How Does Mass Effect: Andromeda Compare to Previous Mass Effects? [Spoilers]

[Music] [Music] your role in the new Mass Effect is the Pathfinder a visionary leader whose hens will shape the character and structure a future civilization in the andromeda galaxy a fresh start for the races the Milky Way a chance to build into the new on the structure of the old the first Mass Effect game was that pathfinding title for Bioware its first foray into the more cinematic choreographed role-playing games that it's been making ever since it was the big leap into a world where role-playing games were more hybridized with real-time action titles presented in a way that's a lot more Hollywood and a lot less unseen hand of the dungeon master it felt like something truly groundbreaking at the time as well Mass Effect one hit all the rhythms and high points of previous Bioware classics from the adventuring party to the world building but with a glossy cinematic presentation and fast paced over-the-shoulder shooting mechanics that were novel in a role-playing game at the time it was a deliberate blend of the older expository style and the new premium cable approach over time the next two Mass Effect games leaned more and more heavily into their visual storytelling in action set-pieces and farther away from the wordier slower paced original game Mass Effect 3 was so far shifted into Bioware's new direction that it did away with planetary side questing and chopped down its conversational approaches from three to two eliminating the neutral Cavalier option in favor of the stronger Paragon renegade dynamic nice effect retold a blockbuster action epic capping off a hundred hour and more trilogy by sacrificing the kind of quiet player driven exploration and bright exposition of the first in favor of a bleak vision of a galaxy on fire a game long war where Commander Shepard is defined by a military command it's the kind of pulpy epic space war championed by authors like David Brin decades ago but more importantly masked leg fries enormous differences in storytelling tone and mechanical prioritization and it filled leagues away from the first it didn't have that sense of novelty in the game design or the twists that the first game had people were irritated by its reduced narrative complexity it's more linear and utilitarian world-building it's historically frustrating ending dlc did a lot to improve and broaden the third game and make it feel more connected to the first but it never got that feeling back from the first game that pathfinder feeling that blend of curiosity and intensity and investment although many of the original masa types game systems are clunky and are awkward and the scenes holding the game together are more visible today than ever that feeling is still there when I've replayed it it's an important transition title not just for BIOS catalog but for RPG development in general if not for modern Bioware is so focused on bombastic action driven RPGs but there be such a hungry market for obsidians crowdfunded isometric throwbacks so for Bioware to return the Mass Effect after the original trilogy's controversial conclusion creates a lot of questions of brand identity and issues of how to tonally move forward should Andromeda be more like Mass Effect 3 its immediate predecessor or Mass Effect 1 which set the tone and defined so much of what makes the game world distinct in marketing materials the first thing they really teased about the game was the Nomad The Replacements of the first games Mako Rover the Mako was a symbol to fans what was unique about the first game its clunkiness its optimism its tremendous breadth of optional content and exploration and also its comical cheapness and letting the player actually interact with those explorative elements they were beginning with a new version of the makeover Andromeda surely that meant that they were looping back to the design priorities of the first game that was clearly the intention a new galaxy a new start for the franchise when the human Ark arrives though they are dismayed to find that nothing was as expected and the planets they thought would be welcoming and exciting where instead waste lands where much work would have to be done to make them habitable it's a fair warning the players greatest struggle is to make themselves feel at home in a wasteland of inhospitable and superfluous game systems Mass Effect Andromeda as a whole experience couldn't have felt more opposite to the first game Andromeda feels outdated in a way that I wasn't prepared for it feels behind the curve of even Bioware zone catalog Mass Effect 3 focuses on a handful of compact highly detailed slice-of-life planets and they the memorable for the short time that you were there Ragan Age Inquisition had relatively strong regional plots and gave it sprawling land a narrative definition mass effect to had tight level design and for the most part snappier dialogues in Andromeda and Mass Effect one for all its many technical shortcomings felt like it was much more effective in layering in exposition and world building laying a foundation for the games to follow Andromeda is a mix of motifs and aspirations that evokes the previous games while failing to go beyond nostalgic imitation it's not a wholly bad game but it's the most inconsistent and unfocused of the entire Bioware catalog I'll put it another way Mass Effect Andromeda is the Blues Brothers 2000 of electronic role-playing it exists only because people love the first one and fails because all it has to offer is its needy corporate nostalgia it looks similar walks the same basic narrative path but there's a resistance to genuinely embracing creativity and novelty that continually handicaps the game and game whose principal theme is the virtue of daring curiosity in the face of the unknown the design plays that as safe as possible at every juncture a chance to adventure in a new galaxy is a chance to dial up the exotic system and double down on things that would be difficult for television to portray but in convincing illustration to something that would look too silly and makeup and rubber to see creatures that are bizarre an impossible landscapes whose harshness and strangeness stretch the imagination why else go to a new galaxy if it's going to look the same sounded the same that's Andromeda central problem its whole setup is a mandate towards wonder and creativity Mass Effect Andromeda shares in the premium cable era approach to science fiction that Mass Effect 2 and 3 have in terms of presentation but it falls down the ladder to basic table in terms of imagination no alien that couldn't be portrayed by humans and makeup no ideas it takes more than 42 minutes to explore and rubbery looking Schmucks that cannot emot-- for actors there are so many individual components of Mass Effect one design that agree incorporates like planetary exploration a focus on side content a more optimistic and curious tone but the one critical thing it doesn't recycle is a sense of pushing spend portrayed in a science-fiction media before when mass errect one came out the Reapers were a memorably impressive villain for video games in terms of scale in terms of Menace say lanes were often human-like but the game had a wide variety of strange archetypes with deep cultures explored and memorable side conversation Andromeda has only two new alien races one of which is hostile with bony faces and an arsenal of assault rifles and shotguns that the player can also use and the other one the friendly one is just a ripoff of James Cameron's blue space cats most disappointing about all this is the missed opportunity games more than television by a huge margin almost as much as books are able to illustrate impossible things so to limit your science fiction to the creative range of an old episode of Stargate sg-1 and a big-budget 2017 game about the thrill of exploration is puzzling why would the writers be so unwilling to live up to the lessons of their own characters the set up is so solid though the Andromeda initiative is a borderless organization in which each of the major species of the Citadel from the first trilogy create an ark to sail the space between galaxies and set up a totally independent civilization when you arrive the Ark's have been missing and the forward team has spent a year or more in chaos and starvation your father is the human Pathfinder but passes the mantle down to you within first couple hours of the game the game tries to pull the player into the immediate present tense of the plot by focusing right off on your characters family your sibling whichever gender you didn't choose here your own character is in a coma after the ship received damage on arrival your father trying to retain command is an aloof and intimidating figure you define for yourself and dialog if a character feels emotionally connected to him or not and then a clever bit of face map his character model always looks plausibly related to your character in my run he extremely resembled Edward James Olmos which I really got a kick out of a central mystery of the game relates to why and how your father became the human Pathfinder and why he would