Individual Report #1 | Mass Effect: Andromeda
So here we are.
70 hours later I finally beat Mass Effect: Andromeda!
I still have a bunch of side missions to do but the major ones are done and that’s what matters :P
I don’t usually make posts focusing on individual games however I feel a game as extensive as this really deserves the time, especially with all the controversy around it.
I will do my best to keep this first part spoiler free and get into detail down below. Don’t worry there’s gonna be a rather clear warning before that part ;)
Andromeda is certainly a bag of mixed emotions. Sure, it has its problems however it’s not without its charms either. My personal take is that it retains a very decent core, pretty faithful to everything the previous Mass Effects have established and is in desperate need of extra polish on it’s surface. If anything it gave me a feeling close to that of the first Mass Effect, visually subpar for its time yet the beginning of a great journey.
Story wise it’s a slow burner. The first few hours of the game, which also is the part most of the reviews are based on, aren’t really the best moments the game has to offer. They feel aimless and generic, just a lukewarm storyline progressing as you expect it to. I can’t really pinpoint a moment when that changes, it’s gradual and slow but as the pieces start falling into place, your crew is coming together, you start having the choice of where to go and how to proceed etc, you find yourself getting invested more and more, the characters you felt were flat and uninteresting start coming to life little by little and you see there’s actually stories behind them worth exploring and you start going down the rabbit hole that is the Heleus cluster. Sometimes that is very rewarding, sometimes it’s the birth of a meme.
The quality of the dialogue and plot is best described as inconsistent. In the span of a single interaction you can find some of the best dialogue in the game followed by the most awkward and badly written one. There are several cringe worthy moments during the game and there are also several awesome ones. You just never know which of the two is coming up.
Graphics wise I don’t think there’s anything left to say, the internet has made a good enough job of not leaving a stone unturned regarding this part. Character models and facial animations are atrocious while environments, armor etc are incredible. The good news is BioWare already committed into polishing that. In an upcoming patch they’re adding stuff to the extremely limited character creation tool, they’re changing hairstyles and eyes(crazy eyes, crazy eyes everywhere!) and improving animations here and there. I expect in a few months time it’ll finally be at the point it should have been before release.
The combat is for the most part familiar with a couple great additions. First of all you’re now not locked into a class when you create your character, instead you have access to every single skill and class profile and are free to spend your points as you like. You can be a biotic with Stealth and Turrets, you can be a shotgun bearing badass with flamethrowers, you can deploy turrets and finish off stranglers with mines and generally play however the fuck you like. The only limitation is you can only have 3 active skills at a time. BUT you can also save up to 4 skillsets/profiles and change freely between them, you’ll just have to wait for the skills to cooldown when you do, just as if you had just used them.
The second major change to both combat and exploration is the jetpack. It provides insanely more maneuverability allowing you to either get in fast and clean and just wreak havoc up close, hover midair shooting everything behind cover or dash out of hairy situations before you even have time to blink, making fights much more fun than they ever were in Mass Effect. They way it was implemented is actually pretty great and can’t think of Mass Effect anymore without it.
One element that also really divides the playerbase is the “turn” to an open world setting instead of a corridor like progression like the previous ones. For me it was a very good change as it really made the game feel like an exploration game and helped you get immersed in the world of Heleus. It’s true there’s a lot of “filler” generic quests like fetch this, fetch that, talk to that, track down this etc. but the vast majority of those are still available after you finish the main plotline and feel rather appropriate for that time. Hopefully BioWare learns from this and includes more interesting quests next time but also keep the open world setting.
All in all I’d have to say I find Andromeda to be a very enjoyful game despite its shortcomings and I definitely recommend it to anyone that played the original trilogy and like that. However know that when entering Andromeda you’re not entering a standalone game, but you’re entering the beginning of yet another interplanetary journey. Even though it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, it does leave a lot of plotlines unresolved with the intention of exploring those in sequels or DLCs. That’s as much as I can say without giving away details.
If you’ve played Andromeda already or don’t care about spoilers click below to reveal the next part. MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOWING
Mass Effect:Andromeda
Playtime: 70 hours / 34 of 55 achievements
First of all I'd like to say a few things about the cast of the game. Even though they all started rather superficial by the end of the game I felt most of them were rather interesting and we had once again built "a family". Sure, I missed some people from back in the Milky Way( especially Joker, navigating a universe without him at the helm was probably the biggest blow) however Andromeda introduced a rather interesting bunch. I'd like it if they included your non combatants a bit more though in a few missions, maybe have a couple ones where they have to come with you as NPCs following you, or they get captured or something, it would have added a bit more flavor to them.
The biggest surprise was Broder(mRyder) though. I was quite hesitant going into Mass Effect without my mShep but by the end of Andromeda I think I even like Broder more. I love his more relaxed and casual feel as well as the freedom the new dialogue setup provides for him.
