Bioware General (Mass Effect/Dragon Age/Other)

[UNiT]

Man, I love lining up my Cobra RPG and hitting two Remnant Destroyers in one shot. Did my first silver APEX mission last night.

I can never manage to make that work consistently. Either I kill both of them, kill one and severely damage the other or just damage both. Even when they're practically nuzzling and I score a hit right in one's stupid mouth, it feels like it's a matter of luck if I kill them both. Feels damn good when it happens the right way, though.

The trick is is to do it whern they both open their reactor cores.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxL297BSxyg

[TheodoricFriede]

A company named "Sincair Networks" is claiming that they were making the Mass Effect Andromeda DLC, and that it was all canceled.

However, this company apparently doesn't even DO that, and only works on polish. Ian S Fraiser, the producer for Andromeda claims he never even heard of them, but they are credited in the game.

And the entire leak was on their facebook page, and is now deleted.

Looks like it was all a hoax.

[magnuskn]

Yes because there are so much left to do in the smoldering remains of the now peaceful Milky Way.

Maybe they can break new ground and have Liara in the game.

Your lack of imagination is, as always, not even slightly surprising.

[TheodoricFriede]

Your lack of imagination is, as always, not even slightly surprising.

I find it hilarious that this is coming from someone who cant see a future for the series set in an entirely new galaxy.

[TTTX]

Unlikely given current knowledge.
What if we hold all the remnant tech and could map the genomes of all absorbed races and revert them back? That'd probably make the kett think twice. But a plot device like that could never exist because it couldn't ever be given a chance.

Well if ME:A doesn't get many DLC's there is still plenty to work with.
The trouble is you lack imagination when it comes to Mass Effect.
You want to return to MW because you can't think of anything brand new.
ME:A presented a fresh canvas and we've just placed down our compositions and light observations and now you want us to put this fresh canvas down and go paint over the Sistine Chapel.

that's would take a lot of time to research (not just the genetics, but also how the remnant tech work and reprogram it and such) and not to mention find various cures that works on the various Kett, because it would be very unbelievable if there was 1 cure to revert all Kett and it wouldn't really in the context on how turning species get turned into still takes time and resources to figure how to do it (and they did it pretty fast, but considering how many times they done it I imagine they have more experience on how to do it then the milky way species will have figure how to revert the entire thing without killing the host in the process).
So having a plot device that can magically turn Kett into what they where before would be ME3 endings levels of dumb, simply because genetics are so diverse that having 1 cure would be impossible in Scifi like ME.

I never claimed once there isn't enough to work with.
No it's BW who keep using the same story over and over, not to mention they did hint in ME:A that the Kett have an empire and will return in some future installment.
One I never claimed in my post I wanted to return to the MW so stop putting words in my mouth and two there isn't anything really new about ME:A a lot of the stuff we see in ME:A we have already seen in the MW, so claiming that ME:A is new and fresh is not really true or lie for that matter, because the story could have taken place in the MW you just had to change a few minor things here and there and ME:A could have taken place in some unknown place in the MW shortly after the Reaper war.

Who's to say there aren't more remnant ships? Yeah, the remnant left but who's to say that they didn't go to the jardaan and if they won't be another ally in this coming conflict. Also we are talknig about a VI robot army not AI robots that can be used for the fights also when your desperate to win something you won't really care about past mistakes so no building murderbots to fight kett isn't out of the question.
Anyway your missing the point. The point is we have the advantage of knowing so they can't surprise us anymore, furthermore helius is a god damned minefield a perfect place for attrition warfare. You don't even need a big fleet because the bigger it is the bigger the risk of it getting caught in the scourge. You don't have to beat the kett just make it so it's not worth the effort to exalt the sector.

there are but they are generally destroyed by the scourge. That's assuming the Jardaan is still alive (it's a bit odd they didn't return sometime after those 400 years they went away, you would think the conflict would have been dealt with one way or other) and how far away they are.
you still need to reprogram the remnant tech, how it works etc. first and that will take time.
And that scourge is a ticking time bomb that will kill cluster at some point so that won't last for ever because people want it gone for obvious reasons (not to mention if the kett find a way to expand the scourge it'll more of a death trap for the cluster then for them). I imagine the Kett will wait and plan at first, they seem to be playing the long game so who knows what they'll do, but there probably be a bigger army involved and the Kett fight smarter.