pass the honor directly to you in violation of the chain of command it's a mystery that you solve via collection quest this disconnect between setup and execution is terminal to a lot of the game's narrative ambition as Pathfinder you take the broken pieces of the initiative and reforge them into the original relentlessly optimistic vision that everyone left their homes behind for them it's a compelling role to play and the thematic connection to the tone of first game is strong there as the first human Specter you shaped how the other races would view humanity ambitious and cut-throats or diplomatic and generous all eyes were on you to excel at a job that everyone was skeptical of your ability to even perform in the first place the Pathfinders looked at the same way to the same ends you're a pioneer a diplomat and a soldier and that order if the gameplay experience of being the Pathfinder is disappointingly similar to being the Inquisitor in the last Dragon Age you're more of a box checker in chief than a genuine leader the flow of the narrative is relentlessly artificial gaining meaningful story developments behind trite and bland collect and kill mission objectives take the road to placing an outpost on the pirate settlement of Kedah report there's a thieves war between Sloane Kelly the pirate queen and an unknown aggressor the quest lab tells you to an event to settle coderre you have to be working with a guy named rays but the Rays quests are mostly just wacky hijinx ray is trying desperately to come across as space Zorro after several missions that appear to have no significance whatsoever to the larger plot outside of Palin around with a clever Latin space pirate it's revealed that Ray's is the shadowy usurper that's been dogging Kelly all along so now he's very sinister and not very playful at all only after choosing between Kelly and raise in a showdown so bursting with b-movie tough-guy nonsense it's remarkable you still have room to maneuver your character in combat that you're able to set up the outpost you are not given an explanation a wire compelled to do these quests until you see exactly what the game wanted to show you what you eventually build for the Andromeda initiative is compelling enough to build the foundation of the plot on but you have to put up with every boring objective and every commercial break fade-out plot revelation for the games throws in your lap to see it through Andromeda is most adept with its own nostalgia it the way mass effect opens giving you two companions in a similar way and starts you out with Liam a well-meaning and loyal security officer just like Caden in the first game just like Jacob in the second and then he picked up a capable female officer in the rightful second in line for the Pathfinder Cora she sells the same total and structural position as Ashley and Miranda in its best moments Andromeda can take these deliberate echoes of past games and put a distinctive twist on it making it feel unique to that particular game it learned a lot of lessons from the wonderful Citadel DLC from Mass Effect 3 that VLC provided many moments of companionable hanging out in domestic scenes for the crew of the Normandy making their personal and professional connection seem more real and more grounded and dromeda flushes out its companion characters from the very beginning in ways that skew more towards Citadel than the stand here and answer my questions on your resume and culture approach of Mass Effect 1 as a result Liam and Cora seem more consistently human and grounded as the game goes along than the automatic counterparts in the original trilogy loyalty quests make a return as well a popular and likable mechanic from the second and third game where by companion dialogue reaches a gameplay climax and a mission centered around that companions personal struggle Liam's loyalty quest is an example of the game doing that sort of character writing well Liam's ambition and impatience with the organization is present from the beginning his loyalty quest has him planning an adventure under your character's nose and then having him depend on your main characters friendship and patience to save the adventure that he planned and pull off the objective builds naturally the banter is quick and at the end it really is something that would create a deeper bond between the two characters Cora has a much more utilitarian loyalty mission hers is finding the asari arc this is such a critical part of the general plot but to have it classified and structured as a loyalty mission is kind of bizarre it short changes both Cora and the mystery of the missing arc Cora has great moments of character building especially in early scene where she talks about her passion for botany and her hopes and joining the X decision in the first place but her mechanical power set is biotics the franchise's psychic space magic much of her backstory is dominated by her military self-identity as a human member of an asari commando unit the ark is currently being held by her old commanding officer which makes it a personal quest her old CEO made some poor selfish decisions Angora has to cope with that but it doesn't feel as personal as LeeAnn this loyalty quest the big moral letdown is predictable and simple the main plot is advanced by what's classified as side content personal content it's far from the only time that Andromeda props up rickety disorganized structure with bland and predictable writing but the real cruelty is in showing that it can do better from time to time and then letting the player down anyway the sparks and fire where the dream of a new start meets the cold reality of the new place is fascinating it's a skeleton setup that can be fleshed out with millions of creative details and dromeda to its deepest detriment so prioritized nostalgia that it simply repackaged in over following number of plot points in creative directions of previous titles instead of coming up with something genuinely creative on its own there's no better place to see this than in another one of your companions PB she's a one-for-one replacement for Lee are in the plot but with her personality inverted both are genius sorry archaeologists young enough to still have to work for respect in their fields and brave enough to go out and delve ancient ruins that will give them answers Liara has the Protheans PB has the remnant of the ancient machine race whose terraformers who spend the entire game trying to turn on Liara is demure and professionally minded PB is flirtatious and revels and change and conflict he's actually got a lot of good jokes and her more mercurial personality makes her a more active participant in banter and the squad ensemble than Liara was but her position is being functionally equal in personality opposite to the original trilogy's most prominent sorry is awkward and obvious which is why it came as such a surprise that her loyalty quest was one of the best moments in the entire game her conversation progression reveals more and more about a caddy rivalry she has to the next girlfriend her ex is an absolutely cartoonish foil showing up at the most obviously nefarious moments throwing out lame insults and talking down to PB like a character from heather's it all builds in direction where PB is going to have to some kind of life-or-death confrontation with her rival which sounds like overdramatic nonsense of questionable quality which it absolutely is but it takes place and a unique and purposefully hidden remnant facility on a decaying volcanic planet it's one of the most dramatic environments in Andromeda and its sense of danger and mystery is strong the mission design itself from environmental arts and detail to the pacing of the action is as well produced and engaging as any of the better sequences of Mass Effect 3 but it's a fluke the grand majority of content in questing is done in the style much closer to Dragon Age Inquisition than the mass of x/3 the ending of most quests is a green checkmark indicating that you are in fact a good boy who deserves a treat even in PB is final long predicted confrontation everything plays out exactly as you might expect the fate of an important artifact in balance with her axes life IPV save her old friend and lover and lose the fruit of their archeological search or take the choice away from PB and make sure that her rival dies so that the artifact can be recovered the choice given is not a complex one and more disappointingly the remnant never developed an opposite personality from their trilogy counterpart like was done with Lea and PB the remnant sell exactly the same role of mysterious technologically advanced monolithic culture for exactly the same reasons that the Prothean did to create a trail of vague breadcrumbs for the player to follow and provide a point of contest between the player and their nemesis the first mass effect had sarin Andromeda tries to follow in those footsteps but comes up aching Lakeshore's having Saren be your game long nemesis in the first mass effect was narrative ly powerful it was a spectre like you took the same risks you took his path is one that the player seems like they could end up on if