Post by rflowings on Apr 22, 2017 17:12:21 GMT
Hi all,
Anyone who has helped me playtest stuff in the last couple of years knows that I like converting and scratchbuilding ships and troops from the Mass Effect series and every so often I playtest a ruleset with them at the club (more in the works). My wife and I finished Mass Effect - Andromeda last week and I know I'm not the only person with an interest in the series so I thought I'd sum up my thoughts. I'd certainly like to hear yours!
I've largely avoided spoilers except for part 3.
Part one: the good stuff.
A good bit of the magic of the first Mass Effect game has rubbed off on Andromeda. I personally enjoyed roving around in the Mako picking up minor missions in odd corners of the galaxy. There are strong elements of this in Andromeda, and the Nomad (Mako replacement) being used more as an ATV rover than an AFV doesn't at all detract from the game, I thought it was a good departure. This isn't really a military game, it's an exploration game. When you're actually 'on location' either planetside or back at the Nexus, there are interesting missions to be had and the game has the 'Star Trek' feel I think Bioware were going for.
Many of the interspecies political dynamics which brought the original trilogy to life are still around in this game, and characters often stand out. The Nexus leadership (Director Tann, Security Chief Kandros, Chief Engineer Kesh, and the unbearable Colonial chief Addison) are well written and the working relationship you build with them can be satisfyingly confrontational or equally satisfyingly cooperative. Your squadmates are a mixed bag (Liam, a convincing Londoner, gets some rough reviews although I rather liked him) but their personal 'loyalty' missions really stand out as a storytelling high point.
Some of the more minor characters are ace too. On the planet Kadara, there is a power struggle between Sloane Kelly, something of a pirate queen, and her faceless adversary "The Charlatan". Sloane is interesting, her regime a good case study in colonialism, and the other characters you pick up in this quest are some of the best written in the game. It is not a coincidence that some of the biggest controversy in the fanbase has revolved around a single shot fired in a cave in the middle of nowhere on this miserable planet. It's a good story.
There is also some good fun to be had on planet Elladen. This is also a desert planet and the Krogan colony there have troubles of their own. It is still unclear to me why there are Krogan on this highly advanced scientific mission... but they are well written and I don't begrudge them.
Part two: the average stuff
Gameplay in Andromeda is adequate. The addition of jump packs makes Andromeda feel like more of a platformer than the original Mass Effect. As an FPS, this feels more like Halo than Mass Effect, but none of these aspects is a problem for me. The old cover-shoot-move rythym of the original trilogy isn't quite the same, and I do miss it, but there's still capacity for that sort of firefight. There is not much innovation in this area and I can't say I got too excited over the boss fights. If you enjoyed customising weapons and you like inventory management, there is a lot of enjoyable game time to be spent here. It's not really my bag so I won't dwell on it.
The natives of the helios cluster, the Angara, are another neither good-nor-bad aspect to these games. They are poorly defined in comparison to any of the Milky Way species, but they have some intriguing political dynamics. The Angaran background and history is (apparently intentionally) obscure, and I think this is a bad decision from the design team as it seems like they ran out of ideas rather than they are building up to anything more interesting (see below). This is absolutely fascinating from a post-colonial perspective but I'll save the intellectualism for another day
From a purely numbers perspective, Andromeda introduces us to three new sentient species. These all look ok and add some local flavour, but are nowhere near as interesting, either individually or collectively, as the 12+ other sentient species who we left in the Milky Way and have not (yet?) made an appearance in the Helios Cluster. This is a 4-1 loss of depth to the Mass Effect Universe and it makes for a very empty feel to the new galaxy.
At least Fermi's paradox still counts for something, I guess?
Part three: the actual bad stuff.
Hoo boy. I don't want to bore you but there is a lot I do not like in this game. From a quality assurance perspective, Andromeda is junk. I remember encountering bugs in the original trilogy (every game has bugs) but Andromeda is a massive step down. We got bugs which knocked us through the map into the abyss constantly. Not off a cliff or into a hole, but through the map. The game froze constantly. Cutscenes regularly failed to load properly and at times your player character is invisible in these. There was no way to predict when this would happen but in 100 hours of gameplay we must have encountered at least one bug per hour, maybe a quarter of which required us to restart our console and most of the rest of which made us load an old save. I would have accepted this if the game's scale was significantly different from Bioware's last stab at an open-world system, Dragon Age: Inquisition. It's not. DA:I used a similar setup and did it with a fraction of the bugs we've found in Andromeda. We know Bioware can do better, what is unclear is why it went this badly wrong.
