Mass Effect Andromeda
To boldly go and collect 18 different rocks that all share the same 3D asset across 6 planets…
Perhaps with a hint of irony I maintain that this is the ‘least disappointing Mass Effect sequel’. Now lets imagine together that I’m in video games criticism school, it’s not too dissimilar to the high school classroom in starship troopers and the teacher, played obviously by Michael Ironside growls at me after I make such a statement “Do you understand it? Do you believe it?”
A pause, the classrooms eyes are on me.
“I don’t know”
Perhaps I should explain myself.
So disappointment, in my mind is relative, Mass Effect was/is one of my favourite games of all time, to say my expectations going into Mass Effect 2 was high that would be an understatement. And I know I’m in the minority for disliking ME2, but for me, the disappointment was real and at its biggest. Going into Mass Effect 3 my expectations were much much lower, and while that game somehow broken storytelling itself my disappointment overall was less - less expectations to disappoint right?
Now Mass Effect Andromeda, is a fascinating game, is it by any measure an objectively good game? Absolutely not, and that’s not to disparage the hard work and sweat by BioWare Montreal et al - the fact that they somehow scrambled together a game like this in what I believe amounted to 18 months of actual production time is nothing short of super human. Anyway, needless to say, after Mass Effect 2 and 3, my expectations where rock bottom for Andromeda. But I was always going to try it, after the franchise arson that had just taken place with Mass Effect 3 I just had to see what they did, where did they go from there?
There are moments in ME:A that do linger in the memory, have a degree of ‘freshness’ lacking throughout the rest of the 40-60 hour campaign
I didn’t find Andromeda disappointing in the same way as the other sequels, I had no prior attachment or memories with the cast, it was basically a soft reboot and I was gonna take it on it’s own terms. And wow, this video game does not make a lot of sense to me, like, at all. And if anything that’s the fun of it. Having worked on a lot of video games myself, part of the fun is breaking down and trying to understand what the studio intended while you play through a game, and Andromeda certainly will have any fellow developer asking questions of it.
I still have some explaining to do...
I could probably write a novels worth of content complaining about Mass Effect plot holes, contrivances etc but I’ll try and keep on theme and not waste my time and yours complaining about every single little thing I hate about the setting an the premise and how that sucks any drama out of what is supposed to be happening in this video game.
It’s been a downwards slope for Mass Effect, from the second games solitary collector ship in which we are expected to believe is a credible threat to humanity with its rejected Contra boss inside, to whatever the hell the crucible(?) was in ME3. The world and the rules of the universe got progressively looser and looser and that framework to ‘how things work’ erodes away and that damages the drama and the believability of the proceedings.
Here’s me banging on about ‘readability’ again, what exactly is the focus of this area? Turns out its the not corpse compatriot of Jaal - who I can barely see & cannot save because the quest is bugged and TRIANGLE won’t appear. Sorry Jaal, we have to leave them to die :(
So you don’t need to have seen Carl Sagan’s Cosmos to know that space is incomprehensibly large, even allowing for sci-fi magic that the journey can be done in 600 odd years, the entire plan just doesn’t hold up as plausible. I’m expected to believe that not only you can make the distance, they were able to scout ahead somehow and find a few ‘golden planets’ from 2.5 *million* light years away. What’s the reason for this, what is their motivation for doing so? The Arks are unarmed? But there are ex-military folks throughout this initiative, how does force projection work when all they apparently have are shuttles and a scout ship (the Tempest) - there’s a big ass space city called the Nexus, that got here a year earlier? It’s apparently unable to take care of its current (small) population but is the size of a city, with lush green spaces, tower blocks etc. How did it get there? If resources are so tight, surely the rebellion being exiled would have been a death sentence? But there’s thousands of outlaws and settlers out tall over the galaxy ready to die by the players hands? With dropships, bases, plentiful firearms, food and water? These worlds are harsh & inhospitable right?
Made me laugh revisiting this screenshot, thought that orange ball thing was a hud element, no turns out that’s my vehicle in the shot & another example of everything just kind of merging into one and results in a curiously flat & dull environment to explore
Now I *think* there are answers to questions like these in tie-in novels and the in-game codex (another feature that has gotten progressively worse with each instalment) but these are big questions, big building blocks for the lore. They should be explained properly, or better yet, make more intuitive sense based upon what we already know from the three prior instalments. The real reasons for some of these questions (like, what the fuck, *is* the Andromeda Initiative) can be found if you do enough side quests and collection stuff, but for me this should be right front and centre as a major motivation for the player.
The game can be super floaty with the detail, so that ship in the foreground is whoever the big bad guy’s flagship… apparently. But earlier in another cutscene he can be found on a much, much, much bigger and ‘iconic’ ship in a CG cutscene, I guess this is his ‘Sleeper’ ride?
Why did all this exciting stuff happen before I even got there by the way BioWare? Station rebellions and settling attempts? I know the setting is important but I feel seriously short changed as my adventure basically amounts to driving to 3 switches, then flipping the master switch on each planet. These little glimpses to politics and war all pretty much happen without your involvement in any meaningful way. You are the ‘Electrician’ Ryder, there’s some fuses that need sorting over in Aya.