Keyword AFAIK. Bioware can spin it any way they know.

perhaps, but it would raise a lot of questions about why the Jaardan didn't use that function to win whatever conflict they were in.

[SciFlyBoy]

Salarian Infiltrator, better with the Hurricane SMG than with a sniper rifle. By far.

[TTTX]

I find it hilarious that this is coming from someone who cant see a future for the series set in an entirely new galaxy.

to be fair we probably wouldn't have ME:A taking place in another galaxy if it weren't for the whole ME3 ending fiasko, we probably would still be in the MW, but it got difficult to say the least to continue to move the series forward in MW without basically doing a retcon or minor reboot (which ME:A kind of is).

[Alienmorph]

Considering that we now know that the original plan was a prequel, and they did the whole Andromeda shtick just because fans wanted to "move the story forward" and that the plot of ME:A boils down to the plot of most BioWare games in general, I don't really see how moving the story and setting from the Milky Way to Andromeda is supposed to open an whole new array of possibilities. It was just a way to avoid cleaning up the mess left with the previous title, and they literally did nothing that couldn't have been done in the Milky Way as a prequel or a parallel story.

[UNiT]

I won't deny that there needs to be a timeskip for a sequel. I just don't think the skip is as long as some people think it will be because we are talking about a bioware game.

[TTTX]

I won't deny that there needs to be a timeskip for a sequel. I just don't think the skip is as long as some people think it will be because we are talking about a bioware game.

There is nothing stopping BW from saying ME:A 2 takes place a 1000 years after ME:A (after all ME:A takes place 600 years after ME3).

There is no rule in BW that every game has to take place 2-3 years the game that came before.

Although BW doesn't generally handle time skips very well.

[UNiT]

I won't deny that there needs to be a timeskip for a sequel. I just don't think the skip is as long as some people think it will be because we are talking about a bioware game.

There is nothing stopping BW from saying ME:A 2 takes place a 1000 years after ME:A (after all ME:A takes place 600 years after ME3).

There is no rule in BW that every game has to take place 2-3 years the game that came before.

Although BW doesn't generally handle time skips very well.

Making a sequel 1000 years in the future defeats the purpose of underlining plot lines that haven't been solved in the first game. More likely the sequel will be somewhere between 2 years and a decade.

[TTTX]

Making a sequel 1000 years in the future defeats the purpose of underlining plot lines that haven't been solved in the first game. More likely the sequel will be somewhere between 2 years and a decade.

it was more of an example, but I don't personally see any sequel take place under 5 years at the bare minimum, because things needs to be build, the new society have to be made, etc and that'll take a lot more time then 2 years even with remnant tech.

[Dragaros]

I'm grateful for the update, if for no other reason than to get a real clear picture of how the ark DLC, if it comes, should play out.

► Show Spoiler

So sassy quarian pilgrim makes friends with the proactively genocidal faction of geth, the ones controlled by Sovereign, he then gets rightly exiled for trying to use whatever information they gave him, he finds time during all this to meet another exiled quarian man to marry, which I suppose at least tells us quarians do have marriage, and our third iteration of the "super-duper-biotic human woman" is a middle-aged lady who's having a wizard battle with a very angry looking salarian.

I'm not sure how much of all that is the comic writer fucking up, or an actual long-term dupe by the geth/Reapers to send a "poison pill" ark with whatever's going on with the quarian ark. I'm assuming Shio'Yiannopoulos will be on it, and I'll win part of the bet with Theo if he's romanceable. If it is a Reaper plot, seems like we're getting geth and husks or something. Or their SAM goes SHODAN because other AI on board is a real and present danger, or some combination.

I can't imagine we'll get the Pinocchio story yet again, and in ME4, the narrative is pretty clearly set for pro-AI sentiments anyway. So given Daddy Ryder's recordings, I could see this as the catalyst for the Reapers becoming known.

► Show Spoiler

Yeah, from the way the comic is going, I think a bunch of Heretic Geth hitched a ride on the Quarian Ark.

Alternate theory: Maybe they might be Geth who, while not agreeing with the True Geth, don’t agree with the Heretics either, like a third faction. Something in Andromeda greatly intrigued their interest. Their faction may have wanted to get the hell out of the milky way before the Reapers showed up and used the Initiative and the quarians as way to avoid detection. And if that's the case, this faction would be initially hostile but might be convinced to not be all "We don't trust organic meat-bags!" over time.

