Mass Effect: Andromeda Review
Mass Effect: Andromeda was the first game in the Mass Effect universe that I had played, despite it being the most recent entry. The reasons for this were that I had heard wide praise for the Mass Effect series, and it was the only one available for me to play on the PS4. So, after playing through the original trilogy and giving my thoughts in it, I can look back on Andromeda with both my original impressions and my newfound hindsight to determine how it measures up to the original.
Set at around the same time as Mass Effect 2, Andromeda tells a mostly separate story from the original trilogy; a vast initiative has sent a huge wave of colonists to the Andromeda galaxy, a journey that took over six hundred years of hibernation, and five arcs for individual species, along with a central space station, the nexus. However, this already perilous mission is jeopardised by inhospitable colony planets, a shifting energy scourge that destroys ships and hinders transportation, and a hostile alien force, the Kett, and the technological Remnants of an ancient alien civilisation.
As pathfinder Ryder, your aim is to rectify these problems, as well as making key decisions for the initiative, settling problems and interacting with the local species.
This premise, along with the promotional material and trailers for the game all point towards a narrative that could rival its predecessors in terms of a tightly woven narrative, tough decision making, and immersive world-building and characterisation, perhaps not in terms of scale, but as a more personal story.
Being my first experience in the Mass Effect universe, it was truly interesting to interact with the other aliens from the Milky Way galaxy, using the codex to learn about their unique cultures, historical events and customs, and allowing them to exist within large spaces and open environments created a sense of authenticity to their existence within the world, something that I do have to give the new sense of scope credit for, even if it does make most of the landscapes barren, lifeless and a chore to traverse across.
However, the narrative isn’t very compelling, and pretty messy. I won’t talk too much about it outside of the spoiler section, but all of the protagonists, villains and plot points feel clichéd, and have been done already, not just in the genre, but the same franchise, and far more satisfyingly.
However, having now played the original trilogy, I realise that you learn a lot more about these species there, along with half a dozen other species that got little more than a few mentions in this one. Additionally, the new species introduced in Andromeda were not particularly memorable aside from their physical appearance, to the point where if you were to ask me now about their culture, I couldn’t recall any specifics. Something about reincarnation, maybe, and having lots of siblings, but nowhere near as developed as, say, the asari or krogan, who I could easily recall some facts about. ]
I remembered references to the genophage just from Andromeda, so when I went to the Mass Effect, I knew what state the krogan were in, and the conflict that they had with other races. Essentially, just referencing the world of the trilogy was highly compelling, even when I had little to no knowledge of it, that is how incredible the worldbuilding was, and something that peaked my attention when playing Andromeda.
Unfortunately, after the first ten hours playing Andromeda, I realised that it wouldn’t get much more compelling. There were very few enemy varieties to encounter, and once you reach a certain point, you realise that no more would be thrown your way, or make you change how you viewed a battle situation, making the whole ordeal feel rather dull. With a huge open world, there needed to be more to do; more accessible customisation, more methods of traversal and more decision making to influence the world.
Unfortunately, it feels like the bare minimum was given in these sections, relying more on time – consuming side quests and drawn out story threads, providing huge quantities of content at the expense of quality. Eventually, I had to focus on the story, as if I didn’t I knew I’d waste too much time doing trivial things like scanning rocks or following the same trail of missing scientists to the same conclusions.
There is a huge amount of time wasted when playing this game – be it the seemingly endless amount of time you spend in the Nomad vehicle moving from side quest to collectibles in vast open worlds, the now painfully long loading times unnecessary and overindulgent animations when landing or taking off from a planet.
If you like games filled with content to keep you playing for tens of hours, then this may be for you, but if you prefer a game with set levels, and a more rigid structure, then the original trilogy will be definitely more to your tastes.
Now to what may be the most negatively publicised aspect of the game; the animations. With four years and 50 million dollars between Mass Effect 3 and this, it was a huge let down when the characters in Andromeda dipped further into the uncanny valley than any of its predecessors, with characters who were supposed to be emotive giving lifeless and dull expressions, their eyes drifting here and there like a machine in the skin of a person.
