again and again we're rapping ramping up for that I'm excited for that um that's mainly would have I been playing jbj Blaze says does 15mth subscribed hit the mark or James did it again uh oh and you said f is better than duelist Tom no I would not say I don't know if f is better than duelist yet I I legitimately can't tell I'm enjoying it a lot right now um it's but that was because jbj Blaze subscribed for 15 months so thank you very much but it's a lot of months man yeah I mean I've only been playing for for like a day so it's hard to tell but it's a game I'm excited to play lots more of okay um yeah Tyler have you been playing anything that's not Mass Effect uh let's see um no I see about 60 hours in Mass Effect uh no I I did actually stop to play Rising Storm 2 Vietnam which is enclosed beta right now uh yeah we gave out some keys last week uh there will be another beta period coming up where we might have some more it's fun but I didn't have time to not suck at it like the the Red Orchestra and the rising storm games you really you have to familiarize yourself with the maps and the character models especially because Friendly Fire is on and I'm always afraid to be that guy who's like constantly killing teammates so I'll just see I'll just see like a squad coming at me and be like is that the Americans or the ah they killed me they were they were bad guys um so yeah that seems like it'll be something I play a lot uh when it comes out because I enjoy that series but uh you you can't really judge it on playing like two rounds uh which is the same for all the other games yeah so it's it's definitely a hardore like I remember I I didn't play the first Rising storm and when I played Rising Storm 2 at like a packs a while back for the first time I was like oh my God this game is it kicks your ass if you're not ready for it yeah it's hard um I also like to uh what is that game with the triangles James uh uh yanai's triangle yeah I think I uninstalled it yeah man I like to play that after like 10 hours of Mass Effect to like to like I don't know defragment my brain it's like a puzzle game that's not hard it like it doesn't really ramp up in difficulty in any well I guess it does a little bit but not much you're just kind of spinning Triangles around but it just has like a weird visual style and and audio that's kind of like trans likee it is so that came out as the best triangles of 2016 sure officially yeah we we awarded it yeah oh yeah we did didn't we we did it's a great game so so that's like my uh you know that's like my post workout game and by workout I don't mean physical exercise I mean playing a lot of Mass Effect and getting tired of it oh man the life of of an executive editor at PC Gamer well obviously we've been doing like a ton of coverage of Mass Effect because knew people would be interested so um that means a lot of like marathoning it to get lots of saves because it is a freaking huge game so yeah well let's without further Ado dig into that because there's a lot to talk about about Mass Effect Andromeda for those of you living under ack it did come out yesterday um yeah right Tuesday yes 21st so it came out yesterday it's been available the first 10 hours were available to like EA Origin access people for a few days before that um and then you guys have been playing the game for a week a little over I don't even remember at this point I think I think I started it I started it last Saturday no the Saturday before the previous one James has lost just all perception it's been a long time how space James I don't know where to start with this game okay well well let's let's start with the fact that there is a lot to dig into let's start with there which is that the game so far has been divisive in in reviews and opinions so for example um for example the the oh my God I just totally lost my train of thought excuse me it's been divisive on our staff uh is that's for sure like Chris Chris that's what I was gonna say Chris our our reviewer uh I believe he gave it an 80 he was a fan of the game he recognized its problems but he had quite a good time playing it by contrast Tim Clark editor-in-chief who I wanted to get in on this but was too busy today uh came into our Monday morning meeting and was basically like this is a pile of hot garbage it's one of the worst games I've played in years I don't understand why Everyone likes it so it's like and and not neither of those people are wrong right it's just it's a divisive game opinion wise I'm I'm somewhere in the middle there where it's like I was talking to James before we started I can't I can't really talk about the game without criticizing it because there's so damn much to criticize about it but I can just shut off and play it and just like watching a an episode of Star Trek Voyager like I can still enjoy it as long as I'm not thinking about you know what I would say about it but when it comes time to talk uh I can I can talk about that game for for ages so where do you guys want to start do you want to start at like I mean you talked a bit about or Tyler talked a bit about some stuff last week but like is there anything I guess to start that that you would want to talk about past those 10 hours we could talk about last week I think I think for me at least like the first 10 hours didn't really show me the shape of the game like okay am I going to be hitting up each you know six planets and just like how how is this how are the quests and like uh companion quests going to be structured around that and story Quest going to be strugg am I going to be like doing busy work on each of these worlds to get them to a % like I didn't really know and now I do know and I know it's all fluffy like it's it's uh James is in the Tim Camp I'm I lean I think I lean towards Tim slightly and you seem to lean lean towards Chris um but the this game okay the stuff you do in the open worlds uh is almost all filler it's there's there's you know collections you go collect uh dad fragments dad memory fragments you go scan minerals you go scan plants you um there's some side quests that you get um most of them are just like go here and kill these people or go here and look at this terminal uh and those things will like Ping you back and forth between a planet your ship the Nexus and so on which all have these like 10 to 15 second uh ship uh flying Transitions and loading screens and only to get you know you go back to the Nexus only to get sent back down to the planet to talk to some guy to close out the quest um I think I think almost all that extraneous stuff is garbage the the the planets themselves are populated with uh like four or five different like uh creatures all of the planets in the entire galaxy cluster are so you get the same big uh brawler dude you get the same Raptor looking thing you get the acidic Beetle looking thing you get it's it's not there's nothing surprising in terms of the zoology of these planets and even in in the topography like in the geology of these planets uh they're all kind of just Barren and and Rocky and hilly and anytime you see a point of interest at least in my experience going there was usually pretty fruitless i' be like oh I find this down ship what's going on here ah there's some cat damn it thanks for telling me again and Sam your AI will tell you anytime you drive by cat he'll be like h cut and like okay or it's like you got you got 50 research points yeah you found 10 aluminum thanks buddy um yeah like anytime you like find a cave or something in any other like semi-open World game or purely open world game you'd be like rewarded for exploring that or get a tidbit about uh the world or or find some kind of secret and no I mean most of the time it's like that's a place reserved for a quest you haven't found yet and you'll be back there so don't go there yet there's no incentive to explore in that in that regard almost none I mean maybe there's some cool thing someone found somewhere but in my experience nothing um Tyler have you found anything like cool just from exploring those those places not really it's it's like you'll run into someone who's there and they need help which usually means go scan something or go find something yeah um you know you start to have to kind of like work with like a day planner where you're like because it does take those 15-second transitions to go between um PL you know system to system to a planet and then onto the planet surface so you have to kind of be like okay well if I make the track back to EOS which is like the first planet you land on uh I want to make sure I'm like primed to complete as many quests as I can on there so that I don't have to come back later if I don't need to uh because there's just so much everyone you talk to has something which is why like you could probably play 200 hours and not get very far in the story to be honest um and I I wouldn't say that that 200 hours would necessarily be uh very fun but I don't know I'm I'm okay with doing some of the dumb side quest like can you put can you put this on EOS because of my brother and I'm like okay yeah I'll do it and I I'll get a really brief like introspective bit of dialogue where I'm like huh wow okay I guess it's the little things that count and then uh go on with my day and I'm I'm I'm kind of okay with that maybe more so than than you and Tim well definitely more than you and Tim yeah um but as far as like oh I explored into the depths of this planet and found a really cool little side quest and I got a special piece of armor I don't know maybe it should have like rewarded you with actual items and stuff it doesn't really it's just like at the end of a quest you kind of you did the quest yeah that's that's it a little notification in the bottom left corner it's like plus 30 experience and then like the idea is that like that each side quest should get by on on the power of its story and its writing and that's the reward for completing it but that isn't the case for most of them because the writing the writing is like I have a problem can you go scan something and I'm like okay you fixed it thanks Ryder seems like they could just make more of these scanners and like other people could scan yeah everyone could just be SC the only one who has a scanner and they're just like oh ryer scanner can detect that why don't why don't everyone have one Pathfinder thing I guess I guess um Tyler the mildly motivated Rider Chris says yeah I'm I'm I'm basically like I have a lot of problems with the game but I'm I'm going to make uh I'm going make sure we're all good in Andromeda and and solve the problems of my uh uh of my people yeah and I I think even if you if that extra like the open World stuff was like intrinsically rewarding and if you find it intr intrinsically rewarding that's cool uh but even then if you don't and you're doing it to like make a meter go up or looking for some reward at the end of the tunnel the reward is uh I think it's called AP and I forget what that means viability points Andromeda viability points those those feed back into another system which androma versus I can't wait can't wait um into a system uh where you're basically waking people from cryogenic sleep um so any every time you level up your EVP you get one extra point to spend on something to wake up people from cogenic sleep but there's that's never really reflected in in your Journeys so it's reflected in a menu so if you wake somebody up or wake up a chunk of people you click on a menu to get a certain bu or a certain perk uh that will be there for the rest of the game so you can choose to uh get resources at a 30 minute interval or something randomly and uh or you'll start to uh you'll get more experience from every encounter or whatever there's random little perks and that's like the extent of the reward of of uh making every planet viable is Perks and well there's a little I mean what what else is there yeah is that you make the planets more viable you wake people up and then and then the settlements will grow and then you'll have more side quest to do when you visit them James this is this is the idea uh I mean I would be totally down I just like and maybe we can just like move into how into the writing in this game because well real quick before we get under writing I I do want to ask somebody mentioned in the chat do the planets visually start looking different as you like do they get prettier and like habited or or like terraformed in any way or are they still like Arizona desert just with some more things I haven't gone I haven't gone nuts with like the viability stuff to be honest because I'm trying to like look into other parts of the game I don't know James have you established like more 100ed three planets and damn uh I think I noticed a change like a visual well first of all you you establish outposts where um previously there was a a a field or an open plane you now have some buildings right and some people to talk to and like you can do research and development there it's like a little hub for activities and and some side quests and and so on uh beyond that I haven't noticed well I think the sky changes in on like the snow Planet if you reach a certain viability on EOS like uh it unlocks more of the planet because you the atmosphere acclimatizes and radiation goes away in like a week or some it's crazy um but you derate the planet in in a week but overall there's very it's it's it'd be hard to tell like one planet from the other based on like 0% or 100% uh viability score and I was hoping there was more of that because I think if if it felt like I was you know making these places habitable and uh there were more of my colonists making a home there and there was like maybe if you came back and there was someone like with a field and they're uh farming something and or or you have like a a a you know residential district over here now or something or a market or I don't know but really you just get the same kind of block of uh like tractor trailer basically space tractor trailer um box car settlements full of people you know who you can't interact with very much you know it's it's I don't know in that way it's very disappointing to me because the whole theme of moving into this space Frontier and making a new home uh on like these planets that are pretty pretty desolate and not totally habitable seems cool to me right like uh leaving a mark and starting a new and there's really no indication in our sense that you're making them home and forcefully colonizing another territory like humans do uh Evan Evan is uh in the chat and he you know he brought up I think he put it well this morning when we were talking that he just didn't feel surprised or yeah curious or any suspense and I agree with him about feeling slightly Pleasant like the interface kind of sucks but I just enjoy the sound effects and you know walking around my spaceship and like uh I don't know uh interacting with people and the idea that I can interact with so many people I mean one of the defenses for the game that I've made um along with Chris is that no one else but B makes RPGs like this like The Witcher is a great series but they're not the same kind of game um so and like torment uh tides of num Manera which I've been playing is a great game but it's not the same kind of game you know it's they they aren't trying to do like fully animated voice acted characters and you can talk to a million of them and your relationships evolve throughout the game um so I give it some credit for being the only RPGs of their kind bi RPGs I I agree and that I agree like there's no other RPG like it but I think just I think from the get-go a few of the like it's foundational uh I mean it's no near it's no near it's no um bullet Health seg what Mass play a combo an action combo based Mass Effect game uh but uh I I think just like right off the bat it flubs a few things that make it hard to like despite the fact that it and and a couple of those things are and you can expand on this Tyler is just the writing overall I think is um I I think before the game came out I said this in in uh our slack chat is that every subsequent BioWare games starts feeling more like fanfiction for BioWare games um and this sort of feels especially 100% it 100% feels like people who were big fans of the Mass Effect Trilogy um but didn't really have a new kind of sci-fi Vision I don't know I don't want to speculate about like the qualifications or the uh um motivations of the writers but you get in there and it feels like it feels like something a fan of the games wrote and and and definitely wrote to appeal to um a younger audience which I have to remember I was like 21 when I played the first mass effect and now I'm 31 so maybe the game hasn't changed that much but I have um makes you think but you know writer kind of says stuff like uh you know my my motto is uh I get done or whatever it was but like really just like she's supposed to be like where Shepherd has experienced uh an experienced soldier who you know kicks ass and and gets things done Ryder you know actually gets things done and doesn't just say that she does ryer is this inexperienced doesn't really know what she's doing can't really hold a meeting correctly and then just kind of speaks like people speak casually now on Twitter um and and I guess that's supposed to appeal to like appeal to them uh Millennials right um which I guess I technically am I hate the term I hate the term Millennials but this feels the most like someone said in a meeting Millennials you need to appeal to Millennials like I really I can I can I don't know some someone in our in our in our own slack chat put it well saying that you you can kind of sometimes hear the writers talking in slack and going oh this is a good joke this is a good joke you know this will work this will be cute like you can just feel when it's trying to be cute trying to be funny and the jokes don't land for me a lot of the time I like some of the banter though like your pilot and your science officer they kind of have cute little exchanges while you yeah I like them well enough well you go meet up with them you know um so the there's been kind of two camps I've seen across the different reviews that I've read and across different people making War yeah basically where and this goes back to what I was saying about the game having kind of divisive opinions is like I I have heard both yeah the writing and the story is terrible but the combat the updated combat is great and I have also heard the combat totally gets in the way of the great story like the that the combat redeems like that game for me almost it like it was the hook that kept me chugging along yeah it's it's definitely fun uh maybe not like the best mix of like shooting and and powers and stuff ever made I don't know what I'd compare it to but I had a lot of fun uh killing cat yeah it doesn't feel like I think people say maybe it gets in the way of the story because there's I mean that's a lot of the filler stuff you find find in the open worlds