#but man someone at bioware WENT OFF on these facial animations

[corvus-frugilegus]

the fucking eye crinkles

[theinquisitivej]

‘Mass Effect: Andromeda’ - A Game Review

I don’t often do game reviews. The medium is dear to my heart, and I posted the odd review for smaller games that fascinated me back in the early days of this blog. But film is what I’m drawn to, even leading me to decide to spend my life studying it, so my writing has reflected that. Despite this, games are still an important part of my life, so I’m going to write game reviews every now and then if I’ve finished a game and feel a need to talk about it.

          The Mass Effect trilogy is one of my favourite game series, and features my favourite sci-fi setting in any medium. The world building and character development is unparalleled, and experiencing them through the eyes of Commander Shepard resulted in fantastic interactive storytelling. Shepard would always be a distinguished Commander in the human military, but their gender, appearance, history, decisions, and actions were all in the player’s hands. Some viewed this as potential for limitless storytelling, where your decisions had a direct, impact on the world your character inhabited, leading to an experience where you, the player, could carve out your own narrative. This was true to an extent, but I prefer to think of it as elastic storytelling; you can stretch the story in multiple directions, but there will always be a limit. How you would resolve a situation was ultimately your choice, but there were only ever a finite number of pre-selected options in each scenario for the player to choose from. The game’s developers used their finite resources to craft an experience which we knew could only unfold in a certain number of ways, but still managed to feel limitless. Our playthroughs were memorable and beloved because players will forever feel like they shared a journey with THEIR Shepard.

          So a trilogy closes, half a decade passes, and we return to begin a new journey. This time, we play as Ryder, a human who has taken part in the Andromeda Initiative, a mammoth undertaking by the various races of the Milky Way to explore the far-off galaxy of Andromeda, and eventually establish a home there. 600 years have passed as the Arks, vast colony ships housing the different species, have finally completed their long journey. Inevitably, problems have arisen. A strange and devastating radiation called the Scourge makes much of Andromeda space dangerous for ships to even travel through, and has even turned potential colony planets uninhabitable. On top of that, a new hostile race called the Kett poses a threat to all life in Andromeda. Meanwhile tensions are high between the Initiative and the Angara, the native race of Andromeda, and racial relations are crucial to prevent making another intelligent species our enemy. Finally, Ryder’s father has perished, and his role as the human Pathfinder, a leader charged with ensuring the survival of their species, has been passed onto Ryder. It is up to them and the player to somehow make the Andromeda Initiative work.

          Let’s get the obvious criticisms out of the way first: the facial animation and glitches. Many have torn ‘Andromeda’ to shreds for its lacklustre facial animation, in which characters stare with wide-eyed blank expressions, and the various parts of their face move with an uncomfortable strain. The vocal performances are still up to the series’ standards, but hearing them come out of these uncanny androids is distracting, especially when paired with stiff body movements that don’t quite sync up with the character’s tone or mood. Yes, Mass Effect, and Bioware games generally, have always suffered from awkward character models and stiff animation, but this was either a case of it being especially bad, or the straw that broke the camel’s back; people simply cannot accept lacklustre presentation when they’re trying to engage themselves in a virtual world. The various game-breaking glitches and character movement bugs don’t help either, leading to a disappointing feeling of sloppiness. I understand why so many people damned this part of the game, especially closer to release when things were even worse.

          Having said all of that, I am tired of this being the only point of discussion when it comes to ‘Mass Effect: Andromeda’. When people discuss ‘Andromeda’, it’s only about its animation and glitches. I realise that such a striking and immediate fault would be a major talking point, but I have little interest in reducing my overall impressions of a game to what ultimately amounts to presentational issues. Mass Effect was never just about presentation. It was an experience that blended fine characterisation, worldbuilding, and some solid gameplay. The character models are not great. Now let’s move on to discuss how the rest of the game holds up.

          When you’re not having conversations with characters or advancing the story and making tough decisions from a list of options for each situation, Mass Effect games are third-person shooters with a range of tools to play with. In addition to a diverse range of futuristic guns, the player has access to skills and abilities that can be powered up as they progress through the game. Maybe you want to be a soldier specialising at using weapons and military equipment, or a tech-savvy engineer that hacks enemy equipment and uses gadgets to adapt to any situation, or perhaps you want to enhance your biotic abilities, the equivalent of psychic powers in the Mass Effect universe which happen because… um, convoluted lore and backstory, shut up, you can lift a man into the air and snipe him out of the sky.