Also, just to clarify, Shio’s husband wasn’t exiled. He was still with the Fleet. They had gotten married before Shio’s exile.

[Dragaros]

[SciFlyBoy]

Played a brand new map last night. Waterfalls, caves. Don't know what it's called, but it's really pretty.

[magnuskn]

Your lack of imagination is, as always, not even slightly surprising.

I find it hilarious that this is coming from someone who cant see a future for the series set in an entirely new galaxy.

I find Andromeda uninteresting in how it has been introduced, while the Milky Way has vibrant cultures with by now deep lore archives. The Kett and Angara cannot compare in the slightest to even the Elcor, IMO.

[Raga]

*images snip*

As it currently stands, I have 0 interest in this game, but it does look fucking gorgeous. I will give it that.

[Someone With Mass]

I find Andromeda uninteresting in how it has been introduced, while the Milky Way has vibrant cultures with by now deep lore archives. The Kett and Angara cannot compare in the slightest to even the Elcor, IMO.

Have to agree on that one.

Then again, ME1 was rather slow when it came to introducing the different races and made them appear to be a cog in the bigger machine. Each of them had a role in the galactic society.

In Andromeda, it was more "THERE'S NO TIME TO EXPLAIN, JUST ACCEPT THESE FACTS!" or "Everything was conveniently lost in the attack."

The first contact moment was kinda neat, though.

[SciFlyBoy]

I find Andromeda uninteresting in how it has been introduced, while the Milky Way has vibrant cultures with by now deep lore archives. The Kett and Angara cannot compare in the slightest to even the Elcor, IMO.

Have to agree on that one.

Then again, ME1 was rather slow when it came to introducing the different races and made them appear to be a cog in the bigger machine. Each of them had a role in the galactic society.

In Andromeda, it was more "THERE'S NO TIME TO EXPLAIN, JUST ACCEPT THESE FACTS!" or "Everything was conveniently lost in the attack."

The first contact moment was kinda neat, though.

I was not a fan of how quickly you can speak fluently to an alien race.

[Someone With Mass]

I was not a fan of how quickly you can speak fluently to an alien race.

Yeah, I get that the Tempest crew have sophisticated translation technology, since the Milky Way has a plethora of languages but I don't buy that it could assimilate the angaran language in like ten minutes of interactions with no verbal references or text or anything.

It's understandable that they wanted to get past that hurdle as quickly as possible so that it wouldn't bog down the narrative, but the devil is in the details.

[UNiT]

Played a brand new map last night. Waterfalls, caves. Don't know what it's called, but it's really pretty.

That's the new firebase aqua map.

[Vol]

Translators: The Andromeda Initiative didn't make first contact, the rebels did, so the angara had plenty of time to have their translators learn about our languages, and logically prepare updates for our software too.

[Raga]

That and if two computers are doing some handshaking in the background, it really wouldn't take the likes of an AI like Sam that long to download a bunch of lexicons, have it hashed out, and push updates out to people's translators either.

[Vol]

If angaran language is composed of nothing more than spoken words, tone, and cultural context, it would take an AI an instant to work out a translation. Maybe if the idioms were really alien, it'd take time to sift through their databases to work out intended meaning, but given how incredibly familiar angaran are to the rest of us, it doesn't seem likely. Leaving certain words untranslated is the A.I.'s version of "nakama" instead of "crewmate."

For thematic reasons, however, drawing it out in this specific story would make way more sense.

[SciFlyBoy]

If angaran language is composed of nothing more than spoken words, tone, and cultural context, it would take an AI an instant to work out a translation. Maybe if the idioms were really alien, it'd take time to sift through their databases to work out intended meaning, but given how incredibly familiar angaran are to the rest of us, it doesn't seem likely. Leaving certain words untranslated is the A.I.'s version of "nakama" instead of "crewmate."

Maybe whoever created them manufactured a language that it deemed able to easily communicate with a humanoid species.

[Vol]

A good point. Because they are a created species, by what we can tell are not all powerful beings, they therefore are constrained in how they can communicate by designer intent, and that may make it even easier for an AI to analyze and solve.

[TTTX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GOPBjRIaro

[TheodoricFriede]

Its Kotaku.

They are full of shit.