are just like random combat encounters you can do or just drive by it's it's kind of funny well I I I guess in a way it it affects the story because the story had to accommodate for it it had to invent sure had to invent you know hordes of kind of faceless bad guy aliens to shoot at whereas if that hadn't been a priority maybe they could have gone in a more interesting Direction than you show up in a new Galaxy and there's a great evil force being amassed and now we have to take care of it because of course we do and of course there is yeah just briefly to touch on that like I don't want to sit on the story all day and we'll get to the combat but you're welcome to sit on the story a how awful and Bland and shitty and just lifeless are the cat as as an antagonizing Force without spoiling much are is that ever redeemed because we talked about it last week are there more Dimensions to the cat yes yeah but not not ones that are like yeah there there's nothing there's nothing in there it's not like there's a little boy Soul trapped in the in the archon's head who's like you know what I mean like it's it's these guys are just straight up jerks that's kind of their backstory is they're like we are jerks we were talking before about how like that there's not a lot of variety to like the alien sort of animals and creatures you meet and in general I thought the point of setting it in Andromeda this is what I thought from from the pitch from the first trailer I thought uh okay so they're setting an Andromeda so that me and my salarian assarian Krogan friends and others you know Coran friends can go to this new Galaxy and discover this like you know Interstellar Society of New aliens and just like in Mass Effect one where you're kind of the newcomer human and everyone's getting used to you and you're trying to understand different aliens that me and my crew would be making first Contact all the time and would actually sort of be the invading Force like you could you could talk about you know it could investigate uh colonialism and it could investigate you know what what morally and ethically humans can and should do in the situation of basically being Intruders like there's so much to investigate but then in the first like you know 20 minutes of andromed getting it's like ah they shot at us ah oh no they got a big ship and that guy looks mean and there's ancient alien technology which is the same shepher was doing like like you didn't have to do ancient alien technology again that didn't have there's no Mystique to it at all like no when it it's interesting that it seems like you've traveled 600 years into this completely new Galaxy where there are isn't any of the what was the stuff called the mass effect the original Mass Effect series The like the the I forgot what are you're talking about the crazy species there's like no the the technology you get is is it had like an alien name that it's all from this one oh the uh Jesus I forgot already I bed it from my anyway there isn't that stuff the prothean stuff isn't there right the Mass Effect relays aren't there all that's Jazz yeah um and it's interesting that you you conveniently flew into a Galaxy that seems to be at the exact same like time period or like era in technology and like culture and all that sort of stuff like they could have flown you into a a Galaxy that was just like these people were just forming their first technology and their first space travel or alternative I me would that have not have been fascinating to do like um first contact with a more primitive have been amazing species way more compelling yeah and then you could do some Captain peard and be like oh I don't know we can't interfere with them or you wouldn't even have rules for that like that's just one of the many ideas you could apply to setting it in a new Galaxy that was not applied instead you you encounter bipedal creatures with two eyes a mouth wearing armor and holding assault rifles picking over a ship like it didn't even occur to me when we played on the stream before it didn't even occur to me that this was like supposed to be some amazing new moment where they were encountering a new alien species because it is so understated is so normal well even when you encounter the other new species there's like one other new species um the angaran it is I mean they've already chatted with people and they are also bipedal and they are also have a mouth and two eyes they I think their defining characteristic is like and their their culture and backstory is like hit they hit you over the head with it because every NPC you talk to was like family family family family we have big families yeah they're the aliens who like family like family cool okay God I can see what you're going for here um yeah and you talked about making things normal Tom which is like that's part of the problem too is it's supposed to be a game about exploration where everything is um fascinating and new to you but for you know space travel is basically no problem for you you can cross uh between stars in apparently minutes you traveled for 600 years through dark space so when you discover ancient alien technology that seems to have like terraforming properties to it it's like why is that why is everyone acting shocked by this like don't you remember all the ancient alien technology in the Milky Way you know the one the space station you lived on called The Citadel that had like robots that no one understood how they worked why is this surprising in the least like I don't know it just didn't go far enough there was like a whole mission and Mass Effect was it one or two where you were like researching those little fixer dudes the little green guys and I know it's hard idea what they were to say you need to outdo yourself you need to like make the ancient alien technology even more incredible I'm not saying that I'm saying maybe just don't have maybe just don't retread that you did that yeah and well it's interesting how the elore was so great in the origal the other thing is yeah so where are the weird species I want you you don't even get like elor cameos or jellyfish dude cameos I forget what they're called but or at least as far as I've explored so maybe they're in there somewhere but there's a lot that you can miss even as long as we've played so to be fair yeah it's interesting silent Marine says Keepers that's what they were called those little green guys but uh it's interesting to me not to get into film too much but how this first game which they assumedly want to make the start of a series I guess they haven't publicly said that I don't think they've said that but but you know you you assume as much yeah um anyway it's interesting to see how this first game mirrors the first game of the Mass Effect Trilogy the original Mass Effect Trilogy in a similar way that uh Star Wars 7 kind of got panned for mirroring Star Wars 4 as the start of another Trilogy right like people were like you're just trying to do like you just did what the original Star Wars did and like this game I feel like is falling into similar pitfalls where it's like they they were it feels like maybe they were so worried about not being Mass Effect that they they made it to Mass Effect if that makes sense it's hard to speculate like why it is the way it is I suspect it's a matter of I don't know just just timing like there wasn't enough time to do something grander or or I don't know it it just it feels that I mean there's so many weird small buggy issues and like kind of half formed systems and the UI is awful that it it feels rushed to me personally I mean it feels to me like we can build a a good combat system and we have the frostbite engine so we can do Battlefield sized and bigger maps that look really good and that you can drive around so what do we do with those two things and it feels like the plot goes from there like well we need an enemy you can shoot a lot of and then we need big open areas so you know sort of colonizing planets works with that and you know that's cool if you're starting there um but it's just the the story beats have not surprised me yet um Evan Evan says I don't even need elor I would settle for rund conniving Volus yeah the volas were cool I liked them yeah I I I still like the aliens that are there it's just I feel like I got to know them like I we're still talking about the genage and stuff and I'm like come on I I did that man I did that there was sacrifice and you know we we did that in Mass Effect 3 and uh I I don't need to revisit that particular moral quandry but it is Revisited fairly often in your conversations so this isn't this isn't strictly uh PC related and I apologize about that but it is an interesting thing to bring up and a couple people have brought it up already in the chat which is March was a busy month for games and especially open world games and this game came out right before right after Horizon zero Dawn which was PS4 exclusive but also very critically praised as an open world game and Zelda which was very critically critically praised as an open world game what's Zelda all right calm down now but the the question is do you think that no do you think that that had any Factor on people's opinions in this game if this wasn't a Mass Effect game no one would want to play it I think it's like the only thing keeping me interested in it is a the combat is like entertaining and like it shows promise and it can be like it's a fun toy to me uh and that the enemy AI is just dull and useless and doesn't do anything um but the powers and combining them is really cool and uh B the fact that it's Mass Effect and might have something Spacey and fun written in there like otherwise if this was just like welcome to Space 2 or whatever no one would no it would be I don't know I I speculate people wouldn't have have expectations or attachments that like keep them invested I would have quit playing 10 hours in but I think people would still play I I no I think you underestimate how much people just enjoy this style of RPG like I I'm not that into fantasy and I played some Inquisition I played maybe like 10 hours and kind of just went H I don't know this isn't for me but I could see myself going back to that and finishing it even though I wasn't that interested in it just because there's a big world I could ride around talk to people I liked Inquisition though like I I think it's colleting it was better for sure it was it was better written like that's the thing is like I I just want to be in space do people look back on Inquisition poorly I feel like I think people like that game people look back and say the I don't think the characters are I don't know there's small things but overall just the open World stuff was shallow and that's like that's it like if you Mainline it and stuff it's fairly entertaining combat's a little dumb down but here in Mass like it the thing is you if you took away the Dragon Age license from Dragon Age Inquisition people would be like ah still fairly well written there's some good companions there's some like interesting stuff it's pretty if you took away the Mass Effect license here you the writing would not stand on its own for me like period having finished the game and seeing having seen the larger structure and the larger plot it's awful like what happens where you go what you do it it's awful it's awful it's like it's awful you are like you are flabbergasted right now I think I think and I've yet to play all the companion quests but those are definitely the best part of the game for me and and the mainline quests are still the best part because they contain combat like Focus linear combat um and some hard decisions that I don't know but uh it what happens in those in those the most dramatic scenarios isn't resolved in a satisfying way ever and writers always you know writers dialog wheel which is maybe something we can talk about it ditches the Paragon Renegade format sure so you can't be super good or super jerk at all times instead your shades of the same person which basically means you can answer with a joke or not and um when you answer with a joke on you know on a super dramatic beat when someone dies or you have to do something serious it just comes off as I don't know that's when it really starts to feel like the fanfiction for me and it's hard to take hard to become invested when everything's joke to your writer or uh when everything is surrounded by so much you know just useless mindless padding in this open world I don't know would you say that the writers were so self-aware that they named the character after themselves now James does even matter at me I got to calm down I need Tyler talk about the things you like uh that's like I said that's hard to do I I enjoy playing it for that like just Pleasant like getting little side quest done and I'm unlocking new dialogue and oh there's a character I haven't met before but the dialogue is often pretty bad and and as much as I thought it was a good move to get rid of paragon Renegade binary jerk or yeah nice like I would I would have liked it to feel more like I was uh I don't know being a slightly different person and not just again shades of the same exact same writer who's just like kind of professional kind of you know when you don't have a choice of dialogue when it's in a cut scene and writer is just talking you can tell the kind of character they want her to be which is this kind of smarmy and uh dismissive sort of jokey person who's uh a little bit a little bit full of herself um and I do enjoy some of those dialogue options like I'll always choose like a a lot of the times you get to take all the credit for everything and I always choose that because that's as close to being a jerk as you can be is basically when they're like oh you you've you know made EOS more viable and then you can be like yep I did it I'm I'm good uh but there are lines in it that just really kind of suck and aren't good and I can't like quote off the top of my head um because there's nothing really quotable uh it's just sort of uh banter you put together a a compilation of like four times in the first 10 minutes of the game where they said like commented on flying rocks or whatever right yeah like in the very uh introductory Mission you land on this planet that was supposed to be a golden world it was supposed to be habitable uh for Humanity um but you get there and it's all torn apart by dark energy and there's light in Striking everywhere and like the rocks are floating and it just struck me as kind of ridiculous that they see all this and go well we'll see what it's like when we get to the surface and it's like dude like clearly something's wrong here and then they they keep going these but these mountains are floating like that's so weird like yeah there's like dark energy clouds shooting lightning everywhere and now you're finding like alien ancient looking alien buildings like do you think those are connected in any way maybe and they just act so clueless and so shocked by this stuff and it's like again you traveled between galaxies this should probably not be that shocking like I guess they just thought they were going to get there and like go live on the planet and everything would be fine so I can see how they would be upset by this new development um but it just yeah it's just like it it just feels in that first mission like they didn't know what to have the characters say so they just have them talk about what they're seeing um you know it' be like yeah if you're just going and this is throughout the whole game everyone just explains what they're feeling what their backstory is and what they're currently looking at right now um to try to give you hints as to like just to make sure you're getting the story like look the Rocks aren't supposed to be floating okay we want establish this so that later when you figure out the ancient alien technology stuff you get why now the Rocks aren't floating anymore because this was what was causing it so and it's just yeah throughout the game it's just people observing things and commenting directly on what they're seeing which gets kind of old um and when you talk to your you know people you meet it's I I think that it's easy to criticize this game for this but all of the mass fix did it and all bowar do it where you ask them general questions about their life and then they say well you know I'm really kind of a loner uh don't don't don't don't make close connections or settle down really so I decided I could come out to Andromeda for a new start and it's like thanks for your backstory and your personality now I know who you are but they do that in all the BioWare games so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna put that on andromed andromed Andromeda andromed we should just start calling it that who might make me like what if they just rebranded the entire game as like a parity game and then suddenly all of the facial animations like make sense and you just call it andromed and like no you know what's going to happen is um so Chris Chris thiren who who couldn't be here to talk about it who I do side with on several things like just generally I'm enjoying it even though all I can all I can do is talk when I talk about it but if I turn off and just play it like I get into his zone so I can definitely see where he's coming from but I think what's going to happen is you know how like every time a game gets like Universal praise from like critics and everyone's like this is awesome BioShock Infinite is fantastic like a few weeks later someone publishes a critical thing that takes a new angle and goes actually it's not very good and then everyone who was saying it was great cuz yeah actually I'm kind of over BioShock Infinite and like I am 100% this person I was like this is a great game oh wait someone did some good critical writing about it I think it sucks now I think Andromeda is the opposite because we've been like dunking on it all for like a week and a half now and talking about all this and then everyone's going to play it and be like what's wrong with you guys just have fun like okay the dialogue's kind of bad but whatever I think it's good well and to be fair at the end of the day like and I'm going to be that person too in a week I'm going to say you James and drop is a masterpiece what well well well if that happens we're bringing you both back on the show I think like I I I like I try to temper like my how much I hate this game with with the fact that I still I still played like I did it for work but I also like was curious and still played like whatever 40 plus hours of it that I'm at right now and that a lot of people are aren't looking for you know will will enjoy it for what it is hell my dad like watched all of Stargate like 70 times I don't know he's okay with that and it's like not the most compelling realistic like it's not it's it's it's not sci-fi that's always building on itself and pushing the medium forward and yada yada and I take Stargate whatever I've seen glimpses