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Vanquish does not tie your health to your ability meter. Did you play the game dude? Your health is 100% separate. Your meter is for dodging, dashing, melee, and bullet time. Completely independent of your health.

Raga is spot on here. ME1 is an RPG where "optimal" play usually involves pausing the action, issuing commands to your party members, and then unpausing and seeing if that worked. Repeat repeat repeat. The guns all handle like poop, too. I did enjoy exploring the tons of worlds, but I gather lots of people found that tedious (and I get that).

The jump in gameplay from ME1 to 2 is so big as to make it almost a different game. Vast improvements on all fronts there, imo.

ME3 refines the action from ME2, and further streamlines player actions while adding complexity. You can combo certain types of abilities to make big explosions, or deal high damage to armor, etc.., which means party composition is important, but single player play is very straightforward and fun.

When I watch the andromeda video, I'm seeing that they've added a jump to your available verbs, and then modified the abilities to work while jumping, too. You can see them use Biotic Charge (or something that looks similar to it, since we don't actually know what they call the abilities in ME:A) a lot, which is that blue dash/charge into enemies. That's been a class ability in the past games and likely won't be something available to every player in this new one.

One note about ME3: The combat in the single player game kinda sucked compared to that of the PvP game in my opinion. The reason was that the single player game is pretty much long hallway after long hallway, and if you just slowly advance from cover to cover to easily dispatch every enemy. In multiplayer, you're in a large, squareish area, and the enemies can spawn pretty much anywhere around the area. The result is that everything is far more frenetic and you're constantly forced to flee your current cover and retreat or flank out to find new cover. I mention this because what I'm seeing in the videos of ME:A is that it seems to be more open world-ish, which also appears to make the combat more like the ME3 multiplayer than the single player experience. That's a WONDERFUL thing, imo, so I really hope that turns out to be the case.

Mass Effect's gameplay has gotten more boring with each iteration. In contrast to Raga's post above, I still like the first Mass Effect's combat the best. ME2 and ME3 obviously feel better in terms of controls but both are way less interesting than the first. I don't want to play Gears of War, I don't want to play Mass Effect the action game. I desperately want to play Mass Effect the RPG, but that game died after the first one.

That said, ME2 and ME3 were both fun, compelling games to play. The combat was tight and fun. Just a whole lot less interesting. Andromeda looks totally fine too. I didn't expect them to go back to the old style or make any significant changes.

Just curious, but what difficulty did you play ME2 & 3 on? The issue I ran into with both games is that on "Normal" or below, the combat feels very basic because the effects of all the shields and damage types are reduced. You don't need to think much about what you're doing because you can just blow everything away with Amy weapon or ability.

But on Hard or above, that changes completely. Enemy shields, armo, and barriers are far more powerful. Combine that with how quickly you take damage, and it forces you to be way smarter and more efficient when it comes to chaining certain abilities and using different ammo types. I found it every bit as deep as ME1.

I hope you're right. My hope is that if there is no pause mechanic, that there is an easy setting.

To give you some perspective, in ME3 just before the ending, you make this full speed charge downhill, you get knocked out, you wake up with just a pistol a bunch of husk coming at you. It is near impossible to move the reticule in this scene, supposedly emulating the difficulty of the situation. I remember my wife being in nearly tears trying to do this scene over and over for an hour the first time. And I'm pretty certain this was just normal setting. She just couldn't move the guns that precisely. Hell, it took me a bunch of tries to get it and I'm relatively good at shooters. It was tough to see her that way, especially knowing how much she wanted to get to the ending after 80+ hours of work in the game.

A bit more clarification:

• The power wheel is gone. It sounds like you'll have three powers on hot key at all times similar to Mass Effect 3's multiplayer.
  
• You can piece together and quickly swap between up to four "favorites" that group powers and (I think) weapons. So you could make a sniping favorite with cloak and a sniper rifle and long range crowd control abilities equipped then switch to a close range favorite that would give you better close range abilities and weapons.
  
• You can no longer order your squad to lay down a specific power but appear to be able to order them to go to a place and order them to attack a specific enemy. It sounds like they are supposed to be smart enough to prime an enemy with the right biotic or tech power or to use one of their powers to detonate whatever you set up.
  
• You can still freeze gameplay anytime you want by bringing up the weapon wheel menu.

All in all, I really liked the look of the updated gameplay, but it sounds like it will be a little more difficult for someone who doesn't play as many games. You won't be able to freeze time and hit a target with just the right power, for instance.

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First: The big one. A "Massive" galaxy to explore. People have fan-theorized this would be like no man's sky. I want to squash that right now. If you look at the galactic map shown in the video, this "massive" galaxy has only 5 waypoints displayed. Now, the clip is super short, and only about 70% of the galaxy is shown, but 5 is not the same as 5 quintillion. It's not even close. I assume they'll release more information about how many explorable locations there are in the future, but based on that clip, I'm going to expect something more like ME3 and less like NMS.