the player isn't being morally careful in the end your great nemesis because your peers and equals starting from a similar foundation and diverging profoundly in choice and beliefs the Archon of the cat your nemesis in Andromeda is cold and remote in a way that's much more boring than menacing he thinks he's right because he's genetically the best he has no crisis of fate or conscience to loop the player into the Archon is a bad guy because he's well a bad guy just not very nice altogether however you look at the situation he wants to use the terraforming Network as a weapon what can great life can destroy life etc etc there are birthday cards more narrative Li surprising and satisfying than the ket and the arc on following the first game in terms of climaxes especially difficult on account of this the first game had a personal villain a miles long impersonal villain and the threat of invasion from more giant angry cyber squids all of these threats layered on top of one another popping off in a rapid succession of deeply satisfying resolutions your nemesis you fight personally twice or once if you talk him into killing himself before the reprise version of them gets back up again the second boss the Reaper sovereign is taken down by a coalition of the allies who've made either a mix of humans and aliens who band together to share the risk in loss or a triumphant human the fleet moving in for the kill after the Citadel races you're floating dead in the vacuum of space and then you're given thanks recognition of a dire warning sovereign was simply the first of many like it so all the activity addressed by the game is mostly resolved there's really no actionable threat left at the end of the game but there is the mystery in danger of the long absent Reapers still hanging in the air keeping you invested waiting for what comes next satisfied but excited the Archon and cat can't shoulder this narrative burden the cat are the most boring aliens in the entire franchise there is so little to say about them so few themes actually being explored and much of that is just a repeat of stuff already done with Reapers and collectors in the second game you encounter the cat when you first make planet fall on habitat 7 before the mantle of pathfinders even pass down your character has at that time the option of lamenting that first contact was violent so much lost how disappointing that what was solved with guns in the Milky Way would have to be solved with guns here as well but Mass Effect Andromeda is an action game and the cat must be there for you to perform action upon it wouldn't have even been necessarily a creative misstep if not for how truly generic they are as villainous space dudes and dead serious when I say that Sara sand reptile villains from Galaxy Quest would be an even swap and he wouldn't even have to change the ship design much all you need to know is that they're mean and their ships and equipment are predominantly green in this way the mechanical demands of the nostalgic structure cheapen to the writing the original Mass Effect trilogy is about experientially a lot of shooting so a villain must exist for you to shoot at and to shoot at you they have to set a template of attacks it must have equivalents in the outlaw family of things to shoot and the remnant family of things to shoot for multiplayer consistency they must use weapons that fall neatly into categories of gun that the player can use as well they must not exceed the player's ability to defeat them in combat or in the plot there were many things that the cat had to functionally be before a personality in the culture could even be developed for them they were doomed by format to be something familiar they've got a race of religious zealots who steal genetic material from the races they conquer they turn us into them but there was already so much of what was done in Mass Effect the big reveal that the collectors were the Protheans in Mass Effect 2 the reprise versions of all the familiar races of the Citadel and Mass Effect 3 hell isn't it seen the colonists being put on spikes that change them into husks in the first 15 minutes of Mass Effect 1 it's not just that it's simple it said it's simple and has already been done time and time again within the Mass Effect franchise already Andromeda is a fresh start to be this stale and uncreative is a choice that was deliberately made the cat's religious structure is interesting sure but little detail is put into it it's just a set of related words to use for enemy titles this one's anointed he's big and tough we'll give him a big gun this one's ascendant we'll give him a floating orb shield a thingamajig you can go into the Codex and look up some encyclopedia entries about the individual types of cat enemies but I never found them to function as anything more dynamic than cannon fodder dispensed by the computer to provide the player something to do besides ask questions in fact much of the late game world building done with the CAD makes them even more boring revealing that there is political disagreement among the cat that the Archon is foolish in his pursuit in technology just taints the cat as unimaginative leave villainous a wider body of ornery bad space dudes who strongly object to tactical creativity on the part of the executive ornery bad space dudes to have made them uniformly zealous and have made their religion so central to their culture is a pretty bold creative choice it makes them more alien but giving them a fearful bureaucracy makes them more human a banal and straightforward race of jerks it's not the only major theme borrowed from the trilogy to be explored in less detail besides explorations of artificial intelligence also feature prominently in Andromeda instead of ET you have Sam human built artificial intelligence that's directly wired into the brains of the writer family it sees through their eyes and grows as they learn it's an interesting setup but the execution is as flat and utilitarian as it comes Sam is just a way to narrative Lea justify hiding the memories of the elder Rider the original Pathfinder behind a multi-planet collection quest Sam is a voice that tells you all the obvious things you're supposed to be doing in the game world in case you're new to games or may be young or maybe stoned though the game makes a point of how Papa Ryder was excommunicated from the Alliance for his AI research hardly anyone in Andromeda objects to the presence of an AI it's handy let it stay the quarry an arc housing the culture who might object to this kind of thing it's never found within the course of the name game they just don't show up you even recover at the end of a quest that seems at first glance to be completely tangential and not at all noteworthy in ancient artificial intelligence who wishes to die you can let it of course who can give it over to Sam to keep company but nothing is fundamentally revealed about who built the ancient computer what it's capable of what history it might hold just a little dilemma where it asks to die and you get to decide to grant or deny that request Andromeda again comes up with a great set up and then kind of brushes off its hands and calls it a day it's a game that values convenience over science fiction coherency in the new Mass Effect more than the original trilogy Eve and there is little distinction between its science and the magic of the world like one and Dragon Age as the game opens habitats 7 along with the other places you'll attempt colonizing the game have decayed from the golden worlds they were supposed to be into barely habitable wastelands tendrils of what they call dark energy have choked the region of space laying waste to ecosystems and atmospheres of planets touched by them in science dark matter and energy is matter of energy which by mass ought to be there but isn't it's matter and activity in detectable to us as human creatures with tools we know but predicted in the equations that we write in the game dark obviously means bad or maybe mean-tempered so what we're going to do here is have an angry space algae and then say oh that's some dark matter right there and then I hope everyone just sort of nods along with it the original trilogy always stayed closer to pop sci-fi than hard to sci-fi which is sci-fi principally grounded in actual science they always had a lot of devices and conceits which were fantastical like biotic standing in for magical spells but when you play and compare in Mass Effect Andromeda and Dragon Age Inquisition the kind of approach taken to magic and technology is interchangeable in a way that feels deeply hopelessly cheap and half-assed there are plenty of sci-fi authors and sci-fi movies that play fast and loose with believability but the combination of predictable and tired ideas within anything goes it doesn't need explanation if you call it advanced approach to science fiction world building only deepens the basic cable's sci-fi feel that haunts the entire experience of Andromeda similarly the whole expedition is little confusing within the technology of the setting one of the big plot points of the original games is that the mass effect relays have shaped