Accompany this with some truly abysmal character creation, with it almost impossible to make an attractive character with the given system, and pre-sets that look distorted and ugly when compared to Mass Effect 2 or 3, along with some bizarre walking animations, and static conversation positions when characters talk to each other totally shatters the immersive experience built up by the trilogy.
The first Mass Effect has some clunky graphics by today’s standards, but its characters had a visual distinctiveness and a variation that could make up for the graphical problems. You never really felt that characters models were copied for convenience, which is why it is infuriating when the once beautiful and regal asari now have a single neutral face, save for Peebee and a couple of others, and the human models aren’t too much better.
I cannot say exactly how or why this downgrade in quality happened from such a talented company, but it certainly hinders the game, and we can only hope that this problem will be rectified if we are ever to get a fifth entry in the series.
The combat is something that I will give the game credit for, though. It is fluid and dynamic, now letting you us a jump-jet to dart forward or jump, as opposed to static cover-and-shoot based mechanics, and whilst I didn’t fully understand things like the biotic powers from a lore or gameplay perspective at the time I played, I have to appreciate how customisable the combat loadouts can be, regardless of the overly complicated research and development system for getting weapons and upgrades.
I think the best way to describe the game as passable. If you go in with huge expectations, then you will quite rightly be disappointed, but if you bear in mind its many issues going in, then there is definitely some fun to be had. It’s no masterpiece by any means, but with improved combat and a new side of the Mass Effect universe to explore. This game gets a 6 out of 10 from me, which is sad, and I can only hope that this roadblock won’t stop Bioware from delivering new Mass Effect titles and restore the brand to its former glory.
6 OUT OF 10
SPOILER SECTION
As I said earlier, the game is highly derivative, but what I kept for the spoilers was the quite ridiculous copying of character types in your crew, creating pale imitations of characters in the trilogy. Here are just a few blatant examples of Andromeda copying aspects of previous games:
· An ancient civilisation that mysteriously disappeared with ruins across dozens of planets (the Protheans in ME:1 and the Jardan in ME:A)
· A foreign alien force that serves as the main antagonists of the game, and converts their enemies into their own footsoldiers (the Reapers in ME3 and the Kett in ME:A)
· A human biotic affiliated with the protagonist (Kaiden Alenko in ME1 and Cora Harper in ME:A)
· A hothead human character (Ashley Williams in ME1 and Liam Kosta in ME:A)
· A socially awkward British lesbian who serves on your ship (Samantha Traynor in ME3 and Suvi Anwar in ME:A)
· A gay engineer who serves on your ship (Steve Cortez in ME3 and Gil Brodie in ME:A)
· A crewmember with religious beliefs to which the protagonist can react dismissively or open-mindedly (Ashley Williams in ME and Suvi Anwar in Me:A
· A rogue turian who wants to play it their own way instead of abiding by the rules and laws (Garrus in ME1 and Vetra in ME:A)
· An asari archaeologist specialised in the ancient civilisation that mysteriously disappeared (Liara T’soni in ME1 and Peebee in ME:A)
· An old krogan mercenary (Wrex in ME1 and Drack from ME:A)
· A disgruntled squad member whose race had fought against the main antagonists prior to the protagonist’s involvement in the story (Javik in ME3 and Jaal in ME:A)
· A final act that involves all of the various factions uniting in a final battle to prevent their annihilation, involving a McGuffin that can solve the primary problem in the game (ME3 with the Catalyst pacifying the reapers and ME:A with Meridian terraforming all the uninhabitable worlds.
When looking at all of this, it is quite damning as to the narrative stagnation this game suffers from. If all this game does is tread old ground with more diluted and basic storytelling, then it wouldn’t have been respected even if it didn’t have a glitchy launch or questionable facial animations. I’m all for calling back to the trilogy, it’s what this game jumps off from after all, but it has to tell its own story, instead of cowering in the shadows of its predecessors in fear that it will make a wrong move.