[spoilers ahead]
I don't care about bugs, believe it or not. But there are gaping holes in this game in the place it matters most: plot. The biggest spoiler for Andromeda is that there is hardly anything to spoil. All the major plot points brought up in Andromeda are left unresolved and are basically abandoned by the end of the game. You do the last mission. There's a fight. You beat the bad guy. And that's... it. There is a space cancer which eats planets on the loose throughout the cluster. We learn nothing about it by the end, except that it might be artificial. There is a vast network of huge ancient machines spanning the cluster, and the reactivation of these is basically the main 'plot' thing you do in the whole game. Who left them? Why? Doesn't matter. Not covered by the story. They are just busy work to eat up game hours. The main baddies, the Kett? You have maybe one straight conversation with the Kett in the whole game, and it tells you almost nothing about them and – crucially – why the hell we are fighting them in the first place. The actual antagonist, the 'Archon' is like Darth Maul: he's vaguely menacing but doesn't have a clear objective or reason to do anything he does. There is no major twist or reveal in his story. No brain fungus, no false flag operations, no shadow conspiracy. You never talk to him, you just don't like him because he's the bad guy.
This would not be a big deal in simple FPS games like the Halo series. However, the well thought-through conflicts of Mass Effect are the biggest thing that draws me to those games. They are frequently absent in the main story of Andromeda. I really could write pages on how bad the plot holes are.
Final thoughts
It's not that I object to playing through a large game with only a couple of obscure plot hooks pulling me on. I object to reaching the end with nothing whatsoever from the story resolved. This has become a mercifully rare occurrence in video games, lately.
If I were to rate Andromeda, I'd give it 6/10. That's marking up from zero, not down from ten – those six points are deserved. If I were to compare it to a movie experience, I'd day it most resembles Prometheus. Some great ideas, some fascinating questions raised and one or two decent characters established, but very poorly thought-through as a whole and unsatisfying.
Maybe it'll all get fixed in the DLC.
Anyone who has helped me playtest stuff in the last couple of years knows that I like converting and scratchbuilding ships and troops from the Mass Effect series and every so often I playtest a ruleset with them at the club (more in the works). My wife and I finished Mass Effect - Andromeda last week and I know I'm not the only person with an interest in the series so I thought I'd sum up my thoughts. I'd certainly like to hear yours!
I've largely avoided spoilers except for part 3.
Part one: the good stuff.
A good bit of the magic of the first Mass Effect game has rubbed off on Andromeda. I personally enjoyed roving around in the Mako picking up minor missions in odd corners of the galaxy. There are strong elements of this in Andromeda, and the Nomad (Mako replacement) being used more as an ATV rover than an AFV doesn't at all detract from the game, I thought it was a good departure. This isn't really a military game, it's an exploration game. When you're actually 'on location' either planetside or back at the Nexus, there are interesting missions to be had and the game has the 'Star Trek' feel I think Bioware were going for.
Many of the interspecies political dynamics which brought the original trilogy to life are still around in this game, and characters often stand out. The Nexus leadership (Director Tann, Security Chief Kandros, Chief Engineer Kesh, and the unbearable Colonial chief Addison) are well written and the working relationship you build with them can be satisfyingly confrontational or equally satisfyingly cooperative. Your squadmates are a mixed bag (Liam, a convincing Londoner, gets some rough reviews although I rather liked him) but their personal 'loyalty' missions really stand out as a storytelling high point.
Some of the more minor characters are ace too. On the planet Kadara, there is a power struggle between Sloane Kelly, something of a pirate queen, and her faceless adversary "The Charlatan". Sloane is interesting, her regime a good case study in colonialism, and the other characters you pick up in this quest are some of the best written in the game. It is not a coincidence that some of the biggest controversy in the fanbase has revolved around a single shot fired in a cave in the middle of nowhere on this miserable planet. It's a good story.
There is also some good fun to be had on planet Elladen. This is also a desert planet and the Krogan colony there have troubles of their own. It is still unclear to me why there are Krogan on this highly advanced scientific mission... but they are well written and I don't begrudge them.
