Original Release: Mar. 21, 2017 for Playstation 4, XBox One, PC. Version Reviewed: PS4, 2017.
THE PLOT:
The Andromeda Initiative was conceived to colonize another galaxy. Volunteers who pass the screening process are put into cryogenic hibernation for the 600 year voyage, with an Ark of sleepers sent for each of the Council races: Asari, Turian, Salarian, Quarian, and human. Each ark has its own Pathfinder, who uses a specially designed AI known as "SAM" to assist in establishing settlements on the prescreened "golden worlds" of Andromeda's Heleus Cluster.
But 600 years is a long time. The human ark, Hyperion, arrives to find the once beautiful cluster ravaged by a dark energy cloud dubbed "The Scourge." The planet originally intended for the human colony has been rendered uninhabitable - and has also been taken over by a hostile species known as The Kett.
Scott and Sara Ryder are the children of human Pathfinder Alec Ryder (Clancy Brown). While investigating that first planet, an accident destroys the helmet of one of the Ryder siblings. With no time for an evac before his child dies from the toxic atmosphere, Alec gives up his own helmet and transfers his SAM - making the younger Ryder the new Pathfinder.
Alec's children never trained for the job, and there are plenty of doubts about this fledgling Pathfinder. The challenges are formidable. The other species' arks remain missing. The advance group tasked with founding the Citadel-like Nexus was decimated by the Scourge, with the intended leadership all but wiped out on arrival. Decisions by the new leaders created resentment and even open rebellion, leading many Nexus exiles to turn to banditry to survive.
At least there seems to be a chance to settle the Golden Worlds, thanks to the terraforming properties of technology left by a mysterious race known as "The Remnant." But the Kett also want control of Remnant technology, and they will fight to the death to obtain it. Leaving the inexperienced Ryder tasked not only with finding a home - but possibly also with winning a war in the process!
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| Alec Ryder (Clancy Brown): The hero the Andromeda Initiative needed, but not the hero they ended up with... |
CHARACTERS:
Ryder: In contrast to the larger-than-life Commander Shepard, the Ryder siblings are decidedly life-sized. Depending on your dialogue selections, your Ryder might vaguely resent or warily worship their father. Either way, there's a strong sense that both Scott and Sara have lived their lives in his shadow. In a smart design decision, you will end up playing as both your selected Ryder and the other sibling - though that doesn't happen until late in the game, which I consider a bit of a missed opportunity.
Alec Ryder: "If you can't run from it, use it." Alec is a former N-7 officer, like Shepard. He keeps his emotions closed off, pushing his people, including his children, toward his selected goals through force of will. Voice actor Clancy Brown makes him a dominant force, and a game-spanning mission involving unlockable memories (flashbacks) mean that he's kept alive as a character even across the roughly 80 hours of game that follow his demise, as your Ryder uncovers the final secret Alec left behind... assuming, that is, that you're willing to track down every memory trigger on every planet.
Cora Harper: The default love interest for Scott Ryder and the second in command. She's a human soldier who trained with Asari huntresses. She also marks a refreshing change for the Mass Effect series: A character who's supposed to be a combat expert is actually one of the game's better combat units! She was meant to be the backup for Alec, his successor as Pathfinder, which means that your Ryder has effectively stolen her job. There was some dramatic potential in this, but unfortunately any sense of resentment on her part disappears too early and far too easily.
Liam: The other human squad member, and he's... kind of a jerk, actually; but unlike Mass Effect 2's Jacob, I think this is intentional. His "squadmate banter" while driving around planets consistently sees him being judgmental or confrontational. His loyalty mission (arguably the best of the game) involves cleaning up a mess created by his own impulsive actions. So... points to the writers for making him consistent. It's not enough to make me like him, though; as soon as other squad members were unlocked, he got benched for most of the rest of the game.
PeeBee: The Asari squad member, a scientist studying Remnant technology. She fills much the same role as the original trilogy's Liara, but in character terms she's practically Liara's opposite. PeeBee is flighty, impulsive, and prone to wanderlust. By her own admission, she doesn't like to stay very long in any one place or with any one person. Her "Rem-tech" obsession makes her one of the better squadmates to bring on story missions, because many of them are Remnant-related and she often has interesting comments during those quests.
