Mass Effect: Andromeda, the build
Damn. I was supposed to write this post a long time ago, while still remembering the details. Now it’s all a bit hazy. But I remember some of it, and back then I made some notes and a rough draft, so I’ll create a post out of those. It’ll be less comprehensive than I had intended, but no one will care because no one plays this game anymore.
I’m talking about Mass Effect: Andromeda, and the build I used to play through the game on insanity (the highest difficulty) without much trouble and without having to play like an action hero (which I neither enjoy nor master). It allows for a relatively relaxed and chilled playing style despite the recurring chaos on the battlefield, letting the team (squad + constructs) do much of the heavy lifting. I don’t even engage in active use of combos, though my team made them happen with increasing frequency as they get more upgrades.
The short version is this: it’s a tech-based build using as active powers the two tech constructs (the turret and the remnant) and the cloak, with the engineer profile. For weapon, a sniper rifle with unlimited ammo, which goes well with being relatively stationary and far away from the epicenter of the action.
Initially and for a good long while I concentrate on developing the tech section, but eventually one runs out of useful tech skills/upgrades to develop, at which point I start investing elsewhere, into improving sniping and other passive non-tech skills. All of those skill points go into the combat section actually, but I would definitely get Barrier from the biotics section if it was available without any previous points into that section (might actually be worth it anyway — there are some wiggle room in this build, some things are set in stone and others are not, and you have to use your own judgement to decide which is which).
Skill upgrades and division of labor
As for skill upgrades, whenever there’s a mutually exclusive choice, I (nearly?) always prioritize improving the team over improving myself, and when I do improve myself I prioritize defense and survival over offense. (That’s not to say that I always pick improving the team first if there’s a non-mutually exclusive choice — that would depend on the current needs, as based on experience from the field. E.g. maybe I really need a better cloak right now, and then that would come first).
With good reason — there is a synergy going on between the these particular skills, skill upgrades, the playing style, and choice of squad members.
All the team do is directly attacking, but I have a couple of additional responsibilities.
There’s the attacking of course, using the sniper rifle, but there’s also the constantly managing and coordinating the others, assessing the situation on the battlefield and making decisions about where they should go and who to attack. That often means having them attack the same target (often the weakest), but not always.
They’re allowed to die or get destroyed; I’m not, so I also need to prioritize survival for myself. In part, I do that through the playing style, hanging around in the background and on the edges of the battle, but also through upgrading my defense and ability to survive. That’s not just improving armor, but also things like making the cloak last longer, and being able to recharge the shield while being cloaked. That’s way more important than, say, getting an upgrade to do more melee damage while cloaked, which would be nearly useless.
Lastly, it’s my job to revive fallen comrades and re-employing destroyed constructs. This happens pretty regularly early on, but less so as the team gets better. In doing so, the cloak is very useful, esp since I often prefer squad members that go into close contact with the enemy, such as the Krogan and Cora, which means that when they die, they end up right in the middle of the action — good luck reviving them on insanity without having a cloak. But in addition the cloak is useful for getting into good vantage points, and escaping if the enemy gets too close. Can’t overestimate how useful and necessary the cloak is for this build and this playing style.
A few additional notes about skills
The three active powers are all so good and essential to this build that I never use anything else, so all other skill points go into getting and upgrading passive powers. I don’t think it’s that hard to determine which of those powers to get (in time I think you get pretty much all passive powers, upgraded all the way, in the tech section.). In some cases it might be somewhat tricky deciding what specific upgrades to get when you have to choose among the mutually exclusive ones. Just use your judgement to the best of your ability and upgrade in accordance with the guidelines I’ve given above. Some choices are obvious, but some are not, in which case it might not even matter that much which way you go. Remember that it’s always possible to regret your decision and redistribute all skill points.
Here’s an additional example of synergy, from memory: there is an upgrade where one can make the assault turret slowly repair itself if it’s in proximity to me. That’s a superb one, esp since I’m relatively immobile during combat anyway. But as mentioned, I am usually far away from the action, so the turret needs to be as well. That in turn means that as it’s time to decide whether to equip it with ice or fire, it needs to be ice, since that’s a long distance weapon, and fire (a flame thrower really) is not.
There are synergies like that all over the place, both obvious and less obvious ones, including finding a nice balance between having the team priming and detonating combos. Having them all do one and not the other would obviously be suboptimal, as far as combos go (which is just one consideration — it’s like a puzzle where you want all pieces to fit). Done right, combos will in time go off regularly without you lifting a finger. I don’t do combos myself, but it’s great having a team that does.