of it it looks dumb as hell so maybe it's the wrong example um but I mean like and that's okay and I think the comparisons I think I've never seen Star Trek so forgive me uh but uh yeah sorry this comes out every couple months in the office and it's always awkward but the Voyager comparison like I hear voyager's not a great season is probably apt because it there's you know there's there's thematically some stuff you can enjoy and just like as far as like uh the atmosphere and mood go yeah you're in space with some with some space friends and you're you're doing stuff and you're shooting bad guys and you're getting some story even if it's not you know if it's not like mindbending sci-fi uh uh genius is at least drama on some level and that might be enough I guess you know I I what else can you ask for I think Voyer is a good comparison for sure and and Panzer too in the chat just pointed out he said uh I'm 15 hours into it I'm still enjoying it but everything they're saying is valid there's a lot wrong with the game and and that's a perspective of it too is like like people like you could just not be as bothered by these things as some other people and still enjoying it right I'm pretty much willing to let stuff go um because I'm a BioWare apologist and I will apologize for everything that's obviously bad like we haven't even talked about the bugs and the scripting errors and it's probably the worst bow work game I've played as far as that goes be like dialogue will cue but you'll walk too fast so it'll cut short because maybe there's some other dialogue that has to Quee or you'll walk in and go to your um like the star map and you know the two characters at the front in the bridge will start talking to each other and then Sam will start talking Sam's like the AI will start talking in your head and then another character will start talking to you over the radio and you'll have like five dialogue tracks going or i' I've talked to people and their character model disappeared when I started the conversation so riter's just talking to a tree behind where they were um I've had God you know what else like bug wise I've had saves corrupt if I save well in The Nomad I can't load that save most of the time that seem don't necessarily quote me on that that seems to be the problem saving in The Nomad but uh I can't tell exactly what's going on in the game uh there's stuff that's not explained I didn't know how to get back in my ship on one planet for a while James told me because there was like unless you see that tool tip or I don't even know if there was one you're just you're just screwed um nowhere did I see it tell me I could Respec my character in The medbay at a terminal in the back that you have to walk up to to notice it does anything um it's like unless you see the loading hints for some of the stuff you might never see it uh characters have bugged out as far as movement um they like to like scatter and run around all crazy quest mark Quest don't update always after I finish them sometimes I'll land on the Nexus the space station then get back on my ship and then when I get back on my ship have an email from someone on the Nexus saying hey come meet me like to continue a quest so I have to go to the Nexus go back to my ship check my email go back to the Nexus and do the quest is is just like scripting errors and stuff the there's one Quest at the end uh of vetras where the same exact two lines of dialogue happened twice like this is just a you know a mistake in the in the in the scripting and yeah it feels like it could have used six months of uh of of Hardcore QA um yeah definitely because it's it's it's buggier than yeah I know BioWare games and again I'm an apologist can get away with it because they're making something so big and complex and like okay there's going to be a a bug here and there but it was just constant yeah I I hadn't heard that side of it so that's interesting like an interesting perspective to get because we haven't touched on performance much and I do want to get to the Q&A very soon but you know performance-wise it seems like the game is running fine like it's it's a demanding game but it's not necessarily like getting frame hitching or it wasn't as bad as like Dishonored to un launch or anything like that but I hadn't heard about these this sort of buggy side of things rather than performance side of things very buggy it's definitely there performance-wise I'm having some trouble but that says a little more about my PC than the game uh my PC needs a little bit of work um but yeah it doesn't run great for me and I do have crashes uh granted I have crashes when I'm doing like stuff a normal user wouldn't do like Force quitting and reloading it uh 18 times in a row to to work on a guide or something so I can't really speak to like performance are crashing because I'm I'm putting it through its Paces but we did a huge performance test uh Jared wrote that for us so here I can link that in the chat but uh and you can find all of our our Mass Effect Andromeda coverage if you as West said last week go to uh pcgamer.com mass-- four because that's how our website works but yeah if you go to that site uh we have lots of coverage character guides multiplayer build guides uh scathing coverage about the planet scanning system that I'm imagined if I get James talking about we will be don't start me just go play torment and people are talking about like hey look I've uh in the chat you know I enjoyed the game and or someone enjoyed the game and kind of getting accused of being a shill I I jokingly call myself a BioWare apologist whenever I say I'm enjoying it um because I do Overlook a lot of the issues it has even though I agree that like it's too buggy and the dialogue is not great but you know as Evan points out in the chat like just in you know we're going to be really critical of stuff but that doesn't mean anyone wants you to stop enjoying what you enjoy I'm trying not to ruin it for people I kind of feel bad B it so much because I know there are so many people who were so excited about this game and they're going to play it so and the truth of the matter is in my opinion a lot of those people that were very excited about the game and are going to play it are going to enjoy it like I there are going to be people out there who like we've been saying recognize these flaws and can get over them and just enjoy the game and I think you know as they were saying the shill thing like I think everyone should be confident in the fact that uh someone liking something more than you does not necessarily mean they have been paid to have that opinion just in the same got a lot of money if that's true yeah right yeah like yeah so that's that's all but I'm I'm glad we dug into this I'm glad we spent so much time on it uh because there's a lot to unpack and you feel better I feel lighter yeah like like the world I got to go back I gota go right back into the game after this J James had to yell at some video games um got to do it sometimes you know that's his therapy yeah uh but let's open it up to you guys let's let's hear what you have to say not necessarily just about Mass Effect Andromeda but if you want to talk about anything at all we're going to open it up tag us with PC Gamer in the twitch chat uh and we will answer your questions if you are a twitch subscriber I know we got some new and returning people today thank you very very much we appreciate your support and we'd love to hear from you uh first but we we have a longer amount of time for our twitch chat today because I really want to take a lot more questions if we can uh so bring them on in and and we'll uh we'll we'll talk about stuff buttface Jones a subscriber asks right off the bat what's the next Pony Island short self-contained unique little chunk of gaming that has no barrier to entry oh well story is Untold I would I wouldn't say it's as like that's what I was thinking yeah it's not definitely not as like U trying to be as clever or or self-aware and like breaking the fourth wall but uh it's definitely all of those things so give it a shot 10 bucks those games have been popping up more more recently too the kind of just like little bite-size sort of here's a weird fun cool thing I said like two years ago that like maybe it was a year ago that like self- referential games like after um oh what's it called uh undertale no no no no no no before that Stanley par yeah I was like after the Stanley Parable everyone's going to do this and then they did and I just wanted to say that so that so that I could say that I was right that everyone was going to do that you did it Tyler you were right on the Internet thanks well there's also the thing of like having a game where there's a monitor in the game like her story and stories and told that has become a big thing and I just you know I just wanted to point out that I notice these Trends and uh I make predictions and uh I'm always right just like when I said the iPad was a stupid idea that would never take off I'm always right Tyler never never change that's all okay okay moving on we have kifu next uh asking can you guys think of a board game or a card game that you'd like to see digitalized into video game form board game or card game that's a good question um I still want a good online version of magic but you know that's just what the what you got like every version of magic ever like every iteration you could ever dream of already exists James is so mad at me today oh my God I want magic no uh fine fine you want me to do something better I would like something I think there needs to be a better version of risk and if we're doing a better version of risk I think I think a version of the Risk Legacy board game where you can actually play with the same people in continued sessions and the game will change over time in video game form would be very very cool so there James are you happy now I'll never be happy I haven't played a lot of board games recently so I don't know there's nothing at the top of my head I've been watching people play D and D every week that's that's what I do now and then telling and then annoyingly like backseat DND Ding and telling them what they should do because it's so annoying when you know the DM lays something out and then uh they don't ask the obvious question you're like what ask about the door ask about the door guys but I'm not actually playing so I'm just an annoyance sorry that had nothing to do with this yeah I have no answer for the question either I don't really play very many board games he just rages about Mass Effect and other things online I'm just angry that's what he does all the time uh oh Chris 86 asks what's your favorite buyway game o that's a nice clean and simple question yeah I don't know Mass Effect 2 Mass Effect 2 is that the easy copout answer I mean this my favorite game my favorite BioWare game I mean people talk a lot of recently I guess people I don't know it's like Tyler Tyler's trend has is in effect I don't know like where we're at in the oscillation but in two years it's going to change but uh Dragon Age I love the original Dragon Age I really I spent and the and the uh the expansion Awakening or no that was just the original Sur name but um no Origins and Awakening yeah yeah so I loved those games I didn't realize how many crazy good games bioware's name was attached to like I didn't realize BioWare was still the developer of the balers game series like I I I thought it was under a different name at that point original cotor Super I mean it's hard to knock that one it was breaking a lot of interesting bow Weare ground yeah I mean nights to the Old Republic is a big one on that list I think I'd actually put n to the Old Republic over Mass Effect too I'd also put I don't know if if i' put this over Mass I think I would I'm going to just go ahead and I I'll put my I'll be the guy who says Jade Empire I was really into Jade Empire uh it had a bad PC Port later on right I I don't believe I will I played it on 360 I believe I'm actually changing mine it's mdk2 the MDK Series so I'm kidding I'm kidding it's not mdk2 MDK were these like those yeah I've heard about these uh yeah like the first one was uh what was that developed by shiny yeah they they're okay but no one would remember mdk2 as a BioWare Game Chris in the middle in the chat is immediately like yay mdk2 so there you go all right let's go grab some more questions because that was that was a good one that was a good that was eye opening for me um as muffin says how far into Zelda have you made it we're we're not talking about that I hm uh we're not going to no what what were you going to say I got a house but oh I'm proud I I'm like I've like over I'm like 60 hours into that game or something like that yeah anyway we're not talking about that uh there was a good question actually that I wanted to take uh from a non-subscriber silent Marine zero who's around a lot uh do you think the EA Early Access trial was a good idea or a bad idea many impressions of the early game uh including ours use the trial and thought the game starts slowly uh many games do not do demos anymore so many users treated this as one to test the game and see that what works uh I emphasized on the Discord that they have the trial use to determine what they like yeah uh I think almost unanimously we in the office we agreed that the the the Embargo on the coverage that was only the trial was a bad idea it was it was a terrible idea yeah because think about it the the conversation all weekend was about how stupid those animations were that was that was what everyone was talking about was how slow it was how kind of crummy the early writing was and how stupid the animations were can I basically go for it no go go for it oh no you go James you I want you to yell some more uh I'm gonna have a slightly different take I think it I think for EA it was very bad but for people who were interested in maybe buying spending $60 on this game it's demo like it functioned as a demo and in that way I think it was very good uh for people who were trying to make purchasing decisions and we're like wow I want to give flavor what's this what's this new taste yeah that's a good point and I think it was frustrating in terms of coverage because we had full we had played the full game or had copies of the full game at that point and to kind of like and at that point like Chris was further in the game and he you know he had talked about things that he thought uh picked up and you know had liked and enjoyed and having those behind like an arbitrary agreement wall was you know frustrating I think from that point of view um but if if you're looking to spend money I think it's fine but but to me as a as a game player like I want there to be more game demos I think Salam Marine was right in saying that game demos are not very common anymore I don't want a game demo to be tied behind some EA Origin access thing oh I don't want the game demo to be before the game comes out I would be fine with what they did and with that origin access thing if it hit when the game launched you had a chance to play it before you bought it when it was available to play but full reviews were already out so that you could use the reviews plus your own experience in the demo as like to get a full picture I think the idea that they gated just that beginning stuff for everyone was like a bad idea and I think they needed to do a demo when everyone could talk about the whole game I don't know if it was a better game it wouldn't have been a bad idea that's a that's true I guess that's a fair point if everyone had played that first 10 hours and been like I can't wait to play more it's amazing um then everyone would be going like ah EA really uh really did a good job there they got everyone so excited they got all this free positive uh you know Word of Mouth out but instead all they got were gifts of like sh you know Rider's eyeballs freaking out um yeah I don't I don't like the EA access thing origin access whatever CU I I wrote about this like this is the beginning where you get to play for 10 hours uh you know a few days early but how long before it's like 100 bucks and you can play the game a month early uh 80 bucks you can play the game two weeks early you know I don't want that to start happening so um if they had just released the game and put out a free demo that's cool um but yeah it backfired from a from a business perspective they couldn't have been happy and I felt kind of bad for like the developers cuz they just had to watch everyone stew in the first few hours of that game all weekend just roasting it mercilessly which which I joined in on because I didn't feel that bad about it you know but I felt a little bad after joining in all right here's one from vend deal asking are there any game franch franchises that you really just really wish would be revived either with a remake or a sequel uh conversely any that you really think should just stop excluding the obvious yearly iteration games oh well so that's a little tougher of a question that way um in terms of revived God I want beyond good and evil I I want another Beyond Good and Evil that's not even a franchise or a series they only made one I just want the second one and I know all y'all guys have been hating on me like the first one wasn't very good what Ros maybe not you somebody did that to me and I don't care I want a second one of that game hey Tom what bian evil sucked James just kidding I expect anything less from you um I think the Fallout franchise should be killed moving on whoa whoa buddy no I think that I think follow that's not a terrible take it's all right I was gonna say the Elder Scroll just hating on Bethesda no um I honest to God I think that both the Elder Scrolls series and the Fallout series need a large refresh uh before they get their next game I don't think either of those games can just put out another one on the same engine and have me be interested still I'm with you that's not really I don't think that means it should be killed right but I think they need I think they need some TLC before we see them again or at least I I would like them to see that do you guys have any serieses in Minds uh it's a tough call uh this old game um oh halflife 2 uh I'd love to see never heard of it no over portal that's a question uh half life three or Portal 3 James uh Portal's gone in my opinion yeah Portal's good I I like I don't know I'd be more interested in in shooting men instead of solving puzzles with intellect so well I see where your priorities are I like solving puzzles I don't have anything every time a series I want to come back comes back it's not like great well that's not true because like torment tides of num maner is pretty dang good I guess that wasn't a series that was that's a sort of successor to one game um but like you know I don't know they tried to bring back Command and Conquer as a free-to-play game and that never even came out because it sucked so hard uh uh ma I I liked max