Another thing Andromda is - is super super wide, there’s dozens of systems, half a dozen explorable worlds, a metric fuckton of side quests, even more fetch quests and thousands of aliens, Milky Way folk and robots to kill along the way. What even is a pathfinder anyway? Finding a home amounts again, to sorting out the planet’s fuse box and calling down some portacabins. The experience for all its breadth is an inch deep.
Tone is also completely out there as far as the characters go and how they react to given situations, Liam’s loyalty mission is a hall of fame (or perhaps shame) in this regard, with the least convincing reaction to being blown out of a starship ever committed to screen. It feels like there was a bit of an attempt to inject Mass Effect with a bit of the Josh Whedon wry Interpersonal style between the characters but it seldom lands in my experience.
Rose Tinted glasses/memories are in full effect, but this has to be the worst character animation, camera blocking and framing tin a Mass Effect game, even compared to the first one with it’s basic soap opera style shot/reverse shot and like three poses.
Above all, I don’t understand why the games scope is so wide given it’s fairly well publicised development issues, but even then, if Andromeda had years more development time, would the core issues really be resolved? Is there really much value in aiming for so much content? Why does it have to be about saving the galaxy... again. I don’t care if it’s a second galaxy & why do you demand a 40-70 hour time investment from me?
So why, have I just got the platinum trophy for the game? I honestly don’t have a good answer, not for myself, or for you dear reader. I used to think the combat was pretty decent, but after completing the game for a second time (and on insanity difficulty) I’ve changed my mind.
Firstly, player feedback. Mass Effect Andromeda has an incredible amount of UI for a fairly modern third person game, but I rarely find it being remotely useful. Constant status update messages flash too and forth as you step inside and out of hot/cold areas, there’s a few health bars, ammo, power cool down bars, squad mate icons, quest trackers and even a compass in there. A lot of stuff right? Why then, during my Insanity difficulty play through did I seldom feel like I had a good handle on whether I was taking damage or not?
And here, is where I think as far as the gameplay goes is Andromeda’s greatest weaknesses feedback and the camera. There’s just something about it being so far away from the player character, I feel like I’m far too high and behind Ryder, mostly looking at the floor roughly 10 meters in front of them, throughout the game. The rush of enemy fire around Ryder, that feeling of pressure? Gone, or rather, never there to begin with. Enemy weapon effects, especially tracers and muzzle flashes are muted or outright not there, impacts on Ryder and they're shields? If they are there? I don’t notice them. The effects of my fire on the enemy? Can’t really see, the UI is in the way. Instead combat is mostly centred around whittling down health bars, which is what it is anyway underneath the hood so to speak, but ideally it shouldn’t feel like that when I’m playing my sci-fi space opera. If you know to look, there’s some really nice environments to look out at on the horizon, but you won’t, because the camera is pointed at the floor and you are following a compass. The fact that there’s an “R3 to look” feature in use to wrench the players attention towards something is to my mind a failure of the art and design. Right at the end of the game you wander in front of a giant pyramid, the thing is huge and striking and I can guarantee I wouldn’t have seen it if it wasn’t for the giant PRESS R3 TO LOOK Prompt that no joke, takes prime real estate in the centre of your screen.
Light probes not found
So, nearly 1500 words and I haven’t even mentioned the Kett. Yikes, I guess it really *has* been downhill for the series after that conversation with Sovereign in Mass Effect 1. Rumours abound that there’ll be a ‘Remastered’ collection for the O.G. Trilogy dropping at some point in the next year, if that does actually happen I’ll get involved with that again, I’ve only ever completed Mass Effect 3 once, it’ll be interesting to go back to that after a decade and see how I feel about it with some distance between myself and the worst opening and certainly ending in human storytelling.
But if Andromeda ever got released again, I can be certain that I’ll never be coming back. I’ve scratched that OCD itch and got the 100% and I suggest you do not do the same despite believing that this is the least disappointing Mass Effect sequel. It’s a train wreck and a monument to poor studio and project management, I morn for the fine people who slaved away to make this game happen. But at least they didn’t kill off Commander Shepard in the first 2 minutes, have a pants on head stupid storyline and streamline out so much of the stuff I enjoyed about the first game. But that’s a rant for another time.
If my life was on the line and I had to name every member of the crew of the… err… Tempest? Whom I have spent around 140 real life hours with? I’d be a dead man
Oh wait… SAM! What a fucking waste of time that character/plot point is. Basically a worse version of “Siri” only it can guess other peoples passwords.
“You have AVP outstanding pathfinder”
“You can mine this area for resources Pathfinder”
“You have email at the terminal Pathfinder”
“Its hot Pathfinder, its Cold Pathfinder”
“Pathfinder, this area has resources available for mining”
What a game eh, what a series. Incredible that this game happened. That a huge corp like Electronic Arts could just let something like this out there and give what I presume was a fairly lucrative franchise (that was already in a closed casket by this point) a full on Viking funeral.