          ‘Andromeda’ does a decent job encouraging you to explore the different abilities found in each class, as you can switch between a set of four customisable profiles, allowing you to mix and match classes if you don’t want to commit to playing the game in one particular style throughout the whole playthrough. I appreciate the effort, and think it works well to a degree. However, because of the profile system, you only have access to three abilities at a time, and when you switch profiles your abilities are all automatically set on a cooldown. What this means is that when you’re done using three abilities and want to seamlessly switch to another set to unleash more powers, you have to wait for a while before you can use those new powers. For people who enjoyed focusing more on the powers and abilities rather than the weapons, this can feel limiting. Maybe I was missing some trick to speed up the cooldowns which would allow me to snap between profiles and have my powers ready to go, but the game doesn’t exactly walk you through the intricacies of the combat, so you’re left on your own to figure stuff out.

          A neat feature which changes up the combat is the new ability to use a jump-pack and evade dash. Since enemies still orient themselves to cover, you can use the jump-pack to leap over cover and slam down, or, alternatively, temporarily hover and fire down on them from above. It’s another option for the player to use or not use at their discretion, and it fits in seamlessly with the rest of the mobility found in combat. Where it starts to present a problem is how it affects movement outside of combat. You see, when you’re exploring alien worlds, the jump-pack is there to allow Ryder to traverse the landscape and free up vertical movement when, say, climbing a mountain. But the geometry isn’t always smooth, so Ryder will leap up, but not quite find a landing large enough to stay put. As a result, exploring Andromeda often boils down to mashing the jump button as you continuously slam your head against a steep surface until you somehow reached the top. Things get even worse when you’re in the Remnant sites, ancient ruins with machinery from an unknown dead civilisation. These sites are meant to elicit wonder, like a hidden tomb in an ‘Indiana Jones’ film. Instead, they boil down to platforming segments as the machinery morphs into a series of platforms for you to traverse by jumping and climbing. What should be a glimpse into the game’s deeper lore becomes a disjointed sequence that feels very much like something that only exists because this is a video game. Ryder also moves in a floaty way when they’re not involved in combat, so you’re not so much controlling Ryder as you are struggling to convince them to go in the direction you need. Consequently, platforming becomes imprecise and unsatisfying.

          It took me a little while to warm to the worldbuilding, but I did end up really liking what they were going for. At first, all the people you meet are fellow volunteers that went on this Andromeda Initiative, which means there’s a bit less diversity between individuals. For a long time, one of the dialogue options for every single person you come across will always be “so why did you join the Initiative?”, like students awkwardly falling back on “so what subject are you studying” as an ice-breaker. For the early parts of the game, I was worried that we weren’t really getting a new world with countless different perspectives to explore, but rather a pretty environment with a bunch of people who all shared the exact same “oh gee whiz, I just want to explore the universe!” philosophy. However, as you go further along, you do start to see that people have their own reasons, and not all of them can be chalked up to a starry-eyed spirit for adventure. I also appreciated being someone in charge of making the Initiative work and meeting people who had different attitudes towards it after things start to go wrong. You have to decide whether to try and convince the disenfranchised that there’s still hope, or to move forward with honest transparency and trust that people will have the strength to cope with it on their own.

          Things become even more interesting when the Angara come into play. From that point on, ‘Andromeda’ is not just about ensuring the survival of the people placed under your care in a hostile environment, but also about navigating the many obstacles and pitfalls that come with establishing a co-operative relationship with a new civilisation. First contact is something the original Mass Effect trilogy never really covered. All of that had already happened, and served as the lore for a pre-established universe. Here, you get to see every part of this new relationship between species unfold, and much of the questions that you would ask and the themes you’d want to explore are gone into through the many side missions and small tasks that you can undertake throughout the game. This is my favourite aspect of the game, and ‘Andromeda’ delivered a lot of satisfying and memorable moments that focused on this premise.