pain 3 but like and max pain is one of my favorite series but it wasn't like brilliant and they really don't need to make any more of those I'm fine with that oh man someone says black and white should be brought back in VR I do like black and white that's a good idea okay that's that's my answer like black and white I love let's take their answers okay uh let's take a couple more questions because there are definitely more and this is why we did bigger section hooray uh Kev Factor asks fuel exploration is back in the game uh felt like that's what was missing from the second and third games okay so that's not really I'm majorly disagree okay you sounded you sounded like aiz on sarry from Parks and W right there well it I I I would May and this is again my experience it's a big game so maybe I have yet to find the thing that the carrot at the end of the stick but I I feel like the exploration and we're talking about Mass Effect right I'm joking yes on my words um because they're not true stop and uh I feel like yeah like the very first thing I did in the Eos and the second world was say I'm going to go off the beaten path and explore and everything I found was just a combat Outpost or you kill dudes and scan some technology or find a container or a cave or something that was waiting for a quest to happen there um so I it's ostensibly about exploration it's just that the exploration isn't isn't that fun you can go to a system and scan all the planets maybe find yourself some iron uh well let's let's move on to a Dark Souls question yeah because I know you'd be excited for that Apollo dingo asks Dark Souls 3 final DLC is going to be better than all the Witcher 3 DLC this is true why I don't know how to answer that because the Witcher 3 DLC is great Al that's a bad question but a good a good question but a bad question uh I have high hopes for the Dark Souls 3 final DLC which is coming out the ring City next Tuesday I believe um but I don't I think like perhaps a mass effect sequel it will not meet the expectations that people are putting on it I think people are looking for like a a very poignant end to the the Dark Souls trilogy um that answers every lore question and has crazy boss battles and wild environments and it might take a few of those boxes but I I'm I'm kind of reeling my hopes back in uh in some ways because I know it's just downable loadable content that probably isn't getting the full force of from behind it in terms of development because they they're juggling a lot of things at the moment uh um but you know I just I hope at the very least it's thematically um uh rich and and and the enemies are fun to fight and it just does the Dark Souls thing well yeah all right we're gonna do uh rapid fire questions right now because I want to fit in a lot before we end uh right long time viewer battl tank 09 asks uh any games based on existing animes you'd like I'd want to just touch on this because uh I actually do think that some of the Dragon Ball Z games are really good like the budai games were great and I hear really good things about the the more recent ones that I can't forget they're forgetting the name of right now um but yeah those games also there was a really good Naruto fighting game for GameCube that I can't remember the name of will is shaking his head yes so there you go that's all the validation I need one punch man one is there one punch Man video game I want there to be one I don't know I want there to be a ping pong the animation video game yeah is there I hope there is I'd play that all right uh let's keep moving uh uh uh uh where did another question go they're all gone there we go crazy kook on the subject of bware guys want to see cotor 3 or Jade Empire 2 go quick give me your answers no ouch wow damn I'd go cotour 3 just because Jade Empire is great you're gonna go Jade Empire 2 okay I'm going to go C because that's at least the more venerated series that's people original properties coming out of BioWare D okay okay tell you something Tom Star Wars sucks Star Trek baby all right calm down go uh Max ersa asks says he's been spending time in the elite dangerous 2.3 beta uh messing with the Character Creator um and asks after the obligatory Max slider character how long do you normally spend on character creators do you create recreate your own face or someone else's or just make one up I found out a long time ago while playing The Sims that I'm terrible at recreating my own face and every time I do it just looks like generic white guy so I stopped doing that and I just make weird characters now I would describe you as a generic wife my face I think you were on point literally every time I've made a character in like any character creator that tried to be me I would show it to someone and they'd be like that doesn't look like you be honest to be honest if you look at us right now it looks like someone just moved a couple sliders around put some glasses on hat yeah that's uh that's not inaccurate James um what was the question do we make our own just how long how long do you spend on characters usually eight hours okay maybe not eight hours but I can like be like I'm going to start this RPG tonight and then be like I better go to bed glad I watch the first cut scene after customizing my character for ages and and then like gotten into the game been like I don't like the hair and then like restarted the whole game to change it it also depends on the commitment of like the type of game like yeah I will 100 hours yeah like if it's going to be a long RPG I will customize the hell out of my character if it's like Arc survival of all I'm just like I'm going to make myself have big biceps and be a tiny dude and like then I move on like I don't I don't spend time on games like that character creators uh and the last question I want to bring up uh uh uh where' it go oh no um which is a big question but I I I'd like a rapid fire answer from you guys subscriber gild dive asks you can only play one game for the rest of your life easy what is it Mass Effect Andromeda James is that your easy answer no Super Hexagon super hexagon oh man that's a good answer yep um I'll go with something like audio surf because then I can keep adding new levels fair enough I'll go with uh Dwarf Fortress hey do we get updates yeah do we get updates not mine won't get updates I think we should get I think updates are okay then that means Tyler will be just literally be living a new life eventually yeah D Fortress is a good shout yeah yeah I feel like in Dwarf Fortress I could just create a fantasy fantasy life where I get to play video games but my dwarves are playing them oh my god um I I would also maybe say something I like I'd also want to go something competitive because then you just like I would even almost say like I'd be fine with League of Legends right like that wouldn't be my first choice but but then 30 years from now what if no one's playing it and you're the last person I'd be willing to put money on the fact that league is still around in 30 years or in some form like it might be League 2 which I guess wouldn't count I'll bet you right now 30 years from this day all right I'm reminder in my phone like five bucks $100 $100 I'll take that bet 30 years from this day if league is still being played sir remind me in 30 years from today to check on the Tyler Tom bet in 30 years you're gonna have to like you're you're gonna have to like put some more specificity than that I'm willing to put this money down $100 that in 30 years from today Legends is still being played yeah cool this is dumbest I've ever taken part in that's that's how we're going to end the show thank you very much guys for your questions as always we we love answering them we love talking to you uh join us in discord.gg pcgamer if you have more questions or want to get in touch with us after the fact if you're coming from pcgamer.com podcast or youtube.com/ pcgamer or our iTunes page or wherever you are listen to the show thank you very much uh we will be back right right here at twitch.tv/ pcgamer Wednesday's 100 p.m. Pacific Daylight time now heyo um although I guess it was last week too yeah anyway thank you very very much and we will see you next time byehey everybody and welcome to the PC Gamer show my name is Tom Marks associate editor here at PC Gamer and your host as always James teased me before the show with a high pitch nasly version of that so I decided to go a little lower today okay self-conscious a little bit he got me I am joined by the very mean J and staven Port not me how you doing James great was good I was pretty what is this is it all coming out now yes we're doing this now this is an intervention actually we're also joined by the the mean decider Tyler wild over on the internet Tyler you're joining us again thanks very much how you doing man pretty good I'm also mean but I I am excited that I have a new desk chair here that will hopefully make my back feel better make you better at gaming you know what kind of chair I have now Amazon Basics hey me too I have that I snapped my uh my arm rest in the first week it's it's awful yeah both of my both of my armrests are hanging off the side oh yeah you can't see for reason doesn't sound very restful for your arms at that point it's not it now it like pinches my arm and I get cuts on all the time wow but invest in a good chair or you'll have back problems like me well uh it's still in the box behind you though yeah I haven't had a chance to to open it up put it together the bo ched the chair assembly yes I have until Mass effects done okay well speaking of uh first we have a couple subscribers Nick Warrior 5 for three months skimble locked for four thank you very much guys for your continued support uh as Tyler mentioned today is a bit of a mass effect day we had Tyler on last week to talk briefly about Mass Effect but we were still under embargo for for the majority of the game at that point uh so we're back today to talk in depth about the The Good the Bad and the very very ugly of Mass Effect Andromeda um our review if you guys did not see it did go up you can find that at pcgamer.com slmd effect Das Andromeda Dash review uh and and you can see what Chris thiren our reviewer for that thought there but we're going to dive into it uh just in general here and and kind of take as much uh as much depth as we want with it the one thing I will say before anyone freaks out is we're going to try to avoid story spoilers as much as possible um obviously there's going to be some things to that but like we're not just going to like blow through it we're going to be talking about more how the game plays the systems the the likes and dislikes in that regard the wonky eyeballs everything like that um my character is beautiful Tom she looks great I just turned on in the settings I turned on keep helmet on at all times and now my character is beautiful you know Tyler all I can say is every everyone thinks that their child is the prettiest child in school so uh but we we are going to get into that but before we get into that we're going to talk about what we've been playing recently and of course we're going to take your guys's questions from twitch chat at the end I think we're actually going to try to make the twitch chat at the end of today's episode a bit longer I kept feeling bad about it being pushed to the end uh so come up with questions and hit us up at the end because we're going to hopefully have a lot of time for that this week uh so I want I want to hear from you guys basically is what I'm saying but let's start uh with what we've been playing recently I was going to do another kind of latest hot news section but there wasn't really a whole heck of a lot going on Mass Effect it's just Mass Effect consuming everything so uh we're gonna we're gonna skip that for now and go right into what we've been playing recently and I want to start with James because James you you and Tyler have been playing a lot of Mass Effect that's a given but uh you you've been playing some other stuff too you've been it in there yeah uh first things first I during my lunch breaks I've been playing stories Untold um which is a kind of episodic sci-fi horror game that uh each episode is centered around a kind of piece of old technology um the first episode and I won't spoil what exactly gets into but the first episode is a called a I don't know something about a haunted house and you're you're sat in front of this old CRT Monitor and this old keyboard it's all rendered with loving detail it's um I think one of the lead designers on that stuff is uh made the tech in Alien Isolation like the old retro futuristic Tech and uh you play an adventure game on this computer on your computer so it's it's I don't I don't want to say too much without uh uh spoiling the premise but it kind of plays into the idea of um playing a game within within a game and uh does some really cool stuff if you like fiddling around with old technology the effects and all the buttons and switches you eventually get to use um are really satisfying uh especially you know if that's if you have a lust for that kind of stuff um so you give that a look it's like 10 bucks and uh about four hours long um pretty pretty uh pretty cool stuff um otherwise I've been playing and I've had very little time to do this uh near automata automata autom automata automata I'm really not sure anymore I don't I don't know I have I think aoma is fine autom let's just go with that um LR meta there you go you wash you wash clothes and uh it's a cool RPG yeah yeah it's got a great spin cycle to be fair RPGs have been made about more mundane things than Wasing clo yeah so this game is Bonkers uh you guys it's it's uh how do I start uh it's it's a sequel sort of to near which I don't know if it was ever on PC or not I never played near you don't have to know anything about near but it's sort of like this cult classic RPG uh pretty flawed apparently um this takes place many many many years later I think centuries later in a sort of post-apocalyptic scenario where robots have taken over the Earth uh humans are forced to the moon and they build this Android Army to kind of reclaim the planet uh and yeah so it's an RPG in that sense you're sent down as this Android 2B and you explore this kind of semi-open world and uh get quests and talk to NPCs and you know there's side quests there's some really interesting environments um the key thing to note here is that the combat systems uh were designed by platinum and if you know Platinum games uh that's kind of their MO is combat Centric games I mean they've had a whole string of kind of smaller games like um the recent Transformers one I know they did an avatar one which was the combat was good but everything else was bad from what I hear pretty much it was really really really repetitive midle gear revengeance and and so on uh Bayonetta I think was their jam too uh so they know how to do combat Vanquish yeah yeah Vanquish they know how to do like wild over the toop combat and this game opens like with some of the most wild over-the-top combat you'll get uh it's it's really deep too I've seen a gif of like some Advanced player juggling a robot for like I don't know it didn't touch the ground for like 30 seconds or something um I'm not that advanced yet but it feels really good there's a lot of variability so you can equip a primary weapon and a heavy weapon and those can those can be interchanged among those slots so you can have um you know your heavy weapon and every weapon behaves differently in each slot so there's like you know they get different Combos and chains and it's wild and over the top and deep and I'm barely scratching the surface of that on top of that it's also a bullet hell shooter what yeah so um wait what yeah it's an open world RPG with Platinum like you know deep uh it's like real time action combat real time action combat with bullet hell elements like or it literally is like a bullet Hill game so okay the game opens like from the top down you're in a ship and you're just playing a bullet hell shooter like there's Ships coming at you it's like an old arcade classic looking thing and then slowly as the scene progresses you move to like free stick and free aim movement okay and you're like all right this is interesting and then you get thrown down onto the planet and you start doing some combat and then later you start uh some enemies start shooting at you and you realize you get taught to how to shoot you can shoot at any point and aim with the analog sticks or lock on uh to start shooting your bullet held gun that just is constant stream of fire and you can also combo and do like do your action moves while you're shooting um so it it throws a bunch at you at once and then eventually you face enemies that spray like these erratic patterns um of of bullets so you're weaving in out of these bullets while doing these Combos and yeah it's insane it's insane um it feels really good though you think it'd be like too much and at first it is but uh it doesn't feel quite like anything I've ever played before in that regard well Joe Donnelly yeah over in the UK uh wrote a piece today called why I love struggling to Define near atom which I I didn't really understand that headline and now that you explain it like I this game sounds like it's just doing a lot of weird stuff and that's like just systemically like the things you're doing like mechanically it's hard to Define but beyond that the story it's trying to tell I don't want to spoil it because I'm still like being surprised by it and I've only like four hours in but um I've heard comparisons to undertale in the morality of what you're doing and like the point like it constantly makes you think about and uh why you're attacking these robots and and so on um I only what's I only played the beginning because I was testing the port which is sort of so so but uh I love that it starts with this quote about like uh God God created us to be mortal I can't wait to kill such a being or something like that I'm like it's it's definitely a very Bleak like it's I mean I found this Village of robots um and there was a robot named uh and I don't know if I'm saying the last name right John Paul SAR who's like this old French philosopher who basic he was an existentialist and um every robot in that Village is named after like an old French philosopher or something of like like that and or an existentialist and it's constantly making you think about what the the purpose of life is um not just like what the purpose of playing this game is it's very Bleak and and the Creator um the director I'm forgetting his name he's always wearing like this spooky ass Moon Helmet or whatever you can never see him he is known as you know being sort of a bleak existentialist himself um but yeah so I mean within the opening minutes or excuse me opening like couple hours uh you're dumped into this world and and I was expecting it to be like all post-apocalyptic but then like very early on like you enter