Drack: By far my favorite character, Drack is an elderly Krogan who was alive during the Krogan Rebellions - the conflict that ended with the deployment of the genophage. Unlike most Krogan, he has a large contemplative streak, likely due to a combination of a very long life and the constant physical pain from the implants that have replaced half of his original organs. A late game cutscene sees him discussing with Ryder how raising his granddaughter saved him from depression. This moment contains some of the best writing in any Bioware game - though sadly, this quality of writing is far from the standard for the rest of Andromeda.
Jaal: He is an Angara, a member of the race native to Heleus. Decades earlier, the Angara met their first alien race: the Kett, who claimed to come in peace only to betray, enslave, and murder. Unsurprisingly, the Angara are wary of Ryder and the new arrivals from the Milky Way. Jaal opens up quickly - maybe a little too quickly for my tastes, but this does at least fit with who he is. Trust comes easily to Jaal, and he tends to give the most positive reactions whenever Ryder responds to dialogue with open emotion rather than with sarcasm or cold analysis.
The Team: Vetra, the Turian squadmate, is one step removed from being a smuggler and outlaw herself. Her primary concern is protecting her younger sister, Sid, whom she basically raised. Kallo, the Salarian pilot, loves to gossip, but he's tight-lipped about himself. Gil, the engineer, likes to tinker with on-the-fly modifications, which leads to clashes with Kallo. Suki, the science officer, balances a fascination for science against religious faith. Lexi, the Asari medical officer, is dutiful to the point of being a workaholic, and she is particularly protective of Drack. All characters get at least a couple of good scenes, though inevitably some work better than others.
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| Combat is fast-paced and rewards frequent shifts in tactics. |
COMBAT:
Mass Effect: Andromeda's combat is very different from the trilogy's. For the most part, the trilogy was a cover shooter. Hunkering down behind cover and sniping was a reliable way to win battles, with the hardest battles maybe requiring you to occasionally dash from one bit of cover to another.
As I discovered many, many times during the tutorial mission, this will get you killed in Andromeda. The combat here is fast-paced and movement-based. Finding cover remains essential, particularly when up against boss enemies such as Architects and Remnant Destroyers. But stay in one piece of cover too long, and you will quickly get flanked and/or overwhelmed. Success requires frequent, rapid changes in tactics. Tough battles will require you to dodge and charge both to and away from enemies. If a particular fight is defeating you, it can make all the difference to swap to a different set of powers, or a different profile, or a different strategy.
I came straight to Andromeda from the trilogy, and it took me quite a while to adjust to the combat. Once I mastered it, however, I had a great deal of fun. If pressed, I would still pick Mass Effect 3's combat as my favorite of the series... but Andromeda would earn a close second, and many of even the game's harshest detractors have labeled it the best combat of the series.
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| Scott and Sara Ryder share a moment of grief for their father. |
"MY FACE IS TIRED:" RELEASE DATE ISSUES:
There's a point early in Mass Effect: Andromeda, when Ryder meets Director Addison of Colonial Affairs. She is rude and dismissive, then apologizes by saying four words that have gone down in infamy:
"My face is tired."
Detractors immediately seized on this one line to sum up the release day state of Mass Effect: Andromeda. It's not entirely fair, but I also can't entirely blame them. After years of teasing the game, Bioware released Andromeda in a state that could be politely described as "unfinished." The results was immediate backlash.
I never played the release day version, but I have seen videos of bugs that include characters falling off the game map or getting caught in infinite death loops. Character animations were a particular sticking point, with the release day character art looking less like a Playstation 4 release than like something you'd have expected on the Nintendo Gamecube.
Bioware spent the following months releasing patch after patch, and the worst bugs were fixed. Character animations now range from "fine" to extremely good. There are still glitches, some amusing and some annoying, but nothing that ever threatens to break the game. The only bugs that actually frustrated me were: (a) a single incompletable fetch quest; and (b) a handful of conversations that lock you into a very awkward camera position that doesn't let you see the person you're actually talking to.