Obviously the Team Support skill has many good upgrades, but you can find team-related upgrades scattered across the other skills and upgrades as well.
You don’t need to be too dogmatic about the details. Maybe I wasn’t, I don’t remember, could very well be that I put a few points i to e.g. sniping before getting a certain team-related upgrade. But in general, team comes first, and then defense/survival over offense for myself, then the rest. That applies not only to skills, but also to armor, which to pick and what bonuses to add, and maybe in other areas as well, I don’t remember all the systems.
A different beginning
Please note that none of those three active powers are available at the start. For the cloak and turret, you first you need to add nine points into the tech section. That means levelling up a few times. Don’t worry, that happens early, but if you run into the wrong enemies before that point, it could actually get really difficult. If so, maybe go elsewhere to get those points, and come back later. I have no advice on what initial interim powers to choose.
The remnant will take a tad bit longer to get, as it requires you to find PeeBee and finish one of her early quests, but do prioritize that though, at least after having the other two powers. Shouldn’t take too long or be too hard.
When you do get the specified powers, don’t forget to respec the build (done in the medical bay) so that no skill points are wasted.
Final thoughts
I’ve heard of people getting stuck on insanity level, overwhelmed by enemies. It doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve also seen it claimed that actively using combos is necessary at this difficulty. Not true. With the right skills and right playing style it is pretty smooth sailing. I’m sure there are many viable builds (even for insanity), especially for action heroes who don’t mind intense and explosive action, but I’ve found a convenient and fun build that suits me perfectly. This is the ”let someone else do the hard work” build. I’m sure it’s boring to some people, but I for one prefer it this way. Among other things, it makes it more of an RPG experience where you rely a little more on making thoughtful decisions and a little less on being good at fast-paced combat.
But anyway, that’s that.
Skyrim #6, Quest Soup
Another post that’s nominally about Skyrim, but actually about a broader topic related to game design, using Skyrim as an example and as a springboard. Here we go.
So there you are in Skyrim, going about your business, stealing, killing, saving the world. Maybe on a mission, maybe just wandering about. Maybe new in town, talking to people trying to get a sense of the place, excited by the prospect of making some profit, ehhh I mean helping the poor.
You’re an offbeat outlander wearing a ghastly mask and a blood soaked armor, but they deem you worthy all the same, their very own watershed moment, and they tell it all within seconds. About family feuds and curses, about private messages to be delivered, some by word and some by the sword, about stolen heirlooms and dark secrets of sadness and cruelty; they tell it all, because they need your help, urgently. You are the perfect stranger, a strand of silver hanging through the sky.
So now you get another quest. They stack up, time passes, attention goes elsewhere many times over. Naturally the details start to blur or get lost entirely in the fog of fading memories, especially since many of the quests aren’t that interesting or relevant to begin with, and since it might have been tens of hours since you got some of them.
As the quest list grows longer, a curious phenomenon emerges: you start to accidentally make progress on, even completing, quests.
You talk to some random guy, and suddenly you’re unexpectedly informed that you’ve taken the next step in a quest you’ve long forgotten. Turns out some women gave you a quest 27 hours ago to inform her brother about some herbs or something, and now you’re unknowingly talking to that brother for some other unrelated reason, maybe trying to get a sense of a new town, and in the course of the conversation delivered the message and made that old forgotten quest progress.
Well, that was easy, but, needless to say, advancing a quest in this manner doesn’t feel very meaningful. Completion still gets you the in-game reward, and to the person you’re helping you may very well be a savior, but you clearly aren’t immersed in the quest narrative.
Heck, even deliberately trying to get engaged in these (to you) small and sometimes rather pointless quests is often a challenge, and you run the risk of completing them by simply going through the motions following the quest arrow, rather than actually caring.
And this, all of it and more, is quest soup, bon appétit. A chaotic unwieldy mess of many forgettable and forgotten quests that are being stacked up in a ten mile long list and completed without immersion, by accident or otherwise. (Which is not to say that Skyrim doesn’t also have some quests that are more interesting and more inherently immersive, but they’re not central enough to the experince as a whole to dissolve the soup.)
I’d like to think quest soup isn’t inevitible in a game like this (Mass Effect compares favorably, for one thing), neither in terms of game design or playing style, but that’s a topic for another day.