an amusement park and the music is just is is very playful and silly and within the combat systems I don't want to spoil it God I can't really talk about things I love yet but uh Yoko Taro yeah yeah um there are things it does that are just outright hilarious like in the first boss battle the first real boss battle I encountered it you if you get hit by a certain thing in this battle it throws you into this other scenario that just is totally out of the out of left field and and really funny in the context of what you're doing um so I I think someone compared this I I saw a tweet I forgot who wrote it oh it was like one of the Steam Reviews one of the top rated Steam Reviews it's it's like uh if um hideo Kojima got really high and made it game about like existence um then this would you know it would be near uh uh so it's it's it's really got my attention and I'm I'm curious to see where it goes I did a side quest where I brought I went and um found a lost robot's robot sister um in the desert and the whole way back the robot was asking me about like the purpose of life and then in the end asked me how babies are made and wouldn't shut up the robot kept asking me how babies are made um yeah there's like a lot of really weird funny stuff the the the localization is really good too so game sounds great it's I I'm so I wish the port was a little better because I had to use a community fix to get the resolution running correctly I know some people have like better experience than others um sounds like there needs to be a bit of work done with it um but as far as the localization I thought it was cool that you can uh you can switch to the original Japanese dialogue and use subtitles which I've been doing that two too few games have that option and yeah the Japanese voice acting like it feels really great and it's the the lips of the characters are synced to that more naturally so yeah it feels better in that way um yeah it's just it's been one of the most exciting things I've played this year in terms of and inventive things I've played this year that's cool I hope more people give it a shot it's it feels like it might get lost in the the M too yeah well that's that's cool that's one that I honestly before this conversation did not have much interest in and now I'm at least interested in trying it you know yeah I think everyone should if you like action heavy games and you like weird hideo coima esque just you know surprising meta commentary and Bleak just uh you know give it a shot give it a shot it might surprise you so we should have a review up uh tomorrow tomorrow yeah likely yeah cool Andy Kelly is on that in the UK right on looking forward to his thoughts yeah that's he likes it well there you go spoiler yeah spiler review of the game well that's that's man that like I was not expecting you to say bullet hell like I was just kind of expecting standard Platinum sort of stuff but it's it's bizarre bizarre right well we can we can damn I I'll I'll find out the rest for myself I suppose but uh I want to go next I've been playing two games Zelda I wasn't even going to say the word today I was completely going to avoid it and then you did it James I did we know the truth Tom yes I've been playing that still but it's because I can play it on the train so shut up okay the two games I've really been playing more lately are um this one puzzle game that I've been really really enjoying um called Cosmic Express I I I played a game I think I might have mentioned this actually when post to GDC um there was a game that I really enjoyed a puzzle game I really enjoyed called a good snowman as hard to build oh yeah I know that game yeah and it's this really kind of underrated puzzle game and the creator of it now made this game which is called Cosmic express love the look um it's a really kind of cute very vibrant bright look um and it's one of the most like deceptively difficult puzzle games I've played in a long time like Snake Bird is the other thing that comes to mind in terms of like really cute simple visuals but damn is the game hard yeah how what's going on in there though yeah so like you it shows you like a track right or like a little like kind of space Dome bubble thing it's in like an isometric point of view um and there are little aliens along that path and you have to you you drive a train and you have to draw a track for the train and it can't overlap itself and it can't go backwards and you usually usually only have like one or two seats on the train so you have to like pick up an alien then deliver him to his matching colored home and then pick up another alien and deliver him and then get to a different exit so the the actual puzzle of the game is you're trying to draw a path that will pick up and drop off these aliens in the right sequence before you then leave okay um and the reason it's so deceptively hard is because like you'll get just a pretty much blank you know maybe 8x6 Square grid to draw on um and there will be two aliens and two drop off points in this big Square grid um and so there's just like a lot of empty space and you're like okay this is going to be simple I just got to do two dudes and draw a line and it's easy but the the actual work that goes into planning that route is surprisingly complex and surprisingly like limited in what you can do so it's it's a really really good game in in just like making you be like oh yeah this is going to be fine and then really kicking your ass instead like uh the guy I was playing when I did play it at GDC I'm playing at home now but when I did play it at GDC the guy who I was first watching and then I ended up having to take over for him um because he he was playing the first he played the first level and he was like oh this is easy and like looked over the developer and I was like so does it like does it get hard like how did I this is this is super simple p and she was like yeah well just just wait and he did the second level and he was like this is so this is so easy and then he got to the next level and he had to walk away he couldn't do it and it was like I've never seen somebody get shut up so quickly when like dissing a developer's game in front of them but yeah he he had to walk away and it was like yeah it's just a very very cool game if you're a puzzle game fan Cosmic Express is is a good one now you say yeah it's already out um it's on Steam it's very good oh also I missed I totally forgot this crazy kuk re subscribers thank you very much um but yeah I I'm a I'm a big fan of cosmic Express the other game that I've been playing I'm a little mad at Wes for and I'm a little upset at myself for playing what um so we ran an article today uh about a new card game hey called faia or FIA it's f a r i a it's a terrible name but it's like a a board based hex based tactics card game um which as people know because I don't shut up about du I'm like a big fan go here we go yeah um and and all Wes had to do yesterday Jody wrote this great article just kind of breaking down why it's a good game um and all Wes had to do yesterday was say to me hey we're does anybody want to edit an article about a new like board-based card game it's pretty fun and I read it and I was like I'm downloading this game right now like it was it I I'm so predictable but I was playing this yesterday and I played it a ton last excuse me last night and some earlier and yeah you could say you're an easy marks an easy Mark oh God I'll give you that one thank you I'll I'll close Skype now but yeah it's it's actually really really fun um and I'm is it yes or is it no I no no no no no let's let's talk about this how many times can you make a goddamn card game with with the hearts and the Shields and and then also just like throw in hex's and say oh good strategy yeah you can make decisions that are that are strategic and you and you have car like I don't I don't understand like make sell this because it looks generic it looks bad it looks I don't know why should I care why should I care okay so without like you know was mean I swinging no cuz you're you're you're right and the truth of the matter is if I show you this screenshot here I'm going to show you some screenshots from from the the steam page real quick if I show you this screenshot you don't care and you don't care about this either and this this looks gross right like honestly the game in screenshots looks incredibly generic it looks really bad and I don't think it it pitches well is the funny thing but in motion and when you're playing it I think it actually is a pretty Charming game d is okay um and and this is why you should care yeah nobody cares about the beta download Steam trailer that that part you don't care about this is why you should care though or this is why I care is I I'm still a huge fan of dualist I've been playing the newest expansion but the something that's been happening with dualist lately is that it's been focusing less and less the new cards have been focusing less and less on the board they've been focusing less and less on making interacting with the actual tiles and more and more on like making cool cards and like weird cards um and this game scratches the board itch for me in a way that doesn't and so the way it works is for anyone familiar with magic or Hearthstone or anything when you play a Mana there's like colored Mana basically but the way it works is that you're actually the board starts completely blank and you can't step on any of it um and then you actually place the board down so you place land tiles that you can then play your units on and move them on that's interesting cuz I I don't know like if you just say a hex based card or board game with card element you know yeah it's I I kind of know what that looks like or just like no know what to expect but but the the more interesting thing about this is like the board since it starts blank like it actually is formed every time and like where you can move is different every time see that's interesting to me and and yeah and it affects tactics that way and I so I like I still love dualist and I still think dualist like has better like pixel art than this cuz this doesn't have pixel art it's just kind of more traditional and honestly it just looks like they kind of took they stole League of Legends color palette and we're like we'll just make a game that looks like that which is like fine but also makes it look very generic um yeah it's it's a really surprisingly good game though it's very very it doesn't feel like Hearthstone in the way that duelist and Elder Scrolls Legends and eternal all feel like some variant of hearthstone or magic okay um which is important I think I apologize for no no no no no we know for yelling at the video game I yelled at the video game again I'm going to yell at another one here in a bit I think again and again we're rapping ramping up for that I'm excited for that um that's mainly would have I been playing jbj Blaze says does 15mth subscribed hit the mark or James did it again uh oh and you said f is better than duelist Tom no I would not say I don't know if f is better than duelist yet I I legitimately can't tell I'm enjoying it a lot right now um it's but that was because jbj Blaze subscribed for 15 months so thank you very much but it's a lot of months man yeah I mean I've only been playing for for like a day so it's hard to tell but it's a game I'm excited to play lots more of okay um yeah Tyler have you been playing anything that's not Mass Effect uh let's see um no I see about 60 hours in Mass Effect uh no I I did actually stop to play Rising Storm 2 Vietnam which is enclosed beta right now uh yeah we gave out some keys last week uh there will be another beta period coming up where we might have some more it's fun but I didn't have time to not suck at it like the the Red Orchestra and the rising storm games you really you have to familiarize yourself with the maps and the character models especially because Friendly Fire is on and I'm always afraid to be that guy who's like constantly killing teammates so I'll just see I'll just see like a squad coming at me and be like is that the Americans or the ah they killed me they were they were bad guys um so yeah that seems like it'll be something I play a lot uh when it comes out because I enjoy that series but uh you you can't really judge it on playing like two rounds uh which is the same for all the other games yeah so it's it's definitely a hardore like I remember I I didn't play the first Rising storm and when I played Rising Storm 2 at like a packs a while back for the first time I was like oh my God this game is it kicks your ass if you're not ready for it yeah it's hard um I also like to uh what is that game with the triangles James uh uh yanai's triangle yeah I think I uninstalled it yeah man I like to play that after like 10 hours of Mass Effect to like to like I don't know defragment my brain it's like a puzzle game that's not hard it like it doesn't really ramp up in difficulty in any well I guess it does a little bit but not much you're just kind of spinning Triangles around but it just has like a weird visual style and and audio that's kind of like trans likee it is so that came out as the best triangles of 2016 sure officially yeah we we awarded it yeah oh yeah we did didn't we we did it's a great game so so that's like my uh you know that's like my post workout game and by workout I don't mean physical exercise I mean playing a lot of Mass Effect and getting tired of it oh man the life of of an executive editor at PC Gamer well obviously we've been doing like a ton of coverage of Mass Effect because knew people would be interested so um that means a lot of like marathoning it to get lots of saves because it is a freaking huge game so yeah well let's without further Ado dig into that because there's a lot to talk about about Mass Effect Andromeda for those of you living under ack it did come out yesterday um yeah right Tuesday yes 21st so it came out yesterday it's been available the first 10 hours were available to like EA Origin access people for a few days before that um and then you guys have been playing the game for a week a little over I don't even remember at this point I think I think I started it I started it last Saturday no the Saturday before the previous one James has lost just all perception it's been a long time how space James I don't know where to start with this game okay well well let's let's start with the fact that there is a lot to dig into let's start with there which is that the game so far has been divisive in in reviews and opinions so for example um for example the the oh my God I just totally lost my train of thought excuse me it's been divisive on our staff uh is that's for sure like Chris Chris that's what I was gonna say Chris our our reviewer uh I believe he gave it an 80 he was a fan of the game he recognized its problems but he had quite a good time playing it by contrast Tim Clark editor-in-chief who I wanted to get in on this but was too busy today uh came into our Monday morning meeting and was basically like this is a pile of hot garbage it's one of the worst games I've played in years I don't understand why Everyone likes it so it's like and and not neither of those people are wrong right it's just it's a divisive game opinion wise I'm I'm somewhere in the middle there where it's like I was talking to James before we started I can't I can't really talk about the game without criticizing it because there's so damn much to criticize about it but I can just shut off and play it and just like watching a an episode of Star Trek Voyager like I can still enjoy it as long as I'm not thinking about you know what I would say about it but when it comes time to talk uh I can I can talk about that game for for ages so where do you guys want to start do you want to start at like I mean you talked a bit about or Tyler talked a bit about some stuff last week but like is there anything I guess to start that that you would want to talk about past those 10 hours we could talk about last week I think I think for me at least like the first 10 hours didn't really show me the shape of the game like okay am I going to be hitting up each you know six planets and just like how how is this how are the quests and like uh companion quests going to be structured around that and story Quest going to be strugg am I going to be like doing busy work on each of these worlds to get them to a % like I didn't really know and now I do know and I know it's all fluffy like it's it's uh James is in the Tim Camp I'm I lean I think I lean towards Tim slightly and you seem to lean lean towards Chris um but the this game okay the stuff you do in the open worlds uh is almost all filler it's there's there's you know collections you go collect uh dad fragments dad memory fragments you go scan minerals you go scan plants you um there's some side quests that you get um most of them are just like go here and kill these people or go here and look at this terminal uh and those things will like Ping you back and forth between a planet your ship the Nexus and so on which all have these like 10 to 15 second uh ship uh flying Transitions and loading screens and only to get you know you go back to the Nexus only to get sent back down to the planet to talk to some guy to close out the quest um I think I think almost all that extraneous stuff is garbage the the the planets themselves are populated with uh like four or five different like uh creatures all of the planets in the entire galaxy cluster are so you get the same big uh brawler dude you get the same Raptor looking thing you get the acidic Beetle looking thing you get it's it's not there's nothing surprising in terms of the zoology of these planets and even in in the topography like in the geology of these planets uh they're all kind of just Barren and and Rocky and hilly and anytime you see a point of interest at least in my experience going there was usually pretty fruitless i' be like oh I find this down ship what's going on here ah there's some cat damn it thanks for telling me again and Sam your AI will tell you anytime you drive by cat he'll be like h cut and like okay or it's like you got you got 50 research points yeah you found 10 aluminum thanks buddy um yeah like anytime you like find a cave or something in any other like semi-open World game or purely open world game you'd be like rewarded for exploring that or get a tidbit about uh the world or or find some kind of secret and no I mean most of the time it's like that's a place reserved for a quest you haven't found yet and you'll be back there so don't go there yet there's no incentive to explore in that in that regard almost none I mean maybe there's some cool thing someone found somewhere but in my experience nothing um Tyler have you found anything like cool just from exploring those those places not really it's it's like you'll run into someone who's there and they need help which usually means go scan something or go find something yeah um you know