[Alienmorph]

Usually yes, but I wouldn't hold my breath too much for extra content. It's gonna be the quarians (and likely geth) thing if it happens, but any minute they could announce they just wanna focus on the multiplayer and that any extra singleplayer bit is cancelled, at this point. Probably the only reason there hasn't been yet a clear statement on the matter is that they think it'd damage what little good press there is about the game even more...

[Vol]

That then raises the question of why they had a VA session with Cora's, but given we don't know who these anonymous sources Kotaku alleges to have, or what EA's plans are, I'm erring on the side of precedent and saying that they had content in the pipeline before release, so that much will put out.

Do we have any idea of sales numbers yet? I've heard 3.5 million bandied about, but no source. If true, that's a lot of money for the budget.

[UNiT]

Andromeda Sales Data.

[Augustei]

I won't deny that there needs to be a timeskip for a sequel. I just don't think the skip is as long as some people think it will be because we are talking about a bioware game.

There is nothing stopping BW from saying ME:A 2 takes place a 1000 years after ME:A (after all ME:A takes place 600 years after ME3).

There is no rule in BW that every game has to take place 2-3 years the game that came before.

Although BW doesn't generally handle time skips very well.

I can't see them addressing Reaper God Shepard well even with a time skip tbh. Unless they say he died while getting milk from the back shops or something

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

I won't deny that there needs to be a timeskip for a sequel. I just don't think the skip is as long as some people think it will be because we are talking about a bioware game.

There is nothing stopping BW from saying ME:A 2 takes place a 1000 years after ME:A (after all ME:A takes place 600 years after ME3).

There is no rule in BW that every game has to take place 2-3 years the game that came before.

Although BW doesn't generally handle time skips very well.

I can't see them addressing Reaper God Shepard well even with a time skip tbh. Unless they say he died while getting milk from the back shops or something

You know they could just make the "And he blew up all the robots" ending canon...

[magnuskn]

Synthesis is the real fly in the ointment. You can explain Control away as Cheesecake just said. But Synthesis... phew. Hard to see how they'd reverse that bloody mess.

[Augustei]

I won't deny that there needs to be a timeskip for a sequel. I just don't think the skip is as long as some people think it will be because we are talking about a bioware game.

There is nothing stopping BW from saying ME:A 2 takes place a 1000 years after ME:A (after all ME:A takes place 600 years after ME3).

There is no rule in BW that every game has to take place 2-3 years the game that came before.

Although BW doesn't generally handle time skips very well.

I can't see them addressing Reaper God Shepard well even with a time skip tbh. Unless they say he died while getting milk from the back shops or something

You know they could just make the "And he blew up all the robots" ending canon...

Yeah that's likely how they'd do it, It'd make Shep seem like they have schizophrenia or something though. "I will be the guiding hand of the many and rule over them....Actually nvm"

[Augustei]

Synthesis is the real fly in the ointment. You can explain Control away as Cheesecake just said. But Synthesis... phew. Hard to see how they'd reverse that bloody mess.

Heh, probably by removing the green glow and have some throw away dialogue "Btw I know i look totally organic, but i'm actually a half robot cyborg"

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

I won't deny that there needs to be a timeskip for a sequel. I just don't think the skip is as long as some people think it will be because we are talking about a bioware game.

There is nothing stopping BW from saying ME:A 2 takes place a 1000 years after ME:A (after all ME:A takes place 600 years after ME3).

There is no rule in BW that every game has to take place 2-3 years the game that came before.

Although BW doesn't generally handle time skips very well.

I can't see them addressing Reaper God Shepard well even with a time skip tbh. Unless they say he died while getting milk from the back shops or something

You know they could just make the "And he blew up all the robots" ending canon...

Yeah that's likely how they'd do it, It'd make Shep seem like they have schizophrenia or something though. "I will be the guiding hand of the many and rule over them....Actually nvm"

Actually I meant just making destroy canon. From the metrics I remember seeing it was overwhelmingly the most common choice taken. And Bioware has been more than willing to pick canon for sequels before.

[TheodoricFriede]

And Bioware has been more than willing to pick canon for sequels before.

They've actually done it for most of their games. Mass Effect is kind of the only outlier, and even then in 3 they made choices irrelevant. Like the Human Council member.

[Augustei]

Actually I meant just making destroy canon. From the metrics I remember seeing it was overwhelmingly the most common choice taken. And Bioware has been more than willing to pick canon for sequels before.

B....But choices matter! They said so.....

There goes a bunch of my fanfiction.