Meanwhile, ponder the fact that I’ve said quest more than one hundred times in this short post. I just don’t feel “mission”. And “investigation”? Are you kidding me, what is this, a detective game?
End captain’s log.
In the meantime
Been hard at work on a post that isn’t coming along very well, so I’m buying myself some time by bringing you this short update instead.
Though I still have a few posts coming related to Skyrim, I‘m definitely done actually playing it. In fact, I got really tired of the game toward the end. Going for a platinum was probably a mistake, as it was far more time consuming than expected, but once you start going down that path, the Daedric prince of sunk cost will make sure you see it through.
Now I’m immersing myself in Mass Effect: Andromeda, hoping it isn’t a big letdown in the making. I mean, I‘m well aware the game wasn’t particularly well received, but it’s also a game by Bioware, and a Mass Effect game at that, the trilogy being one of my favorite games. So there has to be some kind of lower bound of quality below which Andromeda cannot fall, right. Until proven otherwise I refuse to believe it is a dud, but whatever the case may be I will know for sure soon enough. As for the critique, I won‘t even skim it, let alone carefully analyze or engage with it, until finishing at least the main quest, though I did hear there were some wonky facial animations (now patched, I believe.)
I‘m not far into the game, and my only serious complaint so far is the ridiculously small text, and in searching for a fix (there is none) I learned of many others feeling the same way, some even refusing to continue the game because of it. How curious to spend years and untold resources to develop a game, only to then noticeably undermine the playing experience and needlessly aggravating their own customers by neglecting to spend three seconds to add the option to change text size.
Skyrim #4, the happy couple
All hail Skyrim, mighty generator of amusing and bizarre little episodes. This is probably the most absurd one yet.
I was doing a quest for the thieves guild, collecting a few old debts of theirs. One argonian female innkeeper wouldn’t listen to reason, and a fist fight broke out.
Landed a few good punches, and maybe she fell badly on the floor or something, but she unexpectedly passed away. I took the money she owed — our business is hereby concluded, ma’am — and returned to the guild.
They became rather mad, as I wasn’t supposed to kill the target. But you got the money, right? No no, not being cavalier at all, just trying, to… yeah yeah, bad for business, and our sacrosanct code of whatever and all that, but it’s not easy being in the trenches, things go down and, well, you know how it is, and stop that yelling.
To dramatize the exchange a bit.
In any case, their faith in me remained intact, courtesy of Bethesda’s unwillingness to allow failure, since failure might hurt the feelings of kids who are in it for the power fantasy and being the supreme king of winning. But I digress.
Later I returned to the scene of the crime, and now an argonian man was running the inn in her place. Apparently he was her boyfriend, so naturally he wasn’t too happy about what had happened, or about me returning, which he made very clear.
Hadn’t expected this situation. The game came alive for a moment, felt a pang of guilt. But I am the dragonborn, and I am on an important quest to get a shiny and useless platinum, the show must go on.
Then came the quirky turn of events.
His voice softens, eyes becoming dreamy. This was a man deeply and hopelessly in love. He informs me he’s going to marry that woman, and asks whether I would kindly get them some gems for the wedding.
Why yes, that’s the least I can do for having killed the bride.
Probably won’t though, but I like stacking up quests for a rainy day.
A theater should act these scenes out and post it on YouTube.
I‘m done with the game now, playing wise, but I still have a few more posts coming up.
Skyrim #3, my build
In my first run I distributed my skill points in a rather diverse fashion. That usually doesn’t result in a particularly good build, although Skyrim is easy and safe enough that it’s nearly impossible to screw up completely. Gradually over the course of playing I converged toward a few chosen skills, in particular archery since that became my preferred way of fighting (ranged fighting with slow motion, I’m a sucker for that.)
This run I’m drawing upon my experience of last time, and I‘ve right from the start focused my build somewhat more. For a long while I used archery — like last time — as my main way of fighting, with light armor, restoration and a bit of conjuring as supplementary skills. However, recently I started to develop other skills as well, including destruction, now that I’ve reached the end of the archery skill tree. Seems expedient, considering that archery no longer grants experience points toward levelling the character, impeding progress.
Well, at least that’s the case until the skill is made legendary, but making it legendary also means making it crappy again, so you want to have raised the level in another battle oriented skill in preparation (as well as having made corresponding changes in attribute distribution), into which you then put those freed up skill points. Hence the time spent developing destruction and conjuration, embarking on a new mid-game path as a mage.
