Oh, I don't mind...since I've been an involuntary guinea pig for every Bethesda game since Oblivion, it seems right, somehow.
Since posting, they've released a new patch, which supposedly fixed a few things, but...well...it sort of made performance worse, at least for me. It takes a little longer for eveything to smooth out than it used to when loading/resuming, and until then it's a jittery, slo-mo nightmare that is sort of like trying to drive home after a thorough eye exam.
Maybe not that bad. But it should be better, considering that the game got all crabby that my video drivers weren't bleeding edge when I first ran it. I hate updating my drivers. But I did it anyway, and...oh, well.
Anyway, the new patch didn't fix the center-of-screen pointer bug, either.
Faces: I'm not sure why they could look at cutscenes and think, hey, this is awesome and everyone will love it! No one on the internet will find fault with THIS! And how characters move...I'm not sure if anyone in their animation department knows anything about how people actually move. But at least they redesigned Avina in a more body-positive way. And by that, I mean "bigger tits."
I've never been a fan of the default playable characters either (even the default male Shepard was weird), but at least here the presets are passable. Hair still sucks, though.
Characters: I'm not all that impressed by my new squad, or the Tempest crew or, really, any given NPC. (The Tempest itself is awesome, so points for that.) The squad are...okay, it's fairly early in the game, so I haven't gotten the chance to love or hate them yet, but with that said, I don't find -- for example -- PeeBee to be all that annoying. Sure, she's a little weird and oddly exuberant, but I grew up with people like that. I've rarely finished a complete sentence in my entire life, thanks to these people.
It seems they're trying just a little too hard to make the characters memorable. Some of the characters I run into are either bland or complete assholes (Addison). The one character I did like is Lil' [your name here] Ryder's father. Of course, Clancy Brown is his voice actor, so it's unlikely that I would dislike him. (That he didn't brag about cutting off someone's head and having his way with his victim's woman before the guy's body was cold, was something of a minor disappointment.)
There's a female turian squaddie, who is at least novel. There's a krogan, because, hey, why not. The humans, well: there's a blond human woman with kinda weird hair and a black guy with a British accent, because I guess those are trendy now. I'm just wondering why there isn't a left-handed transgendered Latina with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis, because anything less would be an inforgivable insult to the LGBTWTF community. You'll be shamed on twitter. Ellen [Degeneres] will shun you.
There are others, but *yawn*. Again, just in the first stages...but I have yet to run into a Dawnstar (think Jade Empire, not Skyrim) or a Black Whirlwind so far. (ME had the latter in Wrex, more or less.)
On A Romantic Note: Ryder is able to plug away at those romantic innuendoes, saying precious things to random asari, etc. I'm avoiding the whole romance thing because, well, ick.
One of the new alien races, which I call the "arglebargles" (because I'm awful with names), all sound as if they're from Australia or thereabouts. (To quote Richard Jeni: "Find out why all the Romans in the movies have English accents.") I don't know why. Seriously: I may have misheard it, but I could've
sworn that one of them actually mentioned visiting Australia. I know my hearing's been wonky of late, but...wow. A somewhat surreal moment.
Despite all that, I will say that I at least found the female Ryder's voice acting to be more or less pleasant. She sounds age-appropriate, and has that mix of hesitation/uncertainty of the untested with the cockiness of a teenager. Plus, she's kind of snarky at the right times ("would it help if I got out and pushed?").
There have been a few comic moments so far, my favorite being the squad complaining as I'm driving the Nomad on Voeld. One of them asks if we're going the right way...later, he points out the Nomad doesn't corner very well. To that, Ryder says something like "So help me, I swear I'm gonna turn this thing right around, and..."
Okay, on to more minuses:
A lot of emphasis is placed on mining and crafting. Perhaps too much emphasis. By that, I mean WAY too much emphasis. I get it: you're in a new galaxy, there aren't any hanar around to dick you over when you need a better sniper rifle. But this! For example, the material requirements to craft a set of N7 armor is just insane. By the time I was getting close to meeting those requirements (still short of the amount of platinum needed!?!), I found a complete set of tier II N7 armor for sale at a Nexus merchant.
And, once crafted, can I upgrade a weapon? I don't think so. You can add mods to it, but that's it. If you want to improve it, you can craft the next tier...
...this is what drove me nuts about Inquisition. I'm not a big fan of sewing my own pants, so to speak.
Another problem I'm having is being overwhelmed with side quests. (Some of them even require a back-and-forth between Nexus and planets to complete, but that's another weary rant for another damn day.) I can't go five feet without being alerted via map icon (for example) that there's someone else that needs something done. Yesterday I was griping that all I wanted to do was get on the goddamn ship and do some planet-scanning, but nooooooo. I had to run around the station scanning for short-circuited equipment for a botanist, finding ingredients for some bartender, doing an interview with an asari filmmaker, listening to Tann's fruity lisp, or any number of mind-numbing tasks designed to keep me from actually progressing through the game.
I got to one of the arglebargle planets, and the map, thanks to the sidequests picked up there, was an apocalypse of Things-To-Do icons.
And then you have
Marvin The Robot Bitching Betty SAM commenting on anything and everything. Forward station deployed, you should scan this, you should scan that, there is mining potential here, the radiation/cold has increased, it's decreased, my what a lovely day, why don't we stop here and admire the view by which I mean piss off this cliff, and so on.
Related to the sidequests is the problem with actually wrapping them up neatly. For example, on Eos you have about sixteen million things to do, but you can't do them all due to the environmental limitations placed on the area. There are areas you just cannot access because of...well, pacing of story, etc., I guess. And these are given the "You Cannot Go There" treatment by way of lethal amounts of radiation. I wanted to get to a certain place to check off a sidequest, but I couldn't get there. Not yet. So I have to wait until I achieve something, be it a quest or some goal, and...
...okay. I need to take a break. More later. Here's my Ryder in her biker outfit. It's my new favorite thing ever.
I think the driving gloves make the ensemble work.