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

Actually I meant just making destroy canon. From the metrics I remember seeing it was overwhelmingly the most common choice taken. And Bioware has been more than willing to pick canon for sequels before.

B....But choices matter! They said so.....

There goes a bunch of my fanfiction.

It's okay son. Fan fiction will live on in your heart! Like heart disease!

[Mazder]

Actually I meant just making destroy canon. From the metrics I remember seeing it was overwhelmingly the most common choice taken. And Bioware has been more than willing to pick canon for sequels before.

B....But choices matter! They said so.....

There goes a bunch of my fanfiction.

It's okay son. Fan fiction will live on in your heart! Like heart disease!

Or like normal blood cells pumping through.

Personally I think Destroy is the most logical answer in terms of endings.

[magnuskn]

Also the one we had been building towards Destroy the entire trilogy. Destroying the Reapers was practically the goal since ME 1. Controlling them or making them live alongside us were really deviations introduced in ME 3. And really bad deviations at that. I know that after 50000 cycles of galactic genocide I would not be satisfied with having all the Hitlers living next street or controlling traffic.

[TheodoricFriede]

Of course they could also just do what they probably decided on as a company and just continue with Andromeda, which is what i want.

[Alienmorph]

They really should have just made Destroy canon. Then do a timeskip of a couple centuries or so, to avoid the whole reconstruction phase, and build up some new story in galaxy that still feels familiar but was also completely changed. Their refusal to do so still baffles me. They made a half-sequel half-reboot based on a giant plothole because "it's been years since the last game and people don't remember all the details" but pulling a more logical move to salvage the series' core setting was out of the question why... ?

And don't give me that whole "there was nothing new to do in the Milky Way" b.s. You really expect me to believe that a setting that just survived a galaxy-wide war, and that was still mostly unexplored in the first place has no potential for new stories, and that it was really really REALLY necessary to move away from it, especially just to do a rehash of the first game's story anyway?

I can only think they were really enamoured with the whole Synthesis shtick (the fact that ME:A has still an AI-centric plot is quite a good hint of it) and didn't want to completely and canonically deny it.

[Someone With Mass]

Yeah, about 3% of the Milky Way is known space, plus there are a ton of uncharted mass relays because of the laws that were implemented after the Rachni war. Among billions of worlds, there's nothing interesting going on, but going to another galaxy changes that? I can get behind the contingency plan by going to Andromeda to escape the Reapers, but the biggest problem there is that the game barely addresses it. Ryder was more obsessed with his mom than the fact that everything he left behind was potentially destroyed not even a year after their departure. His work at Arcturus Station? Pointless, since the station was destroyed.

Also, you can't say that you're the apex of evolution when you infuse yourself and everyone else with nanomachines (son), because it goes against the very foundation of evolution. Synthesis is a pretentious cop out at best and infuriating hackjob drivel at worst.

[Augustei]

Destroy<Control
Being a big goddamn hero is nice, being a god is nicer. Plus there be relays to repair....Citadel can stay where it is though, looks good there.
But yeah it would have been better to have it set in the milky way exploring a new series of systems with a recently opened relay or something, have some Rachni 2.0 esque moment

[Mazder]

Destroy<Control
Being a big goddamn hero is nice, being a god is nicer. Plus there be relays to repair....Citadel can stay where it is though, looks good there.
But yeah it would have been better to have it set in the milky way exploring a new series of systems with a recently opened relay or something, have some Rachni 2.0 esque moment

Control is absolute bollocks.
For one it completely ruins the power sale in Mass Effect, turning it into some warped parody of Warhammer 40k's God-Emperor without any of the actual point of 40k's. It also doesn't deal with the fact of getting rid of the Reapers, it simply makes Shepard the next Starchild and it'd be only a matter of time before the human's perspective eats in and the cycles start up all over again over something else.
Plus it adds this stupid space-magic-y feel that's just silly. "Oh, I am one with the reapers so I must be a God now". What utter tripe.

Not to mention you inflict the loss that the characters feel whilst dangling the presence of Shepard over them constantly. It'd be like they'd not died, but also can never interact. It's not a greater good mentality.