So I made archery legendary and put those points into destruction and elsewhere, and now during fights I alternate between destruction and archery, as well as conjure up a friendly atronach now and then. Don’t take me for a conjurer of cheap tricks though, I’ve slowly developed conjuring for a good while, and those atronaches are pretty good by now. Both destruction and archery are pretty easy to develop quickly, esp this late in the game with plenty of magicka and stamina, and plenty of health and protective gear.
I enjoy switching between the two. Early in the game it’s probably best to specialize, but mid-game and onward it’s perfectly viable to go dual. It’s still a pretty focused build, all the parts work well together, and I use them all.
I optimize primarily for enjoyment and getting an appealing playing style, not power. For example, enchantment, once you‘ve become a truly deft enchanter, could very well have the best skill tree (having two carefully chosen powerful enchantments on each item is insane), but I don’t care for that style of playing, no matter how effective. I don’t want to collect enchantments, I don’t want to collect souls, I don’t want to recharge items frequently. I don’t want to think about enchantments at all, except as a pleasant surprise when I find a good weapon or gear with a powerful enchantment to play around with for as long as the charge lasts.
As for light armor and restoration, my thinking is along these lines:
Light Armor adds some extra protection, and has a great perk which makes stamina regenerate twice as fast, which is really good when doing archery (though when I finally got that perk, archery was no longer my sole way of fighting — I do run a lot though, for which stamina is also useful). Restoration has healing, which is useful pretty much all the time, and it also has a few nice passive perks like having healing applied also to stamina, and magicka being replenished faster, and not to mention a perk that basically lets you survive a deadly attack once a day. Dying isn’t fatal for the player, or even much of a setback, but it’s annoying, and getting rid of it is an enjoyment boost. Dying just isn’t my style.
In any case, I’m nearing the end of this run (not the end of Skyrim mind you, that’s practically unattainable.) It will likely be my last. I‘m done with the main quest, done with the Dragonborn DLC, done with the civil war, done with the Magnus staff quest, just to mention a few. I consider going for the platinum and then quit, would give me a final reasonably comprehensive objective and a solid note to quit on, while not involving too much work, given how far I’ve already come.
Just Cause 3: Appetite for destruction
Explosions, mayhem, Rico. Through storms of fire and death Rico persists and thrives.
I enjoyed playing Just Cause 2 some years ago (link), so I felt pretty certain I’d enjoy the successor Just Cause 3, and I do. It’s similar but better.
Just like in the previous game you’re playing as the carefree and cheerful action hero Rico Rodriguez, a man bereft of fear and of obedience to the law gravity, and once again the overall mission is one of rebellion against a tyrannical dictator and his grip of a group of tropical islands. Or at least that’s how I recall the last game, but my memory is a bit fuzzy on that point, to be honest. This time an oppressive regime has seized control of Rico’s place of birth, and he becomes a key figure in the revolt, or something.
You see, I don’t really keep track of things like “story” and “characters” and “deeper meaning” in a game like this. It may nominally be about bringing revolution and salvation to the oppressed and downtrodden, but it’s actually about Rico’s proclivity, compulsion even, to blow things up and cause mayhem, bless his heart. And if an innocent bystander or ten gets caught in the crossfire? Well, that’s just too bad, but Rico doesn’t care, Rico doesn’t give a shit. He’s an artist of destruction and an orchestrator of chaos, as well as a wielder of rationalizations and cheesy one liners, and he loves it. He may pay lip service to the idea of rebellion and freedom or whatever, but when you see the tears of joy in his twinkling eye as he mows down both those in his path and those who are not, you know where his heart is really at. Guilty and innocent alike, watch out. Viva la revolution of mowing things down and blowing stuff up.
The game is fairly similar to its predecessor, but it is running on next gen hardware and has a number of improvements, big and small, such as the addition of the wingsuit, which is a piece of clothing shaped like wings allowing for flight. A great addition as travelling is frequently required, and fast travel is not always available or desirable. There are plenty of vehicles of course, but you end up using the wingsuit a lot. It’s both practical and fun to use.
The story and characters are forgettable and pointless, but do work as a delivery mechanism to give you a parade of spectacles to act out. Doing the story isn’t exactly mandatory, there are many other activities available — a true sandbox game — such as taking out military bases, but doing the story does provide with some practical benefits as well as a wide variety of different scenarios and challenges that are fun and that you won’t find elsewhere, so it’s worth pursuing even if you don’t care about the story and the people as such.