interstellar travel that travelling long distances without the relays is kind of an unknown science for the most part so Andromeda opens and characters don't comment much beyond 600 years to breach the harsh and infinitely dark void between galaxies and boy are my arms tired wasn't it also a major plot point how the Reapers are some of the only technological constructs who can survive in the intergalactic void isn't 600 years a little unreasonably short even by the franchise's own fiction freshness of journey you can make the argument that the focus on banter and character over the nitty gritty of made-up house and wise is in deliberate and then recive presentational choice but half the fun of sci-fi is seeing people come up with coherent and challenging what-ifs for future technology and ways of life confident definitive answers too nerdy questions of the sci-fi details what gives a character is an extra crutch to stand on in moments where they need to be taken more seriously by the plot as it stands it's difficult to feel serious tension when you know that the script is unafraid of using even the most blatant and obvious deus ex machina and then hand-waving the in world credibility of it the cheapest feeling of all the game's creative decisions is the way they wrote in the other new alien race the fish can't merpeople of the Angora the engulf it in much too effortlessly with the Milky Way races they are just culturally and biologically distinct enough not to infringe on the identity of the Citadel species but also not different enough that they don't already fit into some kind of pre-existent earth cliche anyway they're a stock standard anciently standard noble savage archetype and they feel so narrative ly dated that it is crazy it's frustrating because I feel like the first game would have had the guts to tackle the kind of narrative needed to negotiate a story where you are essentially reliving colonialism in a campy sci-fi context this is the Angora as part of the galaxy they've already named and explored most of everywhere that you visit in the game but most of them died before you got there the hands of the cat and the mysterious magical space algae so you get to go in renamed their shed build over it and then expect them to be delighted and impressed with your cleverness and moving into and bulldozing over the homes of their ancestors I mean it really does not get much more explicitly colonial than that your character can certainly pay lip service to the broader context of all this but at no point is it seriously suggestive that the initiative is any less impressive for moving into a foreclosed on part of a popular galaxy than it would be for actually conquering a blank frontier the level of seriousness and skill with which these themes are tackled by the game is roughly on par with Cool Runnings anyway the willingness of the first game to portray aliens as being skeptical of and biased against humans was some of what made it truly interesting proving the Citadel Council wrong through your heroism and fidelity to compassionate values is what makes it pair path so rewarding an underdog story proving their mistrust correct by letting them all die to pursue an earth first agenda is what made the renegade ending so startling and memorable in the first game to put such a thematic powder keg in the middle of Andromeda script but never really detonated is quite the cop-out but the end Gardens worst featured by far is being a boring cliche the Angora a completely new race from a new galaxy has instantly identifiable traits and features they have gendered and gendered behavior they have bureaucracy they have the cat resistance movement they use hand weapons like assault rifles and shotguns and pistols they flirt with you you can fur it back there is little about them that's really very alien at all their sacred city of Iowans who get used to his layout isn't much more than a very well landscaped mall out of all of them dramatist narrative choices the one to make the Angora so relentlessly derivative and plain stands as the most petty refusal to be creative in the entire game the closest you get to actually engaging with the politics of colonization is with the loyalty quest for Jahl your own garden companion there's detection of the young guy who hate all aliens no matter how well intentioned or fancily dressed this faction the row car has persuaded Joel's family to join its cause Joel takes the Pathfinder along with him to show that humans aren't so bad after all the dialogue is about as natural as that grown hamburger their episodes of Babylon 5 that handle family and loyalty better their episodes of Babylon 5 they seem to have higher production values as well well the fundamental message is all right judge people as individuals show compassion etc the delivery is so melodramatically spoken ham-fisted ly written and poorly animated that it feels like something played off of VHS tape by a substitute teacher in some dusty classroom a handwritten label on the cassette reading Mass Effect and Friends vol 2 Joel as a companion character and crew member is actually mostly well-done dangar culturally defined by being open with their feelings and so Joel has strong opinions on most subjects his process of coming to understand Milkyway culture leads to some good jokes in some endearing moments but when you take his divided stoicism and then expected to support questions about the mole dimensions of the whole Andromeda initiative it's obvious that Joel is too simple and too cartoonish a character to bear the narrative weight and his manner with the crew even down to the accent is a nostalgic dead ringer for Javik mass spec threes profane companion not everyone got to adventure with Javik because he was broken off into DLC so not all returning players will see the parallel but the parallel is more obvious intentional and ham-fisted than even the PBL er a conceptual relationship on a moment-to-moment basis Joel's a likable enough character but he is derivative and shallow when to get down to it DRAQ your Croghan companion is the same way his banter is strong and his place in the greater ensemble as the cranky old war veteran is well defined but his loyalty quest is a complete eye roller again the setup is good a ship full of Croghan seeds needed to feed the new croghan colony was stolen you have to fight to get it back but dreck has a soft and geeky grandson who's trapped on the ship a soft and geeky Croghan who over the course of the mission rack learns to love and accept it's pretty much a miniature sci-fi version of the dynamic between the greasy hacker kid and Bruce Willis and live free or die hard while somehow managing to be even more irritating wreck is a good concept with an incredibly low effort narrative follow-through and yet despite individual character weakness and shallow writing the whole ensemble functions well and comes across memorably more than who they are individually in their articulations of their prison Amity is how the companions all argue and grow close over time how the adventure changes them and lets them grow into greater versions of themselves the emotional investment this creates learning about them in sharing experiences you come to master your own role and place in the new galaxy having their experience bare to run in perfect parallel to yours is tremendous when you're off the ship so are they drinking and yelling and studying and otherwise pursuing totally independent lives they even have a ton of different optional conversations that play out in the broader game world you can get into a bar fight and a pirate port with Drac you can go rock climbing the sulfur springs and an alien desert with vetro you can rent movies for Liam and the crew at the Nexus Space Station the scenes of Damascus city and friendly banter that made Mass Effect 3 Citadel DLC so memorable and necessary have saved how much of the character building is accomplished here it's great genuinely I felt the most invested in the game in its world during these moments I wanted the moments of wonder and exploration to be my favorites in game I wanted that pioneering spirit to dominate but instead it's these interpersonal moments that best define Andromeda moments handled with the bombast and personality of the third game coupled with the idealistic and plucky rhythmic arc of the first it's a winning combination when it finally presents itself and the best example of franchise nostalgia providing a foundation for new creativity and title and not simply ensuring the creative risk doesn't take place at all yet even when playing it safe and staying a court-ordered distance away from true novelty the game hobbles its own presentation with its powerfully underwhelming animations normally I wouldn't complain about something like lip syncing and facial animation I grew up during the aesthetic mouth wobble era of game design and I've been easily impressed ever since but Mass Effect Andromeda has a genuinely serious problem with making its characters not look like leather puppets most of the time in way of the Dragon Age Inquisition and the other Mass Effect's except maybe the first did not