Mass Effect

A while back I mentioned the Mass Effect series. It’s been a while so my memory of the three games I played is hazy. I skipped Mass Effect 3 because it’s not available on Steam.

I like the Star Trek vibe of the series. However, I was most excited to finally be able to import a save file into the next series installment. Not many games allow for this. This led me to race through the first game in anticipation of playing the second. I selected male Shepard for his classic military demeanour. Series one Shepard was mostly a boy scout eschewing romance and opting for the most diplomatic decisions. Harsh choices and an unanticipated story conclusion had an impact on his character going forward.

Game two veers towards X-Files in space. I liked the game play improvements Bioware made but I did not understand the morality system at all. Events did not turn Shepard renegade but he was much more neutral and less selfless. This turned out to be a mistake and his disengaged attitude got in the way of relationships he wanted to pursure. He also struggled to keep his crew intact. Despite this, he managed a positive outcome.

I really felt like a participant in a science fiction world and I wanted to carry on but not enough to sign up for an Origin account. Then Mass Effect Andromeda went on sale on PSN. The demo hooked me.

The game was fully patched by this time and looked just fine to me. We have already established that my bar is not high for that. I put Shepard behind me and embraced this new adventure. I opted for a female, slightly irreverant Ryder. I don’t know what male Ryder is like but I don’t imagine he holds a candle to Shepard either. I can understand why so many wrote the whole plot off as nonsense. This seems a perennial problem for Bioware. They have a hard time writing characters that measure up to their classics.

I feel sad for Bioware developers. They put tremendous work into this and in some ways I liked it even better than Inquisition. But I understand the reaction. If you did not play Inquisition or played it and didn’t like it, you probably won’t like this game. The game’s structure is quite similiar to Inquisition and sadly suffers from similiar problems.

Andromeda does a much better job of explaining itself to the player. Because I had played Inquisition I grasped combos and got comfortable with the menu system quickly. I loved the ship. The crew moves around and interacts with each other. There’s so much to interact with on the ship and you can see outside. Companions disembark with you no matter who is in the party. It’s fun tracking them down at landing sites. They often have new opinions. I missed the Mako from the first Mass Effect because I was so hiliariously bad at driving it. I wished my companions would criticize my driving. The Mako comes back in the form of the Nomad and I am still hiliarously bad at driving and my companions do comment. My one romance was kind of dull but otherwise the ship’s crew was a real highlight for me.

Establishing outposts on the habitable planets is the main thrust of the game but the main story missions are well integrated. I didn’t engage in any multiplayer activities so I don’t know how well that works. The pace and depth of Andromeda’s missions are better than Inquisition’s but inevitably the game slows down with the leveling system. At some point the game goes from engaging and frenetic to repetitive and drawn out. Crew interaction slows down and ship communications dry up. Once the main mission ends you can tackle any left over side content but that gets tedious quickly. I thought the crafting system was alright. I wasn’t overly excited about equipment but I didn’t play on higher difficulties.

I did play on after the main story ended but I tired of it. I was disappointed in the final world. I have had no desire to play again. Making different choices is not going to alter the experience in any significant way and I believe that was Andromeda’s biggest flaw for Mass Effect fans.

The worst part was Bioware’s reaction to the game’s reception. They made short term decisions that I’m sure made perfect sense at the time but I believe were a huge mistake. There were several mysteries in Andromeda that Bioware was likely to pursue with add on content but they cancelled any plans for that. They seemed to abandon Mass Effect altogether in favour of Anthem. Unfortunately that game hasn’t gone over well either. Another Dragon Age is in development and they now claim they will make another Mass Effect but it’s hard to imagine what they are thinking right now.

DLC could have elevated the game enough to convince those who avoided it over bad reviews to buy a bundled version. At the very least, it could have addressed some story issues or expanded on in game choices in some surprising way. There aren’t a lot of games like this and opinions seem to be softening particularly with players like me buying it on sale. A good DLC bundle could have provided a solid narrative foundation for the next game in the series in the same way that Trespasser did for Inquisition.

I declared Inquisition a good game that could have been great. In my opinion Mass Effect Andromeda was an improvement. Very good but still not great. Bioware fans want charismatic characters and real consequences not the illusion of choice. This can be technically difficult to pull off in vast open worlds and inevitably causes controversy and outrage. These type of games are really complex and expensive to produce and they need to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. There is a natural aversion to risk taking. New platforms mean an opportunity to innovate and that’s what Bioware is going to have to do.