The biggest problem in my opinion is the lack of meaningful choices to be made. With a premise involving you completely isolation from the rest of the Milky Way trying to make this new, hostile area of space a home to live, it provides the perfect opportunity for making tough choices, and having nowhere to run from the consequences. Take for example, the choice to set up either a military or scientific outpost. I chose military, as the presence of the Kett created an immediate threat that needed to be addressed before scientific study, despite every other character I interacted disagreeing with me. The most I got were a few protestors upset that their loved ones weren’t getting unfrozen. If there was a coup I had to deal with, either peacefully or violently, then it would define the character of Ryder through your choices, something that the first game excelled in with its simplistic but effective Paragon and Renegade system.
Andromeda, having different personality traits to determine your character never altered the course of the narrative, and hardly had any effect on your crewmembers or your relations with the factions.
Sure, you can have disagreements with your squadmates that might not earn you their loyalty, but it didn’t create any further consequences, like the increased chance of death in the final mission, or betrayal. No squadmates die from your actions, and the only meaningful decision you can make is which faction ends up controlling the exiles on Kandros, which is held back by another dozen hours of trivial missions, but your relations with the Angarans, the status of your crew and the nature of the final battle are all out of the player’s control, removing the RPG elements that the game needed to keep the player engaged.
Additionally, when looking back at the game after playing the original trilogy, various inconsistencies spring to mind, such as why an arc of quarians set off when each one is expected to contribute to the flotilla, except for if they are exiled. There were only about a million of them, so when exactly were they able to spare at least tens of thousands of them to go to Andromeda? Or why did various krogan leave their people as they were suffering from the genophage and risking extinction?
As much as I grew to like the quarians and krogan, their arcs were clearly finished by ME3. You could have a one or two characters of those groups, but they couldn’t act as a reflection of the rest of species like Tali or Wrex, as they have run out of stories to focus on in relation to their people as a whole.
From a narrative perspective, It would make more sense for species such as the elcor, volus, and drell to be there, as three out of four of them all have medical constraints on their bodies, which could potentially be cured by doctors while they are in stasis, or they could be aiming to find separate colony worlds suited to their biology’s, creating a narrative around that species and an interesting conflict if they wish to settle on say, an already occupied world. You wouldn’t necessarily even need the paragon and renegade system from the previous games, replacing them instead with survivalist and diplomat options, either ensuring the welfare of the initiative no matter the cost, or trying to make peaceful ties to the new species of the Andromeda galaxy; do you forcefully colonise an planet at the cost of its people for the sake of a dying race, or make diplomatic relations with the natives at the cost of those who accompanied you? Maybe with enough reputation points, you could come to a happy medium?
That would create a conflict aside from simply the good guys and bad guys, and would present the player with ramifications to their actions, regardless of their intent, investing them in the world and the effects of their presence in it. That was the precedent set by the trilogy, and that was what fans of the series were hoping for. Complex morality, unique and detailed world-building and decision making and character interactions to shape the protagonists personality.
By all accounts, Mass Effect: Andromeda isn’t a bad game. If you disclude its poor launch, you could even make a case that it is a good game. The problem is it isn’t a good Mass Effect game. If it was, I would bet that players would overlook its technical and graphical problems and herald it as bold new entry in the series.
Now, considering the nature of ME3’s ending, we can only look to the past of the series for new material to explore; either setting a game in the midst of some historic events such as the discovering of the Citadel, the Rachni Wars, the Krogan rebellions or the First Contact War, or remastering or remaking the original trilogy, which has been heavily rumoured, and whilst both of these options would surely meet the demand of fans, it is still a shame to look back at Andromeda, and see all of the wasted potential.
UP NEXT
Next Wednesday, I’ll be uploading my review of Bloodborne, a game I’m really looking forward to reviewing. Stay tuned!
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