Years ago when the Playstation 4 and Xbox One were announced, I quite haughtily proclaimed that I wouldn’t be purchasing a new generation console until Bioware announced a new Mass Effect game to follow on from the original trilogy that I loved so much.
Before delving too far into my personal saga of emotion surrounding this game; some background. Mass Effect: Andromeda is not technically a sequel to the previous trio, but is simply set in an entirely different galaxy, allowing a ‘clean break’ from the past 3 where our own galaxy, The Milky Way, is under threat.
Andromeda is the name of the new galaxy you find yourself in as well as the game title. You wake up after an intergalactic journey which has taken 600 years, and you’re immediately plunged into strange new worlds and conflict with the Kett, the typical, evil ‘aliens’ you face across Mass Effect. With disaster striking your new home worlds and base station, your role as humanity’s Pathfinder takes you to worlds uncharted.
As Andromeda was announced and given a release date, I went out and purchased the PS4 in anticipation of the five year wait coming to a close. Imagine my trepidation as the early beta-access commentary started to appear online. Buggy, Poor Facial Animations, Lack of Hard Choices. Not without the positives, the online comments did include praise for the revamped combat system. No longer a simple ‘cover shooter’ and adding speed and tactics to the game format.
However, after a long wait and a considerable amount of panic on my end, the game dropped through the door; and I was pleasantly surprised.
Yes, the facial animations are a bit wonky, the mapping on them is a bit flawed in certain scenes and has rightly earned itself the meme of ‘My Face is Tired’ across the internet image boards. The flawed animation however, feels less like laziness and churning a game out after this amount of time, and more like a studio staff pushed for too much, too quickly as the sheer volume of interactions, in a dialogue heavy game, are staggering with multiple species of alien as well as humans to animate various emotions onto. The voice acting also helps recover this in many ways, with subtleties and star casting such as Natalie Dormer of Game of Thrones in the role of Lexi T’Perro, the team’s Asari doctor. The animation of the faces aside, the level of detail in them is something extraordinary, from sweat, pores, tears and dirt, remove the animation in certain circumstances and they’re truly impressive.
In terms of the lack of hard choices, I’m inclined to disagree. The old system of simply ‘Good/Bad’ or rather Paragon/Renegade has been done away with, leaving behind a binary character choice and allowing for a more layered character, as well as contributing to the nuances of your team and how the galaxy views you. The truly harrowing choices of the first three games, were just that, three games in the making. I for one, hope Andromeda is not it’s only instalment, despite the louder lambasting of some critics, and we see more of the decisions the first games were notable for.
Combat is indeed a large improvement, and makes tactical thinking a must. With the addition of jump jets to allow jumping (the previous games were curiously landlocked, for all their technology) and more three-dimensional combat and less linear enemy encounters in a huge set of sprawling, open-world planets, mean that encounters can be sudden, difficult and unexpected. This in turn means you must truly lead, and command your choice of two team members from a roster of six, as you position and instruct them.
In every sense, Andromeda is huge. The game is gigantic and the galaxy filled with detailed planets, people and quests (even if the seemingly endless helper side quests can be grating at times). It doesn’t feel like the game is intended to be a continuation of the previous three, it is separated by play style, a galaxy and design, and this is no bad thing. Despite all the bad reviews, my largest complaint I could find is the clunky design of the new weapon/equipment crafting system…it’s broken and in need of a patch fix, but that is at least simpler than re-mapping thousands of facial variables.
Author: Steve, Southgate Store