facial expressions are often either flat or mistimed emotional expressiveness on the part of the voice actors does not make it all the way under the faces of the characters Mass Effect Andromeda really does have an overwhelming amount of spoken dialogue and the voice actors do a high-quality job of performing it but the Deadeye the manikin look of so many of the side characters undercuts the effort badly I know Andromeda would have landed better for me if there had been tighter better choreographed expressions on the faces of the NPCs or the PCs face for that matter it's been pointed out that this is a labor concession many of these conversations were animated algorithmically by the software not hand animated by the team it's easy to be understanding towards the developers for just how impossibly huge a task it would be the hand animate the hours and hours and hours of exposition and explanations it's easy to be sympathetic for the need to use automated resources in completing these conversations but it is just easy to point out that the computer doing the algorithm clearly has no idea what's actually being said from one character to another and it shows which is a disservice to the writers and the voice actors even when the game finally does get around to a bit of sharp dialogue or a complex bit of science fiction well building the visual delivery can tank the impact in a moment a major patch released about halfway through my playthrough added a layer of gloss and deeper color to character eyeballs which made a dent in the utter artificiality of it but not enough to overcome the feeling that you're just talking to puppets this gets a little awkward when they won't stop hitting on you the Bioware oh man where you trade compliments with a character until they tell you they love you right before the final boss fight has grown from side content to back of the box feature a lot of pre-release marketing for Andromeda was dedicated to answering the okay but what Jalen's are the horny ones questions and this too plays to the game's preference to market ability over creativity the Angora could have been anything but there was a lot of pressure for them to be something with great butts it's harder to have a player one I love you so much seen when your reply is player one would be you know I love you too faceless granulated 9 foot tall mineral monster from war box 7 harder still to put that on promotional material but what would have been lost if they had the dialogue is campy er than usual in Andromeda the flirtations more often than usual and even this would have been a fine and tonal choice to simply have a more for tatius Mass Effect if it wasn't for the fact that the folks doing the flirting closer resembled Disneyland animatronics than people Dragon Age Inquisition was a high-water mark for how the studio handles romance the writing was crisp but the rhythm seemed natural the characters were very charismatic Andromeda swings wide you can be space lothario to a degree that borders on self-parody in fact when you meet the an garb right after being given formal permission to interact with the city's inhabitants you can answer the question of why humanity would cross the Gulf of one galaxy to another with a wink and they'd to meet people like you QT mcfish cat having romance and sex in the plot can add a meaningful human dimension to the writing in its better moments the game is better off ending for a broader range of emotional expression with these inclusions but at its lesser moments which is most of the time the romantic stuff is as predictable and can be as Shatner schmoozing up to the girl with the brightest body paint Bioware has made a surprisingly big deal out of romantic subplots in the game but the result is deeply inconsistent positively Vetri you're a turian mercenary companion character is a prime example of the benefit of weaving romance into the script so deeply both of her primary romantic scenes are really well done the first one as they're taking writer out on a hike to the sulfur springs of an alien desert there's friendly athletic competition and then there's a lot of flirting it has a natural rhythm to it and something personal something outside the ship something private the second scene is even better better go stew great links to find Shepherd a real earth steak to make a real earth meal only to yield a comically inedible result it functions in its standard intended romantic comedy way a quiet and hokey domestic joke with a sci-fi frame it seems like these citadel influence scenes that at a grounded humanity to the characters even bony alien ladies like veteran yet these scenes are half of what's included the rest are snippets of dialogue from world where humanity's proudly planted flags of exploration read call me xoxo the one area where a nostalgic vision for Andromeda could yield spectacular fruit is in the explorative design even if the plot was unimaginative a genuinely alien Vista goes a long way toward redeeming a piece of sci-fi media they could have shown us anything they could have given us the high fidelity versions of the strange and dangerous side planets who bounced the Mako across in the first game instead you've got six principal planets a desert a really hot desert a toxic desert a frozen ice desert and a blank rocky asteroid oh and the one time they do get really crazy an overgrown alien jungle covering an artificial city beneath plus they interact replanted with lightning and floating rocks everything else you visit is either ship or a space station or a small urban quest hub the lone exception being some companion loyalty quests who occasionally get the privilege of having unique locations most of the main planets are very large many square miles of alien landscape but they're filled with for lack of a more precise term MMO content objective markers to sweep up that involve either combat or hitting the interact button between 1 and 5 times they're no worse than the simplistic and short missions you do in the Mako side content of Mass Effect 1 but it has been many years and a pile of money to come up with something better and it simply isn't any deeper than those recolored rocks of yesteryear many of the pacing problems from inquisitions open-world design linger including mixing up busy work quests and important and meaningful side content and an effort to get the player to do all of it some quests of little importance like scan for an underground river in three locations can lead to an optional world boss of enormous size and difficulty others simply end with a ubiquitous green checkmark you've got to put up with a lot of simplistic and boring questing the kind of filler that drug down inquisition 2 unlocks are really good stuff suddenly something boring turns into something that feels worth your time and device versa plus your Nomad buggy moves so quickly that arrow get a sense of the scale of landscape like to do with Inquisition the planetary maps are at once too large filled with in memorable nothings and peppering of good science fiction and too small traversed in minutes without appreciating individual regions like an on foot adventure might unfortunately this inconsistency of engagement does a real number on the sense of unbound exploration Andromeda's trying to create welcome to a whole new galaxy of collection objectives get ready to shoot and hold down the use key the open-world portions of the game don't even use the space well on top of all the various tasks most of it check listing there are entrenched enemy positions scattered all over you can get out and tackle them but all you ever get is random loot and the next time you come true they'll have respawned the game central thematic filler the taming of a frontier and the momentum of civilized progress is constantly eroded by the game maps on willingness to change in the evaporative impact of all of your activity activating each world's ancient terraforming vault does change the world visually and mechanically it lowers the ambient danger like heating radiation and also changes the time of day or quality of life it matters bit but little else you do seems to aside from a few big-ticket choices that branch the plot in opposite in irreversible ways the game has deliberately tossed out the Paragon and renegade system for categorizing choice and replaced it with system closer to Dragon Age where it's all about characterization and motivation for Mass Effect it's a weaker system the choice between Paragon and renegade was by the trilogy's and pretty much productively binary but there was always a strong tonal difference between the two options and significant plot differences between the two playstyles the developers of Andromeda spoke of how the color-coded top or bottom choices in the original trilogy netted so that most players would choose one conversational track can write it out all the way through their whole hundred and twenty hours which is a fair criticism of the system so they replaced it with a system more based in tone and emotional motivation of the players response they wanted to make it so the player would choose a wider variety of options to play writer in a