If I'm going to have a pet, I want it to be a robot dog or something non-biological that may die horribly to a predator on an unexplored world because feels.  Either that or let me finally have my varren for...um...pest control.  [narrows eyes at BioWare] 

On the other hand, unless they literally write an entire series of languages for the game you'll end up with something like SWTOR, where "bompa woola" means a thousand different things because there are only a couple dozen words in Huttese and every person who's supposed to be speaking it has to repeat them with different inflection and emphasis to make it sound like actual sentences.

I'd be thrilled with a short introduction to a new language with an explanation of the translation difficulties in the background but after that the babelfish answer is good enough for me if I don't have to hear the same phrase a hundred times in different orders.

To be fair, Zevran makes the same rope comment to a female Warden and F!Hawke makes the same comment about chains.  Those lines are not specific to m/m interaction.  That said, the DA universe could use a little more variety in their male romances.  There has to be happy medium between "slept with a hundred people" and "blushing virgin" for the guys.  Blackwall came close but then, y'know, lying murderer and all.  Gimme a Ser Steve, please!  Without the side of dead spouse angst, preferably.  Not all previous committed relationships have to end in traumatic deaths.

How about Timothy Osmondson?  He does Aric Jorgan's voice in SWTOR but he's done a ton of bit parts and short stints so he's got plenty of experience but isn't overexposed.

They should keep Ryder around as long as the story revolves around him or her.  It would be interesting to have a whole series of protagonists in various parts of the new galaxy, as well, whether it's as expansions telling the same story from different points of view (playing as Asari or Quarian?!) or just leaving a well-established colony at the end of one game to follow a struggling ship cut off from the rest in the next.

I'm firmly in the "I the Mako" camp and am looking forward to careening off every pebble and bouncing like a madwoman along the peak of each mountain I find.  Do you suppose there will be Thresher Maws in Andromeda...

I have been iffy on the Mass Effect books to date, though I enjoyed seeing David Gaider progress through the DA novels from a cliche machine to a decent writer.  It wasn't until I bumped into Greg Bear's Halo trilogy and took a chance, considering how much I enjoy his other work, that I decided to start giving tie-in novels a chance at all.  I'd read a grand total of one before that and it made Deception look well-written.  That makes me far more likely to take a chance on a tie-in from a respected author, particularly one that turns out to be a geek of my own stripe!

I'm okay with any level of "exposure" but I'm positive we won't be getting a full frontal on anybody.  As noted, that would make the game exceedingly tough to sell here in the Victorian Era USA.

With how young the Asari and the brief glimpse of (I assume) Ryder looked to me, I am fearing something more like this:

Like I hope this is a testing venture. If the 4D ride does well, and generates enough interest... perhaps they will consider the Hollywood film. Maybe that is their strategy with all this.

This was my home turf, back in the old days.  Usually, the movie comes before the ride, though.  For instance, they got a Top Gun coaster in 1993 (and it kicked butt flying face-first at everything with your feet dangling free)  Unless the ride becomes as iconic as Pirates of the Caribbean, I don't see it leading to a movie.  It is, however, making me nostalgic and has revived my interest in showing the kids where I grew up...

They had moved to talking about the IP when they started showing that footage with the day/night cycling so I'm guessing that's from where the footage came.  I'm curious about it now, though!  That looked an awful lot like an ME1 capsule from Eden Prime like the one where the scientist is freaking out at the very beginning but it's clearly abandoned and rusting.  Is the new game some post-apocalyptic thing?  Did it get abandoned in the hills somewhere and holds a terrible secret?  What is it?!

Well, for all we know the dude might be shirtless under his trench coat - after all both of them aren't wearing any shoes and seem to be cooling off a bit in the water while the female is also spoting some kind of a coat, probably to shield her from too much sun. If you wouldn't focus too much on the breasts you would probably agree with me that the scene is nicely different from the usual type of settlements we visit in ME and does indeed look very low tech in comparison(that telescope!).

I feared that posting the second picture would derail the discussion and was apparently right. It does bother me a bit, though, that people take issue with a pair of good looking breasts to the extent that they would discard everything else about a picture, it's almost like some irrational breast envy i see lately in different places/forums.