Had it been released in its current state, I suspect the overall reception would have been a lot better, and I do give credit to the company for fixing the worst of the problems. Even so, I can't blame any buyer for being mad at paying $60 - $70 for a product that took months to finally mostly work right.
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| The Angara are understandably suspicious of the Milky Way colonists' intentions. |
OTHER MUSINGS:
I'm a bit torn in reviewing Mass Effect: Andromeda. I think it's a better game than initial fan reaction to it would indicate. Even with the various patches, though, it still has plenty of issues.
The story opens well. Cutscenes introduce the Andromeda Initiative, the rough arrival, and Alec Ryder's relationship to his children. Moving around the ship familiarizes gamers with the basic movement controls. Then the first mission showcases both exploration and combat mechanics, with the complexity gradually rising. This prologue ends with a dramatic sequence that sets up: the battles in Kett bases that will be a big part of the game; the use of Remnant technology to terraform planets; and Alec's death and the inheritance of the Pathfinder role by the younger Ryder. Both as a tutorial and as a first chapter to the story, it is efficient, effective, and enjoyable.
The ending is equally good. The final story mission builds momentum with a smart mix of well-directed cutscenes and gameplay. Combat, which has been engaging throughout, is particularly challenging in this final section. Even on the highest difficulty setting, however, it stops short of ever being too frustrating. The final mission calls for constant shifts in Profiles and Skills - meaning that at the end, your Ryder mirrors Alec's own rapid Profile shifts from that first mission. There's even a post-credit epilogue, boasting more than an hour of content, that allows you to check in on all the characters and gives some hints about what might have happened next, had this game been successful enough to warrant a sequel.
In between that excellent opening and closing, however, Andromeda struggles to maintain its pace, and a big part of the reason is the open world format employed for too much of it...
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| Ryder explores vast alien worlds - a little too vast, stuffed with a few too many repetitive tasks. |
MASS EFFECT - INQUISITION:
This is the fourth Mass Effect game, but it's really a successor to Dragon Age: Inquisition. Like that game, it mostly relies on an open world format, with you and your chosen party exploring vast areas, following main story objectives and side quests while also uncovering bits of lore. Also like that game, companion quests and most major story quests jettison the open world format in favor of Bioware's more traditional linear pattern - and yes, just like in Inquisition, these linear story missions end up being the most enjoyable in the game.
I actually think the open world format is better used here than in Inquisition. For one thing, it better fits the story. The characters came to Andromeda to explore. Even with the Kett, that remains their priority for the bulk of the story, so it makes a certain amount of sense for them to meander around the worlds they discover.
It still falls into the open world trap, though: All that space has to be filled with something - and far too much of that something ends up falling into the categories of "enemy encounters" and "fetch quests" - including a few untrackable quests that I doubt any but the most die-hard of players bothered completing. "Drive to every Kett camp on the planet searching for datapads." Umm... thanks, but no.
Andromeda also repeats one of Inquisition's biggest missteps. Eos, the game's first major planet, is this game's Hinterlands: It's the least interesting of the major settings, and you spend far too much time there before the game allows you to go to more eye-catching worlds. The Hinterlands defeated many an Inquisition player, and Bioware knew that. Why would they make the exact same mistake with their next game?
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| Pathfinder Ryder uses Remnant technology to restore a world. |
OVERALL:
At Andromeda's core is a very good 50 - 60 hour RPG/action game. Too bad that this core is so often buried under a mountain of fetch quests, meaningless enemy encounters, and open world traversal. In design terms, I think it improves on Inquisiton. The combat is better, and there are no areas that are narratively pointless (two words: Hissing Wastes).
The opening hours are excellent. The ending is also quite good, and many of the story and companion missions in between are highly entertaining. Unfortunately, the whole ends up feeling like less than the sum of its parts. There's a lot more good than bad in Andromeda, even allowing for the bugs and the open world bloat, and I genuinely enjoyed playing it - but I rarely felt compelled to play it the way I did with the trilogy.
In the end, it's not a bad game - but it's still a bit of a disappointing one.
Overall Rating: 6/10.
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