Back on to power scaling it also ruins the dynamic of the races and how they interact in ME. No conflicts because you're under the threat of ReaperShep, no advancement because ReaperShep would keep you in check and there'd be no freedom to choose or debate for ourselves because as soon as things get a tiny bit loud ReaperShep would come down and tell us what to do.
It creates this massive power that has not much to do in Galactic terms, that is also an outsider and doesn't fit in.
So unless Shepard is flying the Reapers back into darkspace and staying there then there is no purpose for Control. And even then if that's what they do then they may as well have just chosen Destroy.
I mean you lose one AI and the Geth at a higher level.
the Geth can be remade to their previous form and be treated better.
As Andromeda now proves AI creation doesn't need reaper tech, so AI will return.
Unless their next step is to show SAM is part Reaper tech.
Which would be bollocks.

Yeah, about 3% of the Milky Way is known space, plus there are a ton of uncharted mass relays because of the laws that were implemented after the Rachni war. Among billions of worlds, there's nothing interesting going on, but going to another galaxy changes that? I can get behind the contingency plan by going to Andromeda to escape the Reapers, but the biggest problem there is that the game barely addresses it. Ryder was more obsessed with his mom than the fact that everything he left behind was potentially destroyed not even a year after their departure. His work at Arcturus Station? Pointless, since the station was destroyed.

Also, you can't say that you're the apex of evolution when you infuse yourself and everyone else with nanomachines (son), because it goes against the very foundation of evolution. Synthesis is a pretentious cop out at best and infuriating hackjob drivel at worst.

The entire point of Andromeda when the project started wasn't to do with a contingency plan, nor was it ignoring the possibilities of exploration in the Milky Way.
It was about blasting off and trying something [i]massive[i]!!
I mean, why would we bother going to the moon when we've not searched all our oceans yet? Same analogy and same reasons.

It;s not until they got news of the reapers that Andromeda became, in part, a contingency. The reason why they don't address it much was because it was never the initiatives primary purpose. And they already would face enough hardships in trying the exploration thing, adding "we might be the last of our kind" would make everything so depressive that as soon as the arks went missing the Nexus might have done something dangerous and drastic.

Synthesis is bollocks.

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

I honestly don't know why anyone would bother trying to remake the Geth anyway.

They were useful as cannon fodder and the red wave did the courtesy of disposing of them the exact second they outlived their usefulness.

[Alienmorph]

Control is absolute bollocks.

Agreed. Despite my hatred for Synthesis, Control is probably the worst ending... it basically boils down to Shepard giving his/her life up, in the hope that his/her personality will overwrite and Catalyst and make sure that the Reapers play nice from that moment on. Which even if we do assume to be working on the short period, it's definately not a long-term solution. What happens, say, after a few millennias, once everyone that mattered to Shepard is dead and his/her AI copy doesn't even remotely remember what it is like to be a flesh and bones being?

The entire point of Andromeda when the project started wasn't to do with a contingency plan, nor was it ignoring the possibilities of exploration in the Milky Way.
It was about blasting off and trying something [i]massive[i]!!
I mean, why would we bother going to the moon when we've not searched all our oceans yet? Same analogy and same reasons.

It;s not until they got news of the reapers that Andromeda became, in part, a contingency. The reason why they don't address it much was because it was never the initiatives primary purpose. And they already would face enough hardships in trying the exploration thing, adding "we might be the last of our kind" would make everything so depressive that as soon as the arks went missing the Nexus might have done something dangerous and drastic.

Too bad that A: alot of NPCs and even characters like PeeBee talk like there was nothing left to do in the Milky Way, which is such infuriatingly bullshit, B: it's severaly hinted that the Andromeda Initiative WAS funded a great deal from the getgo by someone who wanted to use it as backup plan to save at least part of mankind before the robo-squid arrived (coughcoughcerberuscough) and that even Alec Ryder and some of the other heads of the project have been suspecting for a decent enough time that that was the real reason the project was being successfully put in motion.

Basically the whole "to boldly go where no one went before" shtick was just a promotional stunt both in-universe and marketing-wise. Had they played it straight instead of building it up like some kind of big twist, it would have made things significantly better... it would have explained why they so desperately needed AI help, why they only had time to locate a few "golden worlds" and why they bothered to build the framework for a second Citadel but couldn't even get more an year worth of supplies with them. Most of the dumb shortcomings of the Andromeda Initiative could have been explained with "we need to leave before the Reapers arrive, this is the best we can do". The fact they managed to build half a dozen megastructures and send them off in just a few years would still be bollocks, but overally not pretending that the whole "escaping the reapers" subplot was some kind of twist would have made things much more bearable.