 

I agree with the second part of your post.

 

p.s.: To make a test. So let's say i post something different.

 

 

I would say that this would make for a great boss type enemy character, because i like the body language, i like the facial dynamic and how the weapon look awesome, somehow connected to the way the cape flows, and how my first reaction in game would probably be "uh-oh, this one means buisiness and/or lots of trouble".

I would probably even come up with a story for this character, something about how this person was previously purely organic and over hundreds of years after replacing more and more parts of herself with mechanical parts, slowly turning in an android, lost a lot of the equivalent of humanity of her species and now rules with an iron hand over a bunch of criminals, bandits or maybe a small army on some forsaken planet.

 

Would you discard all of this and try to focus mostly on the fact that whoever has drawn this, decided to paint this character in a way that shows her behind in a somewhat favourable fashion?

While I find the weapon and the overall design interesting, it isn't the sexualized pose that bothers me about this one.  You can handwave that by explaining that she was caught spinning to face an enemy that ambushed her and I would accept that willingly.   It's not the ass that makes me doubt that explanation.

It's those freaking shoes!  Women in combat situations wearing heels is completely stupid, no matter what, and to me drawing someone clearly intending to go out and fight (you don't carry a cannon like that if you aren't going to war) wearing shoes that will break your ankle if you step in a pothole means the intent is sex appeal, not badass woman.

Yes, I've heard the argument that it's double badass if you can do it in heels (or dance like Fred Astaire but in heels and backwards).  I'll buy the dancing (poor Ginger never got the attention she deserved) but to me going into a situation that will require mobility wearing what may as well be toe shoes is the height of stupidity.  I thought Ashley's heels in ME3 bad enough.

Ah, but if the bikini top were a natural reaction to being hot and sweaty why is the guy next to her wearing a trench coat?  Neither one of those ladies has tattoos or scars on her chest.  The boobs are gratuitous in both instances (especially the second where they're outsized and she's not even wearing a bra.  Tell me going out to do physical labor with no support for that much weight is realistic.)

That said, I don't see any reason people have to hide their bodies, I just don't want to see the chain-mail bikini syndrome where the women are wearing almost nothing and the men are fully dressed.  If it's hot enough or there's some other reason for women to be half nude or more then let all the people be unclothed.

If I never see another robot with boobs, I'll play happily until the end of my days.  BioWare went in big for it a few years ago, in ME and in SWTOR, and it always strikes me as utterly ridiculous.  Imagine if Legion grafting a big codpiece onto himself because he decided he was a male robot and wanted to be sexy for no discernible reason.

The feels?  I want them all!  I want to squee, to happy dance, to fist pump and shout.  I want to howl and rage and sit slack-jawed with shock and or awe.  I want my lower lip to wibble while I surreptitiously wipe away a tear.  I want to wish for a hug mod.  I want to curse, in frustration and appreciation.

Meh, I don't expect much out of BioWare, do I?

I now expect all stasis pods to be shaped like eggs.  At this very moment, the art team is throwing out all their careful designs and drawing white ovals over half the Ark.  [rubs hands]  I can't wait to see it!

My PC is in the same room a the TV, to which the various other game systems are attached.  When I'm playing, a headset is essential equipment!  I've discovered that the surround sound literally being right on my head is way more immersive, even with speakers and a sub attached to the computer.  There's more immediacy and less background noise (kids, dogs, hubby, random cars with loud radios, the usual).  I've had a Plantronics GameCom set for a couple of years now and they've been great--solid but not too heavy for extended wear.

If my Pathfinder is leading a mission, she'll expect the people she's leading to work with her.  That means they can question her decisions but still abide by them.  If she's going along to help them do something personal why the heck would she be the one making the decisions in the first place?

I'm all for your actions influencing their choices, but I most definitely think they should be the ones to choose how their own missions turns out, even if that means them doing something that will be bad for them.  Shep certainly should have been able to influence Garrus over the course of the first game and a half but when it came time to pull the trigger Shep should have stood out of the way and let him make his own decision, even if that meant him making one that would haunt him or one that would turn out not to resolve his guilt.