way that was more personal to them than they might have played shepherd that's a noble goal but the reality of it is that the system has defamed what made Mass Effect's conversational choices by Mary as they were as so distinctive it swapped out action and preference to affectation there are only a few instances in the quieter moments loyalty quests where how you respond really does define the tone of what sort of friendship you strike up at the companion where the system feels like a more robust one than Paragon renegade regularly though what it does is functionally reduce writer from two extremely divergent characters like Shepard to one character whose temperament changes slightly from Player to Player and the choices where the game does genuinely branch like leaving choosing to leave a squad of kokand scouts loyalty or companion Drac to die or the Silurian pathfinder to die in the same position the red you seem to deliberately avoid creating an obvious renegade or paragon solution solutions that are either dangerously altruistic or tactically selfish each choice involves loss and complicity in the loss in Andromeda what I'd rather have seen was a mix of the two a binary of carefully weighted sacrifices feels just as artificial as a constant by an area of ethical values with no real variation feeling the missions building to these choices telegraphing them away ahead of time and knowing that the choice will always be slightly unsatisfactory is as much of an artificial 'ti as knowing ahead of time that you'll have to make a red or blue ethics choice and because the dialogue system the dialogue choices given to writer have so much less functional difference than in the old system there is a much reduced sense of player ownership of a writer choosing to be kinder cruel is simply more work ibly dramatic than choosing between professional or goofy or between emotional and distant those choices can work wonderfully especially in isometric role-playing games where you'd be given four or more tonal variations for response but when you're mostly just given two options that steer the conversation along the same general arc I'd much rather have two less realistic but more dramatically branching choices I didn't feel like there was much value and playing through Andromeda again right away like I always felt like in the previous games there's little to luck back on and wonder what might have been different you're pretty much limited to looking back and wistfully wondering if you could have gotten away with being ruder to director tan it highlights the Gamble's and frustrations of game design on a scale like this they wanted bad emotional complexity and instead eroded player identity it must be difficult to not know how these things will pan out once a game is in the wild like many things about Andromeda I appreciate the intent but I find the execution amazingly counterproductive the most immediately and noticeably counterproductive series of design choices however are absolutely in the inventory and crafting system the Mass Effect series has gone through several distinctly different ones starting with a complex but homogeneous scaled system one linear shooters arsenal and simplified armor system - and then an honestly pretty good mix of unique feeling weapons with wide variety in the third game Andromeda goes back to the complexity and unmanageable nonsense of the first games inventory while piling on the multiplayer ready heaps of unique weapons of the third so there are three branches of Technology in Andromeda Milky Way Helios cluster and remnant each has over a dozen weapons to research suits of armor that require the shoulders leg chess pieces and helmets to be researched separately each of the three branches has its own category of research points each thing your research has up to 10 levels of damage and efficiency each costlier than the last usually get between 20 to 100 points of research for things you scan out in the game world a single upgrade cost between 80 and 280 points to research a good level of an armor takes a thousand or more points in a single category of points among many so you have a choice have a scant few good weapons or try out a number of weak low level versions that's if you can afford produce them after researching them each gunner armor piece also requires hundreds of units of crafting resource points found on the ground by scouring for anomalies on the star map or by resource scanning alamos effect to which you now do in the nomad by driving around to actually get the hang of any of this takes the majority of the game at which point you need to level whatever broop rim you have pretty high up to be consistent with the anime strengthening direct stat you some bonuses you get from a whole new category of upgrade points called viability points which give you research points and crafting units at regular intervals you can get credits and single-player for missions performed in multiplayer it's not an impossible system to use but it is totally dispiriting to get started with and aggravating the whole way through at least in the first Mass Effect it was ultimately simple the gun with the highest numbers is the one you should keep in Andromeda the gun is rarely described before you invest a ton of research and crafting points in it you might end up with an assault rifle with good stats that you did not realize would be semi-automatic instead of fully automatic you might get a shot gun that shoots a projectile you didn't want it to shoot you might end up with a pile of numbers it took you hours to get on a gun that you intensely dislike at least in Mass Effect 3 you could experiment without much consequence if he didn't like a gun you could just buy a new one which is an option here too but the best guns are crafted the best armor is crafted and the crafting itself is an infuriating mess and Robert I went back to the first game which people praised for its complexity versus the sequels so Andromeda made its own inventory needlessly complex completely ignoring the workable system they already had with Mass Effect 3 they're already doing so much of the layered single-player multiplayer content the same as they did in NASA Tech's 3 they don't need to shove in a raise of a superfluous systems while roading the system's that they do have and rely on but that's then Andromeda way nostalgia at any cost the viability point system even has its own postgame climax if it raised every major planet to 100% viable mark you're given a call of congratulations and asked to return as soon as convenient to Habitat 7 the shattered world of electrical storms and disrupted gravity where your role as the Pathfinder began there you see the world as a glowing yellow orb surrounded by a force field while the planet is being terraformed underneath without the help of the remnant terraformer which is broken the initiative itself will reclaim the world on the behalf of the Milky Way civilizations they're naming planet after your family their riders there's your reward for total submission to the game's busywork a planet you don't get to see turned into a monument towards the ego of the character that you play the reality of gameplay is that to achieve 100% violet oh you're just ticking boxes you don't even have to do every single quest to achieve it on some planets like us which is a nice concession on the game's part but the things you do to make the planets more viable are arbitrary find a spot to deploy a pod to have 2% help out a random settler with a personal problem have 5% defeat an ancient gigantic robot worm monster have 10% there is little correspondence between the viability rating which inconsistently measures how many quests and activities you've done and any kind of actual world building around humanity and the other Milky Way race is getting a foothold in the new environments the little cutscene through which the game congratulate you is an almost insulting ice on the cake thanks to your long our is completing varied and mostly frivolous tasks we're going to claim to terraform the world with a magical floating rocks but not bothered to devote any art resources to showing you how they're keeping the boulders on the ground and similarly the payoff for following the writer family secret plotline is so much less than it could have been the main revelation relates the named plot and it is no revelation at all except to franchise newcomers the long hidden secret is that the Andromeda initiative was funded so well because business interests in the Milky Way knew that the Reapers were coming I knew some sort of contingency plan was called for the Elder Rider received transmissions from the galaxy covering some important engagements of Mass Effect 3 and he's left with the impression that everyone home is dead it's not it's not the only direct reference the events of the previous Mass Effect's you can find minor characters whose lives are tied to some unexpected previous threads like a couple croghan scientists bent on continuing the work of dr. Oak hear of villainous broken scientists from Mass Effect 2 alongside a violent anti AI activist whose son was a candidate for the