#her romance was so bugged for some time but now that its playable. and has been added onto. yeah

[devotedlystrangewizard]

minthara's response to "this could be our last moment together" being just a firm "no" because "if we are to die here, we will die together", before she still grabs you SO gently for The Final Kiss. yeah

[chloefraazers]

ME:A post-game thoughts

I should be writing my essay, but here I am talking Andromeda, because I just finished the game and OH MY GOD.  So there are definitely spoilers under the cut. If you haven’t finished the game, don’t click it.  I repeat:

Do not click to read more if you have not finished Mass Effect: Andromeda because there are spoilers below. 

For my first playthrough, I created Bellatrix Ryder.  This was basically decided ages ago: for my first play (and my considered “canon” play) of the Mass Effect trilogy, my Shepard was named Andromeda.  It was kind of by accident.  I went with a space-themed name (my headcanon is that her parents named her after the galaxy because, after the First Contact War settled and spaceflight across the Milky Way was possible, they dreamed of how far people could go in the future), and then later I learned about the Mass Effect: Andromeda game and just laughed about it.  When rumours came around that the ME:A Pathfinder would be named Ryder, I started thinking of names and of course the Black sisters from Harry Potter came up (Andromeda, Bellatrix, and Narcissa).  Bellatrix Ryder actually sounded awesome, despite her HP counterpart being… uh… evil.  ANYWAY. I apologise for the shitty pictures of my TV screen from my iPhone, but:

I had wanted to name her twin Jericho, but your twin is pre-named the default.  Makes sense, since they have to refer to them throughout the game.  I know Codsworth in Fallout 4 has over like… 300 known names for your Sole Survivor, but I think a game of this size would be… just impossible for that.  So I’m not too upset, I guess.  In the end what I decided was that each of