Part two: the average stuff
Gameplay in Andromeda is adequate. The addition of jump packs makes Andromeda feel like more of a platformer than the original Mass Effect. As an FPS, this feels more like Halo than Mass Effect, but none of these aspects is a problem for me. The old cover-shoot-move rythym of the original trilogy isn't quite the same, and I do miss it, but there's still capacity for that sort of firefight. There is not much innovation in this area and I can't say I got too excited over the boss fights. If you enjoyed customising weapons and you like inventory management, there is a lot of enjoyable game time to be spent here. It's not really my bag so I won't dwell on it.
The natives of the helios cluster, the Angara, are another neither good-nor-bad aspect to these games. They are poorly defined in comparison to any of the Milky Way species, but they have some intriguing political dynamics. The Angaran background and history is (apparently intentionally) obscure, and I think this is a bad decision from the design team as it seems like they ran out of ideas rather than they are building up to anything more interesting (see below). This is absolutely fascinating from a post-colonial perspective but I'll save the intellectualism for another day
From a purely numbers perspective, Andromeda introduces us to three new sentient species. These all look ok and add some local flavour, but are nowhere near as interesting, either individually or collectively, as the 12+ other sentient species who we left in the Milky Way and have not (yet?) made an appearance in the Helios Cluster. This is a 4-1 loss of depth to the Mass Effect Universe and it makes for a very empty feel to the new galaxy.
At least Fermi's paradox still counts for something, I guess?
Part three: the actual bad stuff.
Hoo boy. I don't want to bore you but there is a lot I do not like in this game. From a quality assurance perspective, Andromeda is junk. I remember encountering bugs in the original trilogy (every game has bugs) but Andromeda is a massive step down. We got bugs which knocked us through the map into the abyss constantly. Not off a cliff or into a hole, but through the map. The game froze constantly. Cutscenes regularly failed to load properly and at times your player character is invisible in these. There was no way to predict when this would happen but in 100 hours of gameplay we must have encountered at least one bug per hour, maybe a quarter of which required us to restart our console and most of the rest of which made us load an old save. I would have accepted this if the game's scale was significantly different from Bioware's last stab at an open-world system, Dragon Age: Inquisition. It's not. DA:I used a similar setup and did it with a fraction of the bugs we've found in Andromeda. We know Bioware can do better, what is unclear is why it went this badly wrong.
[spoilers ahead]
I don't care about bugs, believe it or not. But there are gaping holes in this game in the place it matters most: plot. The biggest spoiler for Andromeda is that there is hardly anything to spoil. All the major plot points brought up in Andromeda are left unresolved and are basically abandoned by the end of the game. You do the last mission. There's a fight. You beat the bad guy. And that's... it. There is a space cancer which eats planets on the loose throughout the cluster. We learn nothing about it by the end, except that it might be artificial. There is a vast network of huge ancient machines spanning the cluster, and the reactivation of these is basically the main 'plot' thing you do in the whole game. Who left them? Why? Doesn't matter. Not covered by the story. They are just busy work to eat up game hours. The main baddies, the Kett? You have maybe one straight conversation with the Kett in the whole game, and it tells you almost nothing about them and – crucially – why the hell we are fighting them in the first place. The actual antagonist, the 'Archon' is like Darth Maul: he's vaguely menacing but doesn't have a clear objective or reason to do anything he does. There is no major twist or reveal in his story. No brain fungus, no false flag operations, no shadow conspiracy. You never talk to him, you just don't like him because he's the bad guy.
This would not be a big deal in simple FPS games like the Halo series. However, the well thought-through conflicts of Mass Effect are the biggest thing that draws me to those games. They are frequently absent in the main story of Andromeda. I really could write pages on how bad the plot holes are.
Final thoughts
It's not that I object to playing through a large game with only a couple of obscure plot hooks pulling me on. I object to reaching the end with nothing whatsoever from the story resolved. This has become a mercifully rare occurrence in video games, lately.
If I were to rate Andromeda, I'd give it 6/10. That's marking up from zero, not down from ten – those six points are deserved. If I were to compare it to a movie experience, I'd day it most resembles Prometheus. Some great ideas, some fascinating questions raised and one or two decent characters established, but very poorly thought-through as a whole and unsatisfying.
Maybe it'll all get fixed in the DLC.