And even though I very much enjoyed Andromeda it doesn't mean it is without fault. One of the biggest flaws I can find in it is a constant feeling of "been there, done that". We go into a new galaxy and what do we find there? 2 new alien species who surprise surprise, are anthropomorphic in the sense of having four limbs, 2 eyes, one mouth etc. And not only they look like us, they also live like us! We even use the same doors...
There was such a clean slate here, the freedom to design anything they wanted and yet they made something so extremely familiar. We barely got to explore the Angaran culture because it's just too similar to what we already knew. There are subtle hints here and there giving you more insight on them but it's mostly a bit of the same. Such a shame.
As for the kett we're still not sure what is happening with them and why they do what they do, since we know by the end that we've only met a rogue faction lead by the Archon in Heleus. We're sure to be seeing more of them down the line, hopefully dig a little deeper in their motives and social structure.
Which brings us to yet another point. Exaltation. The process of manipulating genetic material of a species to turn it into something else that fights for you. Ring any bells? Oh yes, the exact same thing Reapers did after they harvested the Milky Way species. And the Remnant technology? Doesn't that feel extremely similar to the Prothean Ruins? And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot of tropes that feel like plot elements of the OT have been repackaged and thrown back at us. At least they worked though, and didn't feel out of place. I just wish we had something original too.
However I liked the herrings the game leaves for you to follow in future titles/DLCs like not revealing the Benefactor which will probably play a major role in the next installments, alerting you to the existence of the Quarian ark, having Ellen Ryder remain in stasis etc. It sure makes me impatient for the next game when I haven't even completed this one :P
There are also a lot of choices I'm rather anxious to see how they're gonna play out like saving all the arks, having Avitus as a Pathfinder, your choice of ambassador, giving the AI to Angara, leaving Aksul alive, Reyes taking over Kadara while we're banging and so on. I'm already so psyched for the continuation of this saga. And I feel that's the role ME:A had and fulfilled nicely, to serve as a lengthy introduction of a new system, with new politics, new threats and new amazing moments. Hopefully the whole shitstorm won't prevent this from happening and ME will continue its journey.
Pathfinder out~
That is all from me for the time being, see you with the regular report in a couple of weeks.
XOXO
Edit: Patch 1.05 is now live and it significantly improved many things. I don't know what they did with the shaders but the game looks twice as marvelous now, the eye textures were replaced with a darkened top side which makes all the characters look less like playmobils and more like decent models and it's running a lot more smoothly! Seems like in a couple of months BioWare might manage to fix this after all.
Very interesting read. I steered clear of the spoilers section, but it’s interesting to see so many individual reviews and takes on the game that portray it as uneven and janky experience vs general opinion that seems to just hate what Bioware created for a variety of reasons.
As a side note - you may want to re-host images you’re hotlinking from other sources just so they don’t flake it out like your cover image is. When in doubt Imgur is good enough. :)
Ok, spoiler free version summary of the spoiler section then:
-New bunch of misfits populating your ship are well made and can stand their own against most of the characters from the OT by the end of the game. mRyder surprisingly ends ups maybe even better than mShep.
-Andromeda “recycles” themes and plotlines wrapping them up with a pretty nice bow but underneath it there’s a dominant “been there, done that” feeling. And generally there was a lot of potential with the move to a new galaxy that was never realized.
-Lots of choices and semi-finished plotlines seem to have little to no impact on this game however they can potentially have a huge impact on next installments/DLCs, making you want to return to Heleus for sure
-ME:A might be mediocre-to-good as a Mass Effect game on its own however its true purpose appears to be to lay the groundwork for another saga, which it does nicely.
It’s cool to hate ME:A now, especially since most people base their opinions in the first few hours of gameplay which as said is rather weak, however it is not a bad game. It’s closer to an Early Access game which will need a few months of polishing to reach the point it should have been, mostly about superficial, graphical issues.. It’s just that since this is an AAA game, not an indie one, this is rather unacceptable. However the game itself is getting a lot more hate than it actually deserves. The problem is everyone had insanely high expectations because it’s a Mass Effect title and it didn’t live up to them, it was made by BioWare’s C-Team after all. Hopefully it won’t hurt the franchise to the point that it gets abandoned.
Also took your advice, I’m normally too lazy to re-host everything I link but if it already started flaking out… :P
Are respecs available? Like I’d invest some point into combat and then decide to build full biotic/tech sentinel? Is it possible to withdraw points without penalty from combat tree?
There is a respec option in your ship’s med bay. Spend some credits(just a measly 20 credits the first time, it goes up with every respec) and you reset the point allocation completely. You still retain your level and can now put your points wherever you like again. Used it twice myself, started out with an emphasis on Assault rifles and biotics, switched to a more Soldier direction and then switched again to a sniper wielding Combo build. But you will indeed spend some points in all trees anyway, there’s very useful passives in all of them.