you start to have to kind of like work with like a day planner where you're like because it does take those 15-second transitions to go between um PL you know system to system to a planet and then onto the planet surface so you have to kind of be like okay well if I make the track back to EOS which is like the first planet you land on uh I want to make sure I'm like primed to complete as many quests as I can on there so that I don't have to come back later if I don't need to uh because there's just so much everyone you talk to has something which is why like you could probably play 200 hours and not get very far in the story to be honest um and I I wouldn't say that that 200 hours would necessarily be uh very fun but I don't know I'm I'm okay with doing some of the dumb side quest like can you put can you put this on EOS because of my brother and I'm like okay yeah I'll do it and I I'll get a really brief like introspective bit of dialogue where I'm like huh wow okay I guess it's the little things that count and then uh go on with my day and I'm I'm I'm kind of okay with that maybe more so than than you and Tim well definitely more than you and Tim yeah um but as far as like oh I explored into the depths of this planet and found a really cool little side quest and I got a special piece of armor I don't know maybe it should have like rewarded you with actual items and stuff it doesn't really it's just like at the end of a quest you kind of you did the quest yeah that's that's it a little notification in the bottom left corner it's like plus 30 experience and then like the idea is that like that each side quest should get by on on the power of its story and its writing and that's the reward for completing it but that isn't the case for most of them because the writing the writing is like I have a problem can you go scan something and I'm like okay you fixed it thanks Ryder seems like they could just make more of these scanners and like other people could scan yeah everyone could just be SC the only one who has a scanner and they're just like oh ryer scanner can detect that why don't why don't everyone have one Pathfinder thing I guess I guess um Tyler the mildly motivated Rider Chris says yeah I'm I'm I'm basically like I have a lot of problems with the game but I'm I'm going to make uh I'm going make sure we're all good in Andromeda and and solve the problems of my uh uh of my people yeah and I I think even if you if that extra like the open World stuff was like intrinsically rewarding and if you find it intr intrinsically rewarding that's cool uh but even then if you don't and you're doing it to like make a meter go up or looking for some reward at the end of the tunnel the reward is uh I think it's called AP and I forget what that means viability points Andromeda viability points those those feed back into another system which androma versus I can't wait can't wait um into a system uh where you're basically waking people from cryogenic sleep um so any every time you level up your EVP you get one extra point to spend on something to wake up people from cogenic sleep but there's that's never really reflected in in your Journeys so it's reflected in a menu so if you wake somebody up or wake up a chunk of people you click on a menu to get a certain bu or a certain perk uh that will be there for the rest of the game so you can choose to uh get resources at a 30 minute interval or something randomly and uh or you'll start to uh you'll get more experience from every encounter or whatever there's random little perks and that's like the extent of the reward of of uh making every planet viable is Perks and well there's a little I mean what what else is there yeah is that you make the planets more viable you wake people up and then and then the settlements will grow and then you'll have more side quest to do when you visit them James this is this is the idea uh I mean I would be totally down I just like and maybe we can just like move into how into the writing in this game because well real quick before we get under writing I I do want to ask somebody mentioned in the chat do the planets visually start looking different as you like do they get prettier and like habited or or like terraformed in any way or are they still like Arizona desert just with some more things I haven't gone I haven't gone nuts with like the viability stuff to be honest because I'm trying to like look into other parts of the game I don't know James have you established like more 100ed three planets and damn uh I think I noticed a change like a visual well first of all you you establish outposts where um previously there was a a a field or an open plane you now have some buildings right and some people to talk to and like you can do research and development there it's like a little hub for activities and and some side quests and and so on uh beyond that I haven't noticed well I think the sky changes in on like the snow Planet if you reach a certain viability on EOS like uh it unlocks more of the planet because you the atmosphere acclimatizes and radiation goes away in like a week or some it's crazy um but you derate the planet in in a week but overall there's very it's it's it'd be hard to tell like one planet from the other based on like 0% or 100% uh viability score and I was hoping there was more of that because I think if if it felt like I was you know making these places habitable and uh there were more of my colonists making a home there and there was like maybe if you came back and there was someone like with a field and they're uh farming something and or or you have like a a a you know residential district over here now or something or a market or I don't know but really you just get the same kind of block of uh like tractor trailer basically space tractor trailer um box car settlements full of people you know who you can't interact with very much you know it's it's I don't know in that way it's very disappointing to me because the whole theme of moving into this space Frontier and making a new home uh on like these planets that are pretty pretty desolate and not totally habitable seems cool to me right like uh leaving a mark and starting a new and there's really no indication in our sense that you're making them home and forcefully colonizing another territory like humans do uh Evan Evan is uh in the chat and he you know he brought up I think he put it well this morning when we were talking that he just didn't feel surprised or yeah curious or any suspense and I agree with him about feeling slightly Pleasant like the interface kind of sucks but I just enjoy the sound effects and you know walking around my spaceship and like uh I don't know uh interacting with people and the idea that I can interact with so many people I mean one of the defenses for the game that I've made um along with Chris is that no one else but B makes RPGs like this like The Witcher is a great series but they're not the same kind of game um so and like torment uh tides of num Manera which I've been playing is a great game but it's not the same kind of game you know it's they they aren't trying to do like fully animated voice acted characters and you can talk to a million of them and your relationships evolve throughout the game um so I give it some credit for being the only RPGs of their kind bi RPGs I I agree and that I agree like there's no other RPG like it but I think just I think from the get-go a few of the like it's foundational uh I mean it's no near it's no near it's no um bullet Health seg what Mass play a combo an action combo based Mass Effect game uh but uh I I think just like right off the bat it flubs a few things that make it hard to like despite the fact that it and and a couple of those things are and you can expand on this Tyler is just the writing overall I think is um I I think before the game came out I said this in in uh our slack chat is that every subsequent BioWare games starts feeling more like fanfiction for BioWare games um and this sort of feels especially 100% it 100% feels like people who were big fans of the Mass Effect Trilogy um but didn't really have a new kind of sci-fi Vision I don't know I don't want to speculate about like the qualifications or the uh um motivations of the writers but you get in there and it feels like it feels like something a fan of the games wrote and and and definitely wrote to appeal to um a younger audience which I have to remember I was like 21 when I played the first mass effect and now I'm 31 so maybe the game hasn't changed that much but I have um makes you think but you know writer kind of says stuff like uh you know my my motto is uh I get done or whatever it was but like really just like she's supposed to be like where Shepherd has experienced uh an experienced soldier who you know kicks ass and and gets things done Ryder you know actually gets things done and doesn't just say that she does ryer is this inexperienced doesn't really know what she's doing can't really hold a meeting correctly and then just kind of speaks like people speak casually now on Twitter um and and I guess that's supposed to appeal to like appeal to them uh Millennials right um which I guess I technically am I hate the term I hate the term Millennials but this feels the most like someone said in a meeting Millennials you need to appeal to Millennials like I really I can I can I don't know some someone in our in our in our own slack chat put it well saying that you you can kind of sometimes hear the writers talking in slack and going oh this is a good joke this is a good joke you know this will work this will be cute like you can just feel when it's trying to be cute trying to be funny and the jokes don't land for me a lot of the time I like some of the banter though like your pilot and your science officer they kind of have cute little exchanges while you yeah I like them well enough well you go meet up with them you know um so the there's been kind of two camps I've seen across the different reviews that I've read and across different people making War yeah basically where and this goes back to what I was saying about the game having kind of divisive opinions is like I I have heard both yeah the writing and the story is terrible but the combat the updated combat is great and I have also heard the combat totally gets in the way of the great story like the that the combat redeems like that game for me almost it like it was the hook that kept me chugging along yeah it's it's definitely fun uh maybe not like the best mix of like shooting and and powers and stuff ever made I don't know what I'd compare it to but I had a lot of fun uh killing cat yeah it doesn't feel like I think people say maybe it gets in the way of the story because there's I mean that's a lot of the filler stuff you find find in the open worlds are just like random combat encounters you can do or just drive by it's it's kind of funny well I I I guess in a way it it affects the story because the story had to accommodate for it it had to invent sure had to invent you know hordes of kind of faceless bad guy aliens to shoot at whereas if that hadn't been a priority maybe they could have gone in a more interesting Direction than you show up in a new Galaxy and there's a great evil force being amassed and now we have to take care of it because of course we do and of course there is yeah just briefly to touch on that like I don't want to sit on the story all day and we'll get to the combat but you're welcome to sit on the story a how awful and Bland and shitty and just lifeless are the cat as as an antagonizing Force without spoiling much are is that ever redeemed because we talked about it last week are there more Dimensions to the cat yes yeah but not not ones that are like yeah there there's nothing there's nothing in there it's not like there's a little boy Soul trapped in the in the archon's head who's like you know what I mean like it's it's these guys are just straight up jerks that's kind of their backstory is they're like we are jerks we were talking before about how like that there's not a lot of variety to like the alien sort of animals and creatures you meet and in general I thought the point of setting it in Andromeda this is what I thought from from the pitch from the first trailer I thought uh okay so they're setting an Andromeda so that me and my salarian assarian Krogan friends and others you know Coran friends can go to this new Galaxy and discover this like you know Interstellar Society of New aliens and just like in Mass Effect one where you're kind of the newcomer human and everyone's getting used to you and you're trying to understand different aliens that me and my crew would be making first Contact all the time and would actually sort of be the invading Force like you could you could talk about you know it could investigate uh colonialism and it could investigate you know what what morally and ethically humans can and should do in the situation of basically being Intruders like there's so much to investigate but then in the first like you know 20 minutes of andromed getting it's like ah they shot at us ah oh no they got a big ship and that guy looks mean and there's ancient alien technology which is the same shepher was doing like like you didn't have to do ancient alien technology again that didn't have there's no Mystique to it at all like no when it it's interesting that it seems like you've traveled 600 years into this completely new Galaxy where there are isn't any of the what was the stuff called the mass effect the original Mass Effect series The like the the I forgot what are you're talking about the crazy species there's like no the the technology you get is is it had like an alien name that it's all from this one oh the uh Jesus I forgot already I bed it from my anyway there isn't that stuff the prothean stuff isn't there right the Mass Effect relays aren't there all that's Jazz yeah um and it's interesting that you you conveniently flew into a Galaxy that seems to be at the exact same like time period or like era in technology and like culture and all that sort of stuff like they could have flown you into a a Galaxy that was just like these people were just forming their first technology and their first space travel or alternative I me would that have not have been fascinating to do like um first contact with a more primitive have been amazing species way more compelling yeah and then you could do some Captain peard and be like oh I don't know we can't interfere with them or you wouldn't even have rules for that like that's just one of the many ideas you could apply to setting it in a new Galaxy that was not applied instead you you encounter bipedal creatures with two eyes a mouth wearing armor and holding assault rifles picking over a ship like it didn't even occur to me when we played on the stream before it didn't even occur to me that this was like supposed to be some amazing new moment where they were encountering a new alien species because it is so understated is so normal well even when you encounter the other new species there's like one other new species um the angaran it is I mean they've already chatted with people and they are also bipedal and they are also have a mouth and two eyes they I think their defining characteristic is like and their their culture and backstory is like hit they hit you over the head with it because every NPC you talk to was like family family family family we have big families yeah they're the aliens who like family like family cool okay God I can see what you're going for here um yeah and you talked about making things normal Tom which is like that's part of the problem too is it's supposed to be a game about exploration where everything is um fascinating and new to you but for you know space travel is basically no problem for you you can cross uh between stars in apparently minutes you traveled for 600 years through dark space so when you discover ancient alien technology that seems to have like terraforming properties to it it's like why is that why is everyone acting shocked by this like don't you remember all the ancient alien technology in the Milky Way you know the one the space station you lived on called The Citadel that had like robots that no one understood how they worked why is this surprising in the least like I don't know it just didn't go far enough there was like a whole mission and Mass Effect was it one or two where you were like researching those little fixer dudes the little green guys and I know it's hard idea what they were to say you need to outdo yourself you need to like make the ancient alien technology even more incredible I'm not saying that I'm saying maybe just don't have maybe just don't retread that you did that yeah and well it's interesting how the elore was so great in the origal the other thing is yeah so where are the weird species I want you you don't even get like elor cameos or jellyfish dude cameos I forget what they're called but or at least as far as I've explored so maybe they're in there somewhere but there's a lot that you can miss even as long as we've played so to be fair yeah it's interesting silent Marine says Keepers that's what they were called those little green guys but uh it's interesting to me not to get into film too much but how this first game which they assumedly want to make the start of a series I guess they haven't publicly said that I don't think they've said that but but you know you you assume as much yeah um anyway it's interesting to see how this first game mirrors the first game of the Mass Effect Trilogy the original Mass Effect Trilogy in a similar way that uh Star Wars 7 kind of got panned for mirroring Star Wars 4 as the start of another Trilogy right like people were like you're just trying to do like you just did what the original Star Wars did and like this game I feel like is falling into similar pitfalls where it's like they they were it feels like maybe they were so worried about not being Mass Effect that they they made it to Mass Effect if that makes sense it's hard to speculate like why it is the way it is I suspect it's a matter of I don't know just just timing like there wasn't enough time to do something grander or or I don't know it it just it feels that I mean there's so many weird small buggy issues and like kind of half formed systems and the UI is awful that it it feels rushed to me personally I mean it feels to me like we can build a a good combat system and we have the frostbite engine so we can do Battlefield sized and bigger maps that look really good and that you can drive around so what do we do with those two things and it feels like the plot goes from there like well we need an enemy you can shoot a lot of and then we need big open areas so you know sort of colonizing planets works with that and you know that's cool if you're starting there um but it's just the the story beats have not surprised me yet um Evan Evan says I don't even need elor I would settle for rund conniving Volus yeah the volas were