When you’ve liberated the entire territory you can choose to have areas of choice re-oppressed in order to liberate them again, Rico-style. Told you he loves that shit.
Part of the fun is the many ways to get the job done. Take out the military base with a tank? Check. Another type of tank and using another tactic? Check. Helicopter? Check. Parachuting with a rocket launcher? Check. Throwing yourself in the middle of a swarm of enemies for some high-intensity action? Check. Sneaking around the edges sniping people and objects? Check. And so on, the list is long, there’s a large assortment of weapons, vehicles and approaches. You’re a one-man-rebel-army.
There is a certain compelling and player-driven feedback loop that’s going on between you and the environment, as it reacts to your actions and you counter-react to those reactions, on and on, strikingly fluidly. The circumstances unfold and you make quick tactical decisions adjusting to them and, sometimes, bending them to your will. It’s largely possible to regulate the intensity of the encounter by how you approach the situation. I often make the intensity sway back and forth, sometimes throwing myself into the thick of things (a high risk, high gain gamble), and sometimes approach the mission with more calm and thoughtfulness. The game really do support a wide variety of approaches and tactics.
So yeah, it’s a fun game, but what about negatives? For me, the unseriousness of it all prevents any deeper sense of immersion in the world, which is actually quite a drawback. You do get flow, but not true immersion or a real sense of meaning. You don’t believe in the world so you can’t truly imagine yourself being a part of it. And that’s fine in a way, it’s not a failure of part of the developers as it isn’t something they aim for, and changing this would basically require remaking the entire game, but if that’s something you crave, then playing this game too much might start to feel like eating too much candy — tasty but not really nourishing. But moderately and maybe intensely once in a blue moon, absolutely.
NES Classic
I’m ancient enough to remember when early games such as Pac-Man were all the rage, though I was very young at the time. Despite all the duds and wrong paths, it’s hard to deny that the then nascent and promising video game industry and video game scene have come a long way, created a big catalog of wondrous games as well as having permeated the culture and people’s minds. Truly, video games, mostly thanks to ever more powerful computers, have come a long way since, a very long way (not that Pac-Man isn’t awesome), and it’s been quite a fascinating and rewarding journey to be part of, witnessing the unrelenting growth of this new area of human creativity, from humble beginnings to the highly advanced — but still early! — stage we’re in now.
Though I did get to play the original NES I never actually had one (I had Commodores — VIC20, c64, Amiga), so last year when I heard about the NES Classic — a new mini version of the old NES, shipping with 30 well chosen built-in games — I was pretty happy, finally a chance to delve into that piece of gaming history more deeply. Sweet.
Then began the troubles. The preorder sold out. But no hurry and no worries, I could wait, especially with my eight mile long backlog of games. I’ve waited before.
Then the console was released, months went by but the shortage remained. I was starting to get mildly annoyed, but not terribly so, I can wait, no big deal.
Then Nintendo dropped the bomb: production of the NES Classic was to end. Wait, what? They can’t be serious. They were serious. Didn’t see that coming, and they sure as hell didn’t tell us it was coming. Instead, they let us keep our hopes up for months needlessly (save for the lucky few that got hold of a unit.)
That was kick in the gut. For god’s sake Nintendo, you egregious tantalizer, why. By way of explanation they did say something about limited resources. That’s a bit cryptic, are they saying they’re selling it at a loss? I would have thought that getting a beloved and strongly sought-after product to the market would become a net gain, not a loss. If they’re selling it at a loss, why not simply set a higher price so that they can afford to produce more units? I wouldn’t mind, and I doubt others would either, especially when the alternative is not selling it at all. But Nintendo stands firm in their inept decision.
Luckily, all is not lost. On the contrary, the situation is pretty good. I learned recently about another initiative of Nintendo — to offer an online service that includes the possibility to play classic Nintendo games on the latest Nintendo console. It’s a Netflix-like subscription service, and at a decent price ($20 or so per year, if I recall correctly.)
(There’s an upcoming SNES Classic console, but I won’t make any effort to get it. It too will be a limited edition and probably be hard to get. I don’t want to keep my hopes up for nothing, esp not with that online service coming anyway — which from what I can tell will be better anyway, more games.)