We JUST Stopped for a Rest Break!

Tags

companions, Mass Effect: Andromeda, mechanics

Minor spoilers for companion behavior in Mass Effect: Andromeda

Butch:

So I toodled around the tempest. I figured, if I was there, might as well.

So I chatted up Cora and got the “Go back to Eos cuz Asaris” quest, heard Gil fighting with Kallo, talked to the hologram. It likes stern Ryder.

And then I was pissed that I got ripped off of Voeld so I went back and picked up where I left off. Took PB out with Jaal, decided to head towards her thing.

I did not get to her thing.

Why? Cuz the way I decided to take had encounters every twelve feet. And NO ONE WANTED TO KEEP DRIVING!

“Kett tech!” (I tried to drive by it) “We should check out that Kett tech.” Ok, fine. Fight fight fight. Scan, nothing. No one cares. Why did we check it out?

“That remnant tech has defenses pathfinder.” Ok, gotta be something good. Fight fight fight. Scan. Nothing.

Am I missing something here or am I just annoyed?

Feminina:

I find myself frequently annoyed by that, so it’s not just you. I’ve actually started managing to ignore the helpful comments about remnant tech (“we should check that out!”) because it’s never anything. It’s hard to ignore, though. Because WHAT IF THIS IS AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE ABOUT SOMETHING IMPORTANT?

Maybe we’re both missing something. Peebee and SAM are both thinking “you have to SPRINT while you scan, OBVIOUSLY.”

I got the quest about the extra weight on the Tempest, found the construction suit, as you said. It was a nice little story. I told them to leave it there in the ship. Suvi specifically said the extra weight wasn’t a problem from a performance standpoint, so fine, leave it.

Speaking of things you do on the Tempest, are you doing the Strike Team missions? I do them when I’m there, because whatever, but I can’t get too into them. I need to thaw the cryopod that will get me money when they successfully completely a mission, because otherwise I just don’t really care.

Butch:

That and we know ourselves well enough to know that the moment we do decide to skip one, THAT’S the one that had the cool shit. It’s how it goes.

But then, if we’re missing it, it can’t be that important.

That ‘extra weight’ was a nice quest, and themey. I reference my earlier wisdom. I thought the recording of the person that made it was really well done.

I have not been doing APEX missions. I kinda forgot to look at them. I got the sense when I encountered them for the first time that they were kinda like those weird side missions in AC4 where you’d send a ship somewhere to do something to get something you didn’t really need. I ignored those pretty quickly in AC4, and decided to do the same here.

And, you know, multiplayer isn’t gonna happen, so…..

Feminina:

ANYTHING WE MISS COULD BE CRITICAL!!!! It’s the eternal fear.

The strike team missions are pretty much exactly like the bits in AC4 where you send people you don’t know to do things you don’t understand in exchange for stuff you don’t care about. GET INVOLVED, damn it!

In AC Brotherhood there was at least some story involved…you’d recruit your assassins in little scenes where you rescued someone from a mob or spotted a clever lad picking pockets, or whatever, and then send them out on missions, and when they were successful they gained status and stuff. They all had names, so you could follow the progress of Sally the Stabber or whatever as she advanced in the ranks, which made it marginally interesting.

This…meh. I do it because it’s there, and I think there’s some XP involved, and if you thaw the right cryopod you can get stuff when they’re successful, but it’s not that interesting. The teams are pretty impersonal, and yeah, multi-player is never going to happen, so there’s minimal excitement.

Butch:

It is the eternal fear! And, also, I feel I need to pursue the tech in order to avoid my own hypocrisy. See, Junior continues with Zelda. I’m trying to teach him little subtle things about how to read an open world game, like, “Well, if a place is killing you over and over, you probably aren’t ready to be there,” or “If you find a place with a lot of quests, you should probably do a bunch of them cuz the next place will likely have harder quests.” That sort of thing.

One enormously helpful lesson has been “Games generally don’t put things in them that don’t serve a purpose. If a game is drawing your attention to something, it wants your attention there and you should go check it out.”

I’ve told him this explicitly.

So I have to follow my own advice! Usually when an NPC is all “Check that out. No, really, check it out,” it’s the game saying it’s important! Right?

RIGHT?

I’m a terrible parent.

Whenever something says “You can do this in multiplayer…or not,” it’s always because they WANT you to do multiplayer, but want to say with a straight face when they’re marketing the game “You don’t have to do multiplayer to get everything the game has to offer!” Which is true, I guess, but there’s no doubt that when a game says “You can do this in multiplayer….or not,” they WANT you to do it in multiplayer and the “or not” is an afterthought.

And, as we do not do multiplayer, the afterthought is given no thought.

Feminina:

You’re a fine parent, it’s just that this game is screwing with us. For some unknown reason, it wants us to get excited about something that is not exciting.

I think it’s another instance of your companions being trigger-happy, to be honest. If this were DAI, they’d be racing off after lizards, in full combat mode. “I WILL DEFEND YOU!!!”

Since they’re stuck in a car, they just get really excited about the possibility of combat (which, if they’re Peebee, they phrase in a more general ‘we should check out that tech’ way, but we all know it’s going to turn into combat).

To be fair to this game’s attempt to pretend that multiplayer isn’t their main focus, a lot of the missions don’t even have a multiplayer option, so the default is, arguably, sending the team instead of going yourself in multiplayer. I have to give them that.

But yeah, it’s just not going to happen with me. Look, if I wanted to hang out with other people, I’d leave the house.

Butch:

I think maybe the trigger-happiness over tech was a remnant (see what I did there?) of the long and turbulent development process. This game had, like, 27 directors over time, and these things reek of a feature that mattered at some point, then was written out after too much work was done on it to remove it completely.

They probably just want out of the car. They know they’d lose all of your respect if they just said “I have to go potty” every five minutes.

As for leaving the house, dude, when I suggest you come over here, you’re stunned.

You just don’t want to share the booze.

Feminina:

I want to share the booze! Your booze. You have more of a budget for it, not paying for your ex and all. Ha.

That’s true, though…I bet it is just a ploy to get a bathroom break. They know in the heat of battle no one will notice if they just sneak off behind that bit of ancient masonry.

I mean, we could also imagine all their armor is stillsuits like in Dune, but that’s not as amusing.