cool I liked them yeah I I I still like the aliens that are there it's just I feel like I got to know them like I we're still talking about the genage and stuff and I'm like come on I I did that man I did that there was sacrifice and you know we we did that in Mass Effect 3 and uh I I don't need to revisit that particular moral quandry but it is Revisited fairly often in your conversations so this isn't this isn't strictly uh PC related and I apologize about that but it is an interesting thing to bring up and a couple people have brought it up already in the chat which is March was a busy month for games and especially open world games and this game came out right before right after Horizon zero Dawn which was PS4 exclusive but also very critically praised as an open world game and Zelda which was very critically critically praised as an open world game what's Zelda all right calm down now but the the question is do you think that no do you think that that had any Factor on people's opinions in this game if this wasn't a Mass Effect game no one would want to play it I think it's like the only thing keeping me interested in it is a the combat is like entertaining and like it shows promise and it can be like it's a fun toy to me uh and that the enemy AI is just dull and useless and doesn't do anything um but the powers and combining them is really cool and uh B the fact that it's Mass Effect and might have something Spacey and fun written in there like otherwise if this was just like welcome to Space 2 or whatever no one would no it would be I don't know I I speculate people wouldn't have have expectations or attachments that like keep them invested I would have quit playing 10 hours in but I think people would still play I I no I think you underestimate how much people just enjoy this style of RPG like I I'm not that into fantasy and I played some Inquisition I played maybe like 10 hours and kind of just went H I don't know this isn't for me but I could see myself going back to that and finishing it even though I wasn't that interested in it just because there's a big world I could ride around talk to people I liked Inquisition though like I I think it's colleting it was better for sure it was it was better written like that's the thing is like I I just want to be in space do people look back on Inquisition poorly I feel like I think people like that game people look back and say the I don't think the characters are I don't know there's small things but overall just the open World stuff was shallow and that's like that's it like if you Mainline it and stuff it's fairly entertaining combat's a little dumb down but here in Mass like it the thing is you if you took away the Dragon Age license from Dragon Age Inquisition people would be like ah still fairly well written there's some good companions there's some like interesting stuff it's pretty if you took away the Mass Effect license here you the writing would not stand on its own for me like period having finished the game and seeing having seen the larger structure and the larger plot it's awful like what happens where you go what you do it it's awful it's awful it's like it's awful you are like you are flabbergasted right now I think I think and I've yet to play all the companion quests but those are definitely the best part of the game for me and and the mainline quests are still the best part because they contain combat like Focus linear combat um and some hard decisions that I don't know but uh it what happens in those in those the most dramatic scenarios isn't resolved in a satisfying way ever and writers always you know writers dialog wheel which is maybe something we can talk about it ditches the Paragon Renegade format sure so you can't be super good or super jerk at all times instead your shades of the same person which basically means you can answer with a joke or not and um when you answer with a joke on you know on a super dramatic beat when someone dies or you have to do something serious it just comes off as I don't know that's when it really starts to feel like the fanfiction for me and it's hard to take hard to become invested when everything's joke to your writer or uh when everything is surrounded by so much you know just useless mindless padding in this open world I don't know would you say that the writers were so self-aware that they named the character after themselves now James does even matter at me I got to calm down I need Tyler talk about the things you like uh that's like I said that's hard to do I I enjoy playing it for that like just Pleasant like getting little side quest done and I'm unlocking new dialogue and oh there's a character I haven't met before but the dialogue is often pretty bad and and as much as I thought it was a good move to get rid of paragon Renegade binary jerk or yeah nice like I would I would have liked it to feel more like I was uh I don't know being a slightly different person and not just again shades of the same exact same writer who's just like kind of professional kind of you know when you don't have a choice of dialogue when it's in a cut scene and writer is just talking you can tell the kind of character they want her to be which is this kind of smarmy and uh dismissive sort of jokey person who's uh a little bit a little bit full of herself um and I do enjoy some of those dialogue options like I'll always choose like a a lot of the times you get to take all the credit for everything and I always choose that because that's as close to being a jerk as you can be is basically when they're like oh you you've you know made EOS more viable and then you can be like yep I did it I'm I'm good uh but there are lines in it that just really kind of suck and aren't good and I can't like quote off the top of my head um because there's nothing really quotable uh it's just sort of uh banter you put together a a compilation of like four times in the first 10 minutes of the game where they said like commented on flying rocks or whatever right yeah like in the very uh introductory Mission you land on this planet that was supposed to be a golden world it was supposed to be habitable uh for Humanity um but you get there and it's all torn apart by dark energy and there's light in Striking everywhere and like the rocks are floating and it just struck me as kind of ridiculous that they see all this and go well we'll see what it's like when we get to the surface and it's like dude like clearly something's wrong here and then they they keep going these but these mountains are floating like that's so weird like yeah there's like dark energy clouds shooting lightning everywhere and now you're finding like alien ancient looking alien buildings like do you think those are connected in any way maybe and they just act so clueless and so shocked by this stuff and it's like again you traveled between galaxies this should probably not be that shocking like I guess they just thought they were going to get there and like go live on the planet and everything would be fine so I can see how they would be upset by this new development um but it just yeah it's just like it it just feels in that first mission like they didn't know what to have the characters say so they just have them talk about what they're seeing um you know it' be like yeah if you're just going and this is throughout the whole game everyone just explains what they're feeling what their backstory is and what they're currently looking at right now um to try to give you hints as to like just to make sure you're getting the story like look the Rocks aren't supposed to be floating okay we want establish this so that later when you figure out the ancient alien technology stuff you get why now the Rocks aren't floating anymore because this was what was causing it so and it's just yeah throughout the game it's just people observing things and commenting directly on what they're seeing which gets kind of old um and when you talk to your you know people you meet it's I I think that it's easy to criticize this game for this but all of the mass fix did it and all bowar do it where you ask them general questions about their life and then they say well you know I'm really kind of a loner uh don't don't don't don't make close connections or settle down really so I decided I could come out to Andromeda for a new start and it's like thanks for your backstory and your personality now I know who you are but they do that in all the BioWare games so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna put that on andromed andromed Andromeda andromed we should just start calling it that who might make me like what if they just rebranded the entire game as like a parity game and then suddenly all of the facial animations like make sense and you just call it andromed and like no you know what's going to happen is um so Chris Chris thiren who who couldn't be here to talk about it who I do side with on several things like just generally I'm enjoying it even though all I can all I can do is talk when I talk about it but if I turn off and just play it like I get into his zone so I can definitely see where he's coming from but I think what's going to happen is you know how like every time a game gets like Universal praise from like critics and everyone's like this is awesome BioShock Infinite is fantastic like a few weeks later someone publishes a critical thing that takes a new angle and goes actually it's not very good and then everyone who was saying it was great cuz yeah actually I'm kind of over BioShock Infinite and like I am 100% this person I was like this is a great game oh wait someone did some good critical writing about it I think it sucks now I think Andromeda is the opposite because we've been like dunking on it all for like a week and a half now and talking about all this and then everyone's going to play it and be like what's wrong with you guys just have fun like okay the dialogue's kind of bad but whatever I think it's good well and to be fair at the end of the day like and I'm going to be that person too in a week I'm going to say you James and drop is a masterpiece what well well well if that happens we're bringing you both back on the show I think like I I I like I try to temper like my how much I hate this game with with the fact that I still I still played like I did it for work but I also like was curious and still played like whatever 40 plus hours of it that I'm at right now and that a lot of people are aren't looking for you know will will enjoy it for what it is hell my dad like watched all of Stargate like 70 times I don't know he's okay with that and it's like not the most compelling realistic like it's not it's it's it's not sci-fi that's always building on itself and pushing the medium forward and yada yada and I take Stargate whatever I've seen glimpses of it it looks dumb as hell so maybe it's the wrong example um but I mean like and that's okay and I think the comparisons I think I've never seen Star Trek so forgive me uh but uh yeah sorry this comes out every couple months in the office and it's always awkward but the Voyager comparison like I hear voyager's not a great season is probably apt because it there's you know there's there's thematically some stuff you can enjoy and just like as far as like uh the atmosphere and mood go yeah you're in space with some with some space friends and you're you're doing stuff and you're shooting bad guys and you're getting some story even if it's not you know if it's not like mindbending sci-fi uh uh genius is at least drama on some level and that might be enough I guess you know I I what else can you ask for I think Voyer is a good comparison for sure and and Panzer too in the chat just pointed out he said uh I'm 15 hours into it I'm still enjoying it but everything they're saying is valid there's a lot wrong with the game and and that's a perspective of it too is like like people like you could just not be as bothered by these things as some other people and still enjoying it right I'm pretty much willing to let stuff go um because I'm a BioWare apologist and I will apologize for everything that's obviously bad like we haven't even talked about the bugs and the scripting errors and it's probably the worst bow work game I've played as far as that goes be like dialogue will cue but you'll walk too fast so it'll cut short because maybe there's some other dialogue that has to Quee or you'll walk in and go to your um like the star map and you know the two characters at the front in the bridge will start talking to each other and then Sam will start talking Sam's like the AI will start talking in your head and then another character will start talking to you over the radio and you'll have like five dialogue tracks going or i' I've talked to people and their character model disappeared when I started the conversation so riter's just talking to a tree behind where they were um I've had God you know what else like bug wise I've had saves corrupt if I save well in The Nomad I can't load that save most of the time that seem don't necessarily quote me on that that seems to be the problem saving in The Nomad but uh I can't tell exactly what's going on in the game uh there's stuff that's not explained I didn't know how to get back in my ship on one planet for a while James told me because there was like unless you see that tool tip or I don't even know if there was one you're just you're just screwed um nowhere did I see it tell me I could Respec my character in The medbay at a terminal in the back that you have to walk up to to notice it does anything um it's like unless you see the loading hints for some of the stuff you might never see it uh characters have bugged out as far as movement um they like to like scatter and run around all crazy quest mark Quest don't update always after I finish them sometimes I'll land on the Nexus the space station then get back on my ship and then when I get back on my ship have an email from someone on the Nexus saying hey come meet me like to continue a quest so I have to go to the Nexus go back to my ship check my email go back to the Nexus and do the quest is is just like scripting errors and stuff the there's one Quest at the end uh of vetras where the same exact two lines of dialogue happened twice like this is just a you know a mistake in the in the in the scripting and yeah it feels like it could have used six months of uh of of Hardcore QA um yeah definitely because it's it's it's buggier than yeah I know BioWare games and again I'm an apologist can get away with it because they're making something so big and complex and like okay there's going to be a a bug here and there but it was just constant yeah I I hadn't heard that side of it so that's interesting like an interesting perspective to get because we haven't touched on performance much and I do want to get to the Q&A very soon but you know performance-wise it seems like the game is running fine like it's it's a demanding game but it's not necessarily like getting frame hitching or it wasn't as bad as like Dishonored to un launch or anything like that but I hadn't heard about these this sort of buggy side of things rather than performance side of things very buggy it's definitely there performance-wise I'm having some trouble but that says a little more about my PC than the game uh my PC needs a little bit of work um but yeah it doesn't run great for me and I do have crashes uh granted I have crashes when I'm doing like stuff a normal user wouldn't do like Force quitting and reloading it uh 18 times in a row to to work on a guide or something so I can't really speak to like performance are crashing because I'm I'm putting it through its Paces but we did a huge performance test uh Jared wrote that for us so here I can link that in the chat but uh and you can find all of our our Mass Effect Andromeda coverage if you as West said last week go to uh pcgamer.com mass-- four because that's how our website works but yeah if you go to that site uh we have lots of coverage character guides multiplayer build guides uh scathing coverage about the planet scanning system that I'm imagined if I get James talking about we will be don't start me just go play torment and people are talking about like hey look I've uh in the chat you know I enjoyed the game and or someone enjoyed the game and kind of getting accused of being a shill I I jokingly call myself a BioWare apologist whenever I say I'm enjoying it um because I do Overlook a lot of the issues it has even though I agree that like it's too buggy and the dialogue is not great but you know as Evan points out in the chat like just in you know we're going to be really critical of stuff but that doesn't mean anyone wants you to stop enjoying what you enjoy I'm trying not to ruin it for people I kind of feel bad B it so much because I know there are so many people who were so excited about this game and they're going to play it so and the truth of the matter is in my opinion a lot of those people that were very excited about the game and are going to play it are going to enjoy it like I there are going to be people out there who like we've been saying recognize these flaws and can get over them and just enjoy the game and I think you know as they were saying the shill thing like I think everyone should be confident in the fact that uh someone liking something more than you does not necessarily mean they have been paid to have that opinion just in the same got a lot of money if that's true yeah right yeah like yeah so that's that's all but I'm I'm glad we dug into this I'm glad we spent so much time on it uh because there's a lot to unpack and you feel better I feel lighter yeah like like the world I got to go back I gota go right back into the game after this J James had to yell at some video games um got to do it sometimes you know that's his therapy yeah uh but let's open it up to you guys let's let's hear what you have to say not necessarily just about Mass Effect Andromeda but if you want to talk about anything at all we're going to open it up tag us with PC Gamer in the twitch chat uh and we will answer your questions if you are a twitch subscriber I know we got some new and returning people today thank you very very much we appreciate your support and we'd love to hear from you uh first but we we have a longer amount of time for our twitch chat today because I really want to take a lot more questions if we can uh so bring them on in and and we'll uh we'll we'll talk about stuff buttface Jones a subscriber asks right off the bat what's the next Pony Island short self-contained unique little chunk of gaming that has no barrier to entry oh well story is Untold I would I wouldn't say it's as like that's what I was thinking yeah it's not definitely not as like U trying to be as clever or or self-aware and like breaking the fourth wall but uh it's definitely all of those things so give it a shot 10 bucks those games have been popping up more more recently too the kind of just like little bite-size sort of here's