I don't know where this idea even came from. It's no wonder people are so disappointed by games all the time. Anyone who thinks that Andromeda is going to be anywhere near the size of No Man's Sky legitimately has to be an idiot. I fully expect it to be in line with what we've seen from the series before.

I agree that it's hogwash. Some people on reddit were going nuts about it when ME:A was first launched. If there's one thing we've learned from NMS, it's that people would rather have fewer, more distinct worlds than more, samey worlds, even when those same people keep clamouring for more more more worlds.

So I watched the trailer a few more times, and as excited as I am for this game, I want to point out a few things that are shown in the video which don't match the hype or advertising:

First: The big one. A "Massive" galaxy to explore. People have fan-theorized this would be like no man's sky. I want to squash that right now. If you look at the galactic map shown in the video, this "massive" galaxy has only 5 waypoints displayed. Now, the clip is super short, and only about 70% of the galaxy is shown, but 5 is not the same as 5 quintillion. It's not even close. I assume they'll release more information about how many explorable locations there are in the future, but based on that clip, I'm going to expect something more like ME3 and less like NMS.

Are there really people expecting infinite worlds like in No Man's Sky?! On what grounds?? There's been no promise of a procedural universe or anything like that.

Kids on the internet sounding off into the echo chamber of reddit, I figure.

There seem to be at least seven possible habitat worlds based on a couple of the most recent videos. Habitat 7 is mentioned specifically and one of the Andromeda Galaxy overviews pointed out a few waypoints or star systems also named with "Habitat #". I'd say, baring more info, seven worlds will be an upper limit. It may be significantly higher if there are less important worlds to drive around and fight minor battles on. Mass Effect 1 & 2 had a few like that. But for core, plot significant worlds... I'd guess seven or less.

This all sounds right to me.

So this video is where people got the idea that there would be untold worlds:

There are certainly lines that would lead you down that path, without explicitly giving anything away. "Whole worlds, teeming with alien creatures and civilizations" "We've created a new galaxy for you to explore" etc.. There are also a few shots (Nomad driving over desert dunes, player cresting a hill) that make the world look free-roamish and quite large. Of course, we have no way of knowing if those are cutscenes or actual gameplay (probably cutscenes, given how early this video was released).

Anyway, I believe most of the hype I read about came from wild and unsubstantiated speculation based purely on what was seen here.

Other stuff: The combat clips do show at least one ranged sniper kill, but for the most part the engagements appear to be in relatively small areas (smaller than ME3's multiplayer maps). Combined with the earlier "playable" trailer, I'm no longer expecting a wide open, free roam world (or series of worlds) to explore. It seems more likely that it will be like Destiny's maps, with very controlled areas you can visit, and the advertising is trying to say that even though the map is a big circle, the fact that you can navigate it in either direction means it's "free roam." Again, we know very very little about the map design, so this is just speculation based on what little we've seen.

It's really hard to tell. We don't know if we're looking at key battle choke points similar to those in seen in longer Mass Effect missions. Or if we're seeing fairly big "open worlds" that have detailed place to explore and fight at. My guess is some of both. Some areas have lots of what seems to be custom structures, like up in the cliffs and stuff, while other scenes looks a bit more Mass Effect 1 ish with little bases of reused geometry and boxes and stuff.

We do know that the mako (or a mako analogue) will return, which means the explorable areas are big enough to want a vehicle to navigate, but from what I've seen in videos, this appears to be more like the warthog sections of halo than like the open areas of ME1.

Double really hard to tell. Most of the shots of the Nomad driving around have been close ups that show very little about the size of layouts of the worlds. My current gut feeling is to expect something like better versions of Mass Effect 1's world size and exploration. Perhaps even ME1 crossed over with Destiny. But I highly doubt we're being dropped into one or more Skyrim or Witcher 3 style vast, highly detailed, highly populated worlds. That simply has not been promised or even hinted at. I do expect something more than a vehicle section in a Halo level, though.

This is a really good point. I can't recall if there have been any videos where the nomad is driving under player control. I feel like there was one, but I couldn't find it in a quick search. You definitely see the nomad as a set piece, used as cover in some of the combat clips just released.

For weapons and abilities, we've seen quite a bit, actually. Snipers give a first person reticle, there are 3 overall classes of weapon (plasma, energy, and ballistic), at least the same five categories within those classes (shotgun, sniper, Assault rifle, pistol, SMG), and multiple guns for each category. There are also grenades, and we've seen many of the abilities from ME3 make a return (biotic charge, singularity, nova, shockwave, all make a return) as well as at least one new power (ground slam a'la strikers), and the ability to jump and hover which opens up new playstyles.

Yep. Powers and combat fluidity looks fine so far.