          I also enjoyed going through this with the new cast of characters. The new crew will never hold a candle to your squadmates from the Normandy back in the original trilogy, but I did find myself becoming attached to the characters as I fought alongside them. I was frustrated by Liam constantly causing problems, but also loved his optimism and the fact he never stopped trying, even when things went wrong. Vetra, as the Turian squadmate, was always going to be cool, but I thought the issues she was dealing with as an older sister forced to take responsibility in an uncertain environment made her a solid character underneath an appealing visual design. Cora and Peebee didn’t get as much time in my squad as the others, but I warmed to them once I got to know what made them tick, even if their surface personalities didn’t do as much for me. Drack was my second favourite squadmate, and not just because it’s been too long since we’ve had a Krogan on the team. Stanley Townsend delivers Drack’s sage advice with a badass gruffness, as well as an assured certainty that sells the fact this character has lived and fought for over a thousand years. Drack is fun, but also wiser and more nurturing than his jagged exterior would have you believe. Much like the other players I’ve spoken with, Jaal has become my favourite character in the game. As the Angaran squadmate, he’s a fascinating representation for the species, and I thought it made the most sense to have him on every mission to ensure that I constantly had the Angaran perspective in mind when making my decisions. He is sincere, hilarious, and shows multiple sides to his identity which, instead of making him feel ill-defined, results in him being the most well-rounded personality on the team. Nyasha Hatendi gives Jaal a rich charm through his voice, and I think he, as well as the rest of the cast, should be very proud of their performances.

          The one area where the characters appear weak is the main villain. The Kett are interesting enough once you discover what they intend to do to the people of Andromeda and are left guessing at their motives, but the Archon, their leader, is a disposable Saturday morning cartoon of a villain. He pontificates and does nothing except tell Ryder that the Kett are superior and we will never succeed, and his dialogue just repeats this ad nauseum. This is most grating in the final boss fight, where his big ‘GRRR I’M AN EVIL BAD GUY’ voice is constantly chiming in with updates that yes, he is totally going to kill us all, and that he is the ultimate being, blah blah bloody blah. How did we go from fascinating antagonists like Saren and the Illusive Man to this? Those guys represented a real threat, but when they showed up to have a conversation with you, they had your full attention. Their philosophy had led them to twisted conclusions, but you could understand it, and to a certain level, even agree with them. I could never find myself giving the Archon anywhere near the same level of respect as these two, and I certainly never found the threat he posed to be as haunting as the elemental terror the Reapers instilled.

          The thing that bothered me the most while playing ‘Andromeda’ was that, the further I got into it, the more it felt like I wasn’t exploring a living, breathing world, but moving down a checklist. Missions and tasks pile up, and so many of them can be boiled down to ‘go to this exact point on the map, and then you’ll either have to scan a thing, or a fight will break out’. Yes, the characters you engage with along the way provide context which can make you care about the implications of what you’re doing. But there’s little room for deviation or a winding road along the way. You simply move to an exact point on the map, do a thing, then move onto the next thing. Even within missions, there are so many times where things are padded out when you try a door or a bridge and you’re told ‘this isn’t working; go five feet over there and scan that object or switch it on. Done it? Okay, now we can move on’. It seems like an unnecessary detraction, and if this tangent doesn’t engage the player, why bother? I don’t feel like an explorer playing this game, but someone doing a job. In a strange way, that does kind of work with the context of being placed in a position of responsibility and endeavouring to help in as many places as you can. But not everyone is going to think like that, and even with that concession I found the experience to drag at times.

          I’ve had a great deal of complaints about this game, but I do think there is some good content in there. I care about this world and its characters, and there were countless moments where I was confronted with problems on both the large and small scale which made me pause and deliberate. These are some of the most vital components to a Mass Effect game, and I believe ‘Andromeda’ does well in these areas. But there is a lot of things about it that detract from the overall experience. I would be a lot more on board with the theme of exploration that every character goes on about if the way we explored this universe wasn’t so stiff and ordered (it also doesn’t help that ‘Breath of the Wild’ from earlier this year handles open-world exploration so much more masterfully, but that’s for another review). I’ve said my problems, and so have many people in the gaming community, as well as the Mass Effect fanbase. Yet for all its faults, I am glad I played ‘Mass Effect: Andromeda’ for all those times I felt truly engaged with its world. The game’s poor reception may mean that we won’t see it for some time, but I think it deserves to be expanded upon and refined in a subsequent instalment.

For its technical features, I’d give ‘Mass Effect: Andromeda’ a 5/10, but to give you my honest take-away from this, I’m giving it a…

6/10.

Its flaws are numerous, but the experience is kept afloat by a compelling premise and many moments with solid characterisation and interesting moral dilemmas. A rough ride, but one I’m glad I saw through to the end.