a weird fun cool thing I said like two years ago that like maybe it was a year ago that like self- referential games like after um oh what's it called uh undertale no no no no no no before that Stanley par yeah I was like after the Stanley Parable everyone's going to do this and then they did and I just wanted to say that so that so that I could say that I was right that everyone was going to do that you did it Tyler you were right on the Internet thanks well there's also the thing of like having a game where there's a monitor in the game like her story and stories and told that has become a big thing and I just you know I just wanted to point out that I notice these Trends and uh I make predictions and uh I'm always right just like when I said the iPad was a stupid idea that would never take off I'm always right Tyler never never change that's all okay okay moving on we have kifu next uh asking can you guys think of a board game or a card game that you'd like to see digitalized into video game form board game or card game that's a good question um I still want a good online version of magic but you know that's just what the what you got like every version of magic ever like every iteration you could ever dream of already exists James is so mad at me today oh my God I want magic no uh fine fine you want me to do something better I would like something I think there needs to be a better version of risk and if we're doing a better version of risk I think I think a version of the Risk Legacy board game where you can actually play with the same people in continued sessions and the game will change over time in video game form would be very very cool so there James are you happy now I'll never be happy I haven't played a lot of board games recently so I don't know there's nothing at the top of my head I've been watching people play D and D every week that's that's what I do now and then telling and then annoyingly like backseat DND Ding and telling them what they should do because it's so annoying when you know the DM lays something out and then uh they don't ask the obvious question you're like what ask about the door ask about the door guys but I'm not actually playing so I'm just an annoyance sorry that had nothing to do with this yeah I have no answer for the question either I don't really play very many board games he just rages about Mass Effect and other things online I'm just angry that's what he does all the time uh oh Chris 86 asks what's your favorite buyway game o that's a nice clean and simple question yeah I don't know Mass Effect 2 Mass Effect 2 is that the easy copout answer I mean this my favorite game my favorite BioWare game I mean people talk a lot of recently I guess people I don't know it's like Tyler Tyler's trend has is in effect I don't know like where we're at in the oscillation but in two years it's going to change but uh Dragon Age I love the original Dragon Age I really I spent and the and the uh the expansion Awakening or no that was just the original Sur name but um no Origins and Awakening yeah yeah so I loved those games I didn't realize how many crazy good games bioware's name was attached to like I didn't realize BioWare was still the developer of the balers game series like I I I thought it was under a different name at that point original cotor Super I mean it's hard to knock that one it was breaking a lot of interesting bow Weare ground yeah I mean nights to the Old Republic is a big one on that list I think I'd actually put n to the Old Republic over Mass Effect too I'd also put I don't know if if i' put this over Mass I think I would I'm going to just go ahead and I I'll put my I'll be the guy who says Jade Empire I was really into Jade Empire uh it had a bad PC Port later on right I I don't believe I will I played it on 360 I believe I'm actually changing mine it's mdk2 the MDK Series so I'm kidding I'm kidding it's not mdk2 MDK were these like those yeah I've heard about these uh yeah like the first one was uh what was that developed by shiny yeah they they're okay but no one would remember mdk2 as a BioWare Game Chris in the middle in the chat is immediately like yay mdk2 so there you go all right let's go grab some more questions because that was that was a good one that was a good that was eye opening for me um as muffin says how far into Zelda have you made it we're we're not talking about that I hm uh we're not going to no what what were you going to say I got a house but oh I'm proud I I'm like I've like over I'm like 60 hours into that game or something like that yeah anyway we're not talking about that uh there was a good question actually that I wanted to take uh from a non-subscriber silent Marine zero who's around a lot uh do you think the EA Early Access trial was a good idea or a bad idea many impressions of the early game uh including ours use the trial and thought the game starts slowly uh many games do not do demos anymore so many users treated this as one to test the game and see that what works uh I emphasized on the Discord that they have the trial use to determine what they like yeah uh I think almost unanimously we in the office we agreed that the the the Embargo on the coverage that was only the trial was a bad idea it was it was a terrible idea yeah because think about it the the conversation all weekend was about how stupid those animations were that was that was what everyone was talking about was how slow it was how kind of crummy the early writing was and how stupid the animations were can I basically go for it no go go for it oh no you go James you I want you to yell some more uh I'm gonna have a slightly different take I think it I think for EA it was very bad but for people who were interested in maybe buying spending $60 on this game it's demo like it functioned as a demo and in that way I think it was very good uh for people who were trying to make purchasing decisions and we're like wow I want to give flavor what's this what's this new taste yeah that's a good point and I think it was frustrating in terms of coverage because we had full we had played the full game or had copies of the full game at that point and to kind of like and at that point like Chris was further in the game and he you know he had talked about things that he thought uh picked up and you know had liked and enjoyed and having those behind like an arbitrary agreement wall was you know frustrating I think from that point of view um but if if you're looking to spend money I think it's fine but but to me as a as a game player like I want there to be more game demos I think Salam Marine was right in saying that game demos are not very common anymore I don't want a game demo to be tied behind some EA Origin access thing oh I don't want the game demo to be before the game comes out I would be fine with what they did and with that origin access thing if it hit when the game launched you had a chance to play it before you bought it when it was available to play but full reviews were already out so that you could use the reviews plus your own experience in the demo as like to get a full picture I think the idea that they gated just that beginning stuff for everyone was like a bad idea and I think they needed to do a demo when everyone could talk about the whole game I don't know if it was a better game it wouldn't have been a bad idea that's a that's true I guess that's a fair point if everyone had played that first 10 hours and been like I can't wait to play more it's amazing um then everyone would be going like ah EA really uh really did a good job there they got everyone so excited they got all this free positive uh you know Word of Mouth out but instead all they got were gifts of like sh you know Rider's eyeballs freaking out um yeah I don't I don't like the EA access thing origin access whatever CU I I wrote about this like this is the beginning where you get to play for 10 hours uh you know a few days early but how long before it's like 100 bucks and you can play the game a month early uh 80 bucks you can play the game two weeks early you know I don't want that to start happening so um if they had just released the game and put out a free demo that's cool um but yeah it backfired from a from a business perspective they couldn't have been happy and I felt kind of bad for like the developers cuz they just had to watch everyone stew in the first few hours of that game all weekend just roasting it mercilessly which which I joined in on because I didn't feel that bad about it you know but I felt a little bad after joining in all right here's one from vend deal asking are there any game franch franchises that you really just really wish would be revived either with a remake or a sequel uh conversely any that you really think should just stop excluding the obvious yearly iteration games oh well so that's a little tougher of a question that way um in terms of revived God I want beyond good and evil I I want another Beyond Good and Evil that's not even a franchise or a series they only made one I just want the second one and I know all y'all guys have been hating on me like the first one wasn't very good what Ros maybe not you somebody did that to me and I don't care I want a second one of that game hey Tom what bian evil sucked James just kidding I expect anything less from you um I think the Fallout franchise should be killed moving on whoa whoa buddy no I think that I think follow that's not a terrible take it's all right I was gonna say the Elder Scroll just hating on Bethesda no um I honest to God I think that both the Elder Scrolls series and the Fallout series need a large refresh uh before they get their next game I don't think either of those games can just put out another one on the same engine and have me be interested still I'm with you that's not really I don't think that means it should be killed right but I think they need I think they need some TLC before we see them again or at least I I would like them to see that do you guys have any serieses in Minds uh it's a tough call uh this old game um oh halflife 2 uh I'd love to see never heard of it no over portal that's a question uh half life three or Portal 3 James uh Portal's gone in my opinion yeah Portal's good I I like I don't know I'd be more interested in in shooting men instead of solving puzzles with intellect so well I see where your priorities are I like solving puzzles I don't have anything every time a series I want to come back comes back it's not like great well that's not true because like torment tides of num maner is pretty dang good I guess that wasn't a series that was that's a sort of successor to one game um but like you know I don't know they tried to bring back Command and Conquer as a free-to-play game and that never even came out because it sucked so hard uh uh ma I I liked max pain 3 but like and max pain is one of my favorite series but it wasn't like brilliant and they really don't need to make any more of those I'm fine with that oh man someone says black and white should be brought back in VR I do like black and white that's a good idea okay that's that's my answer like black and white I love let's take their answers okay uh let's take a couple more questions because there are definitely more and this is why we did bigger section hooray uh Kev Factor asks fuel exploration is back in the game uh felt like that's what was missing from the second and third games okay so that's not really I'm majorly disagree okay you sounded you sounded like aiz on sarry from Parks and W right there well it I I I would May and this is again my experience it's a big game so maybe I have yet to find the thing that the carrot at the end of the stick but I I feel like the exploration and we're talking about Mass Effect right I'm joking yes on my words um because they're not true stop and uh I feel like yeah like the very first thing I did in the Eos and the second world was say I'm going to go off the beaten path and explore and everything I found was just a combat Outpost or you kill dudes and scan some technology or find a container or a cave or something that was waiting for a quest to happen there um so I it's ostensibly about exploration it's just that the exploration isn't isn't that fun you can go to a system and scan all the planets maybe find yourself some iron uh well let's let's move on to a Dark Souls question yeah because I know you'd be excited for that Apollo dingo asks Dark Souls 3 final DLC is going to be better than all the Witcher 3 DLC this is true why I don't know how to answer that because the Witcher 3 DLC is great Al that's a bad question but a good a good question but a bad question uh I have high hopes for the Dark Souls 3 final DLC which is coming out the ring City next Tuesday I believe um but I don't I think like perhaps a mass effect sequel it will not meet the expectations that people are putting on it I think people are looking for like a a very poignant end to the the Dark Souls trilogy um that answers every lore question and has crazy boss battles and wild environments and it might take a few of those boxes but I I'm I'm kind of reeling my hopes back in uh in some ways because I know it's just downable loadable content that probably isn't getting the full force of from behind it in terms of development because they they're juggling a lot of things at the moment uh um but you know I just I hope at the very least it's thematically um uh rich and and and the enemies are fun to fight and it just does the Dark Souls thing well yeah all right we're gonna do uh rapid fire questions right now because I want to fit in a lot before we end uh right long time viewer battl tank 09 asks uh any games based on existing animes you'd like I'd want to just touch on this because uh I actually do think that some of the Dragon Ball Z games are really good like the budai games were great and I hear really good things about the the more recent ones that I can't forget they're forgetting the name of right now um but yeah those games also there was a really good Naruto fighting game for GameCube that I can't remember the name of will is shaking his head yes so there you go that's all the validation I need one punch man one is there one punch Man video game I want there to be one I don't know I want there to be a ping pong the animation video game yeah is there I hope there is I'd play that all right uh let's keep moving uh uh uh uh where did another question go they're all gone there we go crazy kook on the subject of bware guys want to see cotor 3 or Jade Empire 2 go quick give me your answers no ouch wow damn I'd go cotour 3 just because Jade Empire is great you're gonna go Jade Empire 2 okay I'm going to go C because that's at least the more venerated series that's people original properties coming out of BioWare D okay okay tell you something Tom Star Wars sucks Star Trek baby all right calm down go uh Max ersa asks says he's been spending time in the elite dangerous 2.3 beta uh messing with the Character Creator um and asks after the obligatory Max slider character how long do you normally spend on character creators do you create recreate your own face or someone else's or just make one up I found out a long time ago while playing The Sims that I'm terrible at recreating my own face and every time I do it just looks like generic white guy so I stopped doing that and I just make weird characters now I would describe you as a generic wife my face I think you were on point literally every time I've made a character in like any character creator that tried to be me I would show it to someone and they'd be like that doesn't look like you be honest to be honest if you look at us right now it looks like someone just moved a couple sliders around put some glasses on hat yeah that's uh that's not inaccurate James um what was the question do we make our own just how long how long do you spend on characters usually eight hours okay maybe not eight hours but I can like be like I'm going to start this RPG tonight and then be like I better go to bed glad I watch the first cut scene after customizing my character for ages and and then like gotten into the game been like I don't like the hair and then like restarted the whole game to change it it also depends on the commitment of like the type of game like yeah I will 100 hours yeah like if it's going to be a long RPG I will customize the hell out of my character if it's like Arc survival of all I'm just like I'm going to make myself have big biceps and be a tiny dude and like then I move on like I don't I don't spend time on games like that character creators uh and the last question I want to bring up uh uh uh where' it go oh no um which is a big question but I I I'd like a rapid fire answer from you guys subscriber gild dive asks you can only play one game for the rest of your life easy what is it Mass Effect Andromeda James is that your easy answer no Super Hexagon super hexagon oh man that's a good answer yep um I'll go with something like audio surf because then I can keep adding new levels fair enough I'll go with uh Dwarf Fortress hey do we get updates yeah do we get updates not mine won't get updates I think we should get I think updates are okay then that means Tyler will be just literally be living a new life eventually yeah D Fortress is a good shout yeah yeah I feel like in Dwarf Fortress I could just create a fantasy fantasy life where I get to play video games but my dwarves are playing them oh my god um I I would also maybe say something I like I'd also want to go something competitive because then you just like I would even almost say like I'd be fine with League of Legends right like that wouldn't be my first choice but but then 30 years from now what if no one's playing it and you're the last person I'd be willing to put money on the fact that league is still around in 30 years or in some form like it might be League 2 which I guess wouldn't count I'll bet you right now 30 years from this day all right I'm reminder in my phone like five bucks $100 $100 I'll take that bet 30 years from this day if league is still being played sir remind me in 30 years from today to check on the Tyler Tom bet in 30 years you're gonna have to like you're you're gonna have to like put some more specificity than that I'm willing to put this money down $100 that in 30 years from today Legends is still being played yeah cool this is dumbest I've ever taken part in that's that's how we're going to end the show thank you very much guys for your questions as always we we love answering them we love talking to you uh join us in discord.gg pcgamer if you have more questions or want to get in touch with us after the fact if you're coming from pcgamer.com podcast or youtube.com/ pcgamer or our iTunes page or wherever you are listen to the show thank you very much uh we will be back right right here at twitch.tv/ pcgamer Wednesday's 100 p.m. Pacific Daylight time now heyo um although I guess it was last week too yeah anyway thank you very very much and we will see you next time bye\n"