Overlord program that the dlc of the same name is centered around the direct references are mostly tangential or in the case of the Reaper invasion secretive but hardly any direct references are needed on account of how much simply reappears in some kind of slightly shook up doppelganger form from the original trilogy most frustrating of all with Andromeda is not what was left out from the original trilogy but what feels like was omitted from Andromeda itself I'm tired of having to wait a year for the fullest most meaningful experience of a Bioware RPG Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age Inquisition were both flat and incomplete on release compared to how they were with all the deals included Mass Effect 3 particularly relegated an important crew member unbelievably important law regarding the origin of the Reapers and its best character interaction the dlc that most people never touched inquisition resolved dozens of its dangling plot points and the genuinely incredible trespasser dlc under release these games have felt like they lacked something critical and then bit by bit you spend another 30 to 60 dollars on extra content and supplementary adventures but give the game the definition that it was lacking at first release generally speaking I am a DLC junkie I can't get enough of little extras and bonus content that developers release but then many dangling threads of the plot and the straightforward week way the man came the main campaign ends and Andromeda have got me especially judgmental about the game for it this time it's not so much that there was just a little foreshadowing down of the main campaign for the DLCs it's that there are huge chunks of what ought to be there for a complete and satisfying story simply missing a sold seperately label in the place of a branch on the dialogue tree what are the other arcs the quarians the hanar what were the remnant difficut care about anything besides making more ket what will become of the writer family now all of these questions ought to have received some kind of attention but they're not so centrally important to the plot that andromeda can't carry on without them being answered yet they obviously will be answered eventually for 10 bucks a pop the end of Andromeda is much more like the end of Mass Effect 2 there's the big mission to the distant mysterious Space Station but after that you're encouraged to keep going and mop off the rest of the side content wait around a while to the DLC to finish up like everything else with Andromeda's quest structure the ending feels infuriatingly soft just one more piece of content in the content constellation not the definitive climax of a 60 hour experience sure you fight the Archon but not personally it's wave of Defense's you shut down his control over the space station systems hit the button fight wait hit another button fight wait hit the final button kacheng save the galaxy Sport good job and there's an after credits teaser scene of a very mad cat warlord storming off like Mass Effect 1 your adventures are just beginning right except the Reapers where an intriguing threat and an enduring series mystery and the next game you fight more boneheaded jerks is not a big enough revelation to keep me on the hook I've barely talked at all about the remnant the lost civilization replacing the Protheans from the main trilogy so little is revealed about them that it's obvious that they're saving that for future Andromeda titles as well they're mostly just a class of enemy in a category of game architecture the proteins were a better developed mystery lost to time holders of the hidden knowledge the remnant are simply makers of the great global dinner's not enough was done to create intrigue nor mystery Andromeda seems to feel that action and architecture flatly equates to intrigue you're in a strange place you did a cool-looking thing you probably wouldn't have done the thing if you weren't interested that's it I didn't connect to the grand Arc of the game's plot at all I spent the majority of the game crossing my fingers that they would throw in some concrete lore and world building details that would really hook me and that the game ended don't worry my quest log assured me you can still go back and collect ten sonic toothbrushes on el-amin while we wait for the next exciting installment Andromeda was a game I was looking forward to from the moment I heard about it a new chance for the franchise its aesthetic its ideas - Shepherd and the Reapers and the incredible cost of continuing to branch the original trilogy's choices but the actual game is so much less than it could have been creatively less in a way that's more about Andromeda being purposefully simplistic with its ideas than it is about the game not having received enough investment it's obvious that the game is already full to bursting with investments of time work money it is a gigantic sprawling high-definition epic what is a gigantic epic that I kind of wish I had not spent so much time on at the end of Dragon Age Inquisition I was optimistically frustrated this is a transitional work I figured it'll be smooth sailing from here Andromeda is a much staler and more creatively confused gain than Inquisition was it is not sure what it wants to be and so grass is wildly at game design straws to try to broaden its appeal simplify the plot complicate the inventory make the aliens hornier the original Mass Effect was a pathfinding title because it was quite focused it knew exactly the kind of bridge it was meant to be between the old Bioware and the new but now new Bioware has become stuck in its own creative rot unwilling to take the kind of risks that once made its role-playing game so thoroughly loveable I do love the Mass Effect trilogy for all its flaws but I didn't love this I didn't even like it solidly half the time I tried the balance by feeling against the knowledge but no one deliberately sets out to make a bad game that each flopping game mechanic or I roll inducing snippet of dialogue had some kind of a nobler intention to start with but there's so much of it thousands of lines of dialogue I didn't connect with dozens and dozens of quests I fought off boredom to complete a hundred square miles of game world I found is flat and artificial is a strip of grass and a highway medium the feeling of the first game that Pathfinder feeling is still accessible in the first game because of its creativity its risks its Gamble's its confidence in its storytelling confidence and the players imagination to fill in the blanks and be borne along into the world the game is creating andromeda has no confidence each new mechanic each plot development is held up before the player like a piece of macaroni art the player might be persuaded to paint on the refrigerator there is a cloying need to be liked pervading the game it takes few Gamble's it deals little reward for all its professed love of adventure in the unknown Mass Effect Andromeda is the most risk-adverse science fiction story I've ever seen and that makes for a bad Mass Effect title thanks for watching you are made possible click website lead like that my name it's like candy on eBay Gabriel nickels Christian Zacharias and Markus Persson Eddie Burton so obscene in cold Birdman will hooting Jake maze Dennis Clark dick Brennan Dalton Tyler World War two free easy feel foolish Alexander leister Ryan Hill or Babia progestin humans come around vision Michael Baer and nobody under O'Brien Andrew Steele Jared Meier awesomely sorcerer Dave's Mike downing Tim's door named Daniel Marsh Andrew taps laccolith why not is Leon Joe I love Connor Jesse listen Michael metal Kowski mad aloose clean metal is king Rory Rainey Simon and near fault Peter room dare ski Argos with Chris light and Ray right here Tom Vickers well Edward Cheryl devera pardon sir now champions Christie right Ricardo Ginga Hercules Johnson Daniel pining free morpheme side Anthony Bardot Nate Williamson Fergus Foley Tom painter Kyle Houdini Cameron loose hakin Coleman William Davis Steven Garret day Oscar Sandberg Jeanette partly Charlize do closure Scheck John a ball heart rates why are all the girls which store Charles Favreau and Winston Carol Henderson Bradley signature of Mathias Hillstrand mouth Naaman Tom Robert Dean Jonathan Jonas Martinez will work great Harvey Jack Dawson Michael Cronin D sticks Jacob Robertson Andrew shovels Michelle Nathaniel ten tsar alexander dmitriyevich are--can ma trillium art history rob tagging mark mark off Tim Divya Faust go to John monkey Alex a lot o and for my rings even premium Matthew demence it's Patrick Joe Hewson Stephen potluck the German snob Simo Paulo Kowski quit dirty Warren Collins Cameron Jackson Michael at little red car camera Geoffrey I cannot fly Wesley a marital bog Alexander heaven snowed up our friendship apart Ivan marna Chris larkey 47 broadly implicit Marsh ties Arabic Aryan press and Allan Kindle hike man over elyes Sean Alex alcohol Erica mechanic dick corporal Matthew Mason major flagger if girls and still Ashley break his damn purse can hey random vote Tasha collage work Josh Marcus doing Neil's bought from our spy Rivera's carbonara sauce