Having Shep less directed let me project my own version of her on whichever of my character I happened to be playing, as opposed to ME3 which forced her to react in a particular way to something regardless of how that version would have done in my head.

I don't mind being forced to take certain actions in order to advance the story.  I very much mind my character being forced to feel a certain way about those actions.  Autodialogue and companion reactions in ME3 gave reactions a given Shep may or may not have had, in character.  [Yes, Thessia, I'm looking at you right now.  My lone, full-renegade, pro-human-all-the-way Shep would have had no patience with all the hand-wringing and sympathy over her supposed "loss" there yet she was forced to feel terrible and everyone on the ship reinforced it.]

If you had a robot companion in the game, what would you want it to look like? 

I'd prefer if we could get away from AI constructs having a gender, so no boobs, no bulge, no glossy, fake humanoid body.  If you have to have one that looks somewhat human, make it like Inspector Gadget. 

ETA: R2 is my favorite droid ever, as well.  You don't need to look human to be awesome!

In SWTOR, Trooper was given this choice and I choose Elara (Miranda-alike) over Aric (Garrus-alike).

 

Garrus-alike being my second-in-command? "Didn't you see me as a command material? Why are you taking my long deserved promotion over that bookish ex-Imp scum? I get things done. Why are you sabotaging me? Are you blind?" ...I mean, seriously... I rather shoot myself in the leg than babysit this entitled jackass who can't seem to remember that I am his superior officer. And remember what Garrus' issues in ME3? Having tough time making bad decisions, whining about how ruthless dictators, stressing about having people depending on him....

 

pffff... I don't want more drama kings that need pampering... 

I always promote Aric, because he got unfairly demoted because the rest of the team wasn't around to punish.  That was a cheap shot.  Otherwise he would have outranked you like he did in the beginning.

That said, you couldn't have had Garrus or Tali as XO on an Alliance ship (in ME1) or a Cerberus ship (in ME2), though I'd much rather have been able to pick Jacob over Miranda.  She's just lucky I got a kickass new suite with the only bathroom on the ship or I'd have had to kick her out of my bedroom, too.   

As long as they can avoid the eyeball-clipping problem SWTOR can't seem to avoid, I'll be happy.  Nothing breaks immersion like your character's expression causing his or her eyelids to enter one or both eyes.  [shudder]  I love that game but some face models simply don't work during cut scenes.

There's no reason to bring full-grown livestock and a full greenhouse along, but why would we assume, given the two different types of biology in our own galaxy, that the new one will have food compatible with our physiologies?  It makes sense to bring a genetic/seed bank and hedge our bets.

My point was that an RPG shouldn't be trying to deliver an experience that has nothing to do with the PC's experience in the first place. It should be trying to deliver the experience of being the PC. That's hard enough even without trying to convey contradictory experiences at the same time.

Edit: I'm not really complaining about ME1's UNC implementation here. Since it didn't actually convey those feelings to me, there was no RP damage. The worst I could say is that it was a dull feature and a waste of dev time, but that's hardly a big deal since it was also cheap and wholly optional

It took me three re-reads to get that first paragraph.  For me, the desolation and emptiness of lightly settled worlds in a galaxy humanity was barely beginning to touch was an effective experience.  Going into those mines (ignoring the fact that they all looked identical) after fighting through howling winds or climbing the Mako over jagged mountains, finding crashed probes and desiccated corpses of failed exploration, knowing this planet would kill me if I dawdled to look at the rings/moons/whatever all combined to bring home to me the PC's experience.

Then again, I'm one of the very few people that drove all over every planet I could and had fun seeing how steep a mountain I could get my sweet, bouncy Mako over.  That doesn't mean I want the same thing for Andromeda.  One presumes the galaxy has been explored and settled, meaning they can do a wide variety of things--from barren, hostile environments to teeming cities--in ways the previous games did not, with new species of flora and fauna as well as new architectural aesthetics for the ground and their ships.  I would like that feeling of exploration to return strongly, however.