Channel: Noah Caldwell-Gervais

Views: 338,041

Keywords: Mass Effect: Andromeda, Review, Critique, Retrospective, Mass Effect, Franchise, Analysis

Id: Ma0VKHnwArQ

Length: 62min 10sec (3730 seconds)

Published: Mon May 01 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Huzzahtime]

After I watched it I can say that this is probably the best video detailing this game. No circlejerking around the animations, no obvious excuses about rose-tinted glasses, a great analysis on why this game did work in some places, and A LOT of points on why this game just fell flat on it's ass.

-edit- Haha, I already got my first angry pm for this one, even when I said that the game was worth defending in some places. The fandom for this game isn't though, so good luck trying to sort that one out Bioware.

[u/Ooftygoofty-2x]

I hate to be that guy but can I get a spoiler free synopsis of his conclusions? I love Mass effect and there are high odds of me playing it at some point so I'm trying to avoid systemic analyses

Thank you

[u/[deleted]]

Dang, this is easily the most critical video I have seen Noah yet make, and this is coming from the guy who unironically enjoys No Man's Sky.

More of an observation than anything since I haven't play a Mass Effect game since 2.

[u/PupperDogoDogoPupper]

Lot of points I agree with, other points I don't agree with.

Archon for instance, they definitely squandered in the final act, which is odd because Meridian feels so epic and not rushed otherwise. The game hints mid-way through that Archon wants the Remnant technology so that he can challenge the Kett Senate, and when some evidence starts to surface pointing this way, a fracture opens up between Archon and Primus, Archon's 2nd-in-command and effectively "Starscream". But then you get to the finale and Archon has a rage-fit that you undermined his plan. He completely forgets his objectives and becomes an unhinged megalomaniac who wants to destroy you. What's worse is that he is retroactively emasculated in the post-credits sequence by a terminal explaining the weapon never would have worked for him in the first place. A dumb, pointless, ineffectual villain by the end of things.

I disagree that Kett aren't interesting though. They're probably one of the most interesting enemies in the franchise because all of them, with the exception of the Archon, believe it is their moral imperative to help you by exalting you. They're not wrong in a sense - the exaltation process brings peace to you, perfecting you biologically, freeing you from disease, improving your strength and stamina, hell, Kett can withstand the vacuum of space. It's not a "hive mind" either, you can find logs that exalted Angaran thank those who improved them. Within the lore they avoid killing as much as they can. It's definitely at odds with your gameplay experience but they're not bad for the sake of bad like Reapers were (who harvest the galaxy because of what is essentially a glitch in their logic). I mean, hell, the fact that a personality like Archon can arise who defies the consensus shows just how un-hivemind-like they are in the first place.

[u/[deleted]]

I fell into the trap that I needed more Mass Effect apparently. I'm 40 hours in, and already distracted away from it. I don't care if anything is spoiled by this video, I've been waiting for awhile for this one.

Perfect timing too since I have a really slow work day.

[u/[deleted]]

I really enjoy the occasional Noah video but his presentation in both audio and visual leaves a lot to be desired. I also feel like his videos are far too long winded and could benefit from some serious editing. That said he doesn't seem too concerned with any of this, but it would definitely be an improvement if he wanted to make his videos more accessible.

[u/Psydonk]

I've not played Mass Effect Andromeda, but I have watched Gameplay and what stood out to me, is what stood out to Noah it seems as well.

New Galaxy, aliens just look exactly like humanoid aliens from the Milky Way and use earthlike weaponry and have the same fashion and everything.

As soon as I saw this the first thing I thought was "wow, what a let down and entire new galaxy and we got Star Trek forehead aliens"

Honestly, it's SPACE. Come up with something interesting.

[u/CedarCabPark]

I notice there's a sort of personality valley between ME1 and ME2-3 fans. I personally don't give two shits about exploration and feeling like I'm exploring something new. There's a lot of games like that. I JUST want good characters, good dialogue, and a good story, with decent everything else. Mass Effect is remembered because of its squadmates and moments, not its... RPG elements and the mako.

The ME1 fanbase is this weird vocal minority that likes a different type of thing than everyone else. I don't want to go back to Mass Effect 1 at all. I want more of 2 and 3. Shit, with DLC, 3 might be the best of the series. CITADEL DLC, From Ashes, Leviathan, Extended Cut.

The second two are a space opera. The first game is basically Star Trek TNG with some more wit and energy. I think Bioware should understand that most of the fanbase wants more of 2 at the very least. I don't care about RPG elements, or thermal clips, or exploring barren planets. I want the story, the lore, the friends you make. That's how something lasts. Games are a true art form now, and it will continue down that path.

So go open world if you want, Bioware. But make sure it doesn't sacrifice the story. Generic story lines don't work now.

The animations are horrible, but that's definitely not the only problem. ME 2 and 3 had hilarious problems at times. Not anywhere near as bad, but still.

Casey Hudson, when doing both 2 and 3, tried to make the criticisms the most important focus of the dev cycle. That's why combat kept getting better, things improved overall. And I'm hoping that continues into MEA2. The trilogy isn't doomed, but you've got to make a jump as big as from ME1 to ME2 to make it work.

[u/Eadstompa]

I don't get how he can dislike Andromeda for having the standard Bioware romance options, and then say he liked the way Inquisition handed romance when they both did it in the EXACT same way.

I'm not even defending Andromeda, I think they both suck as far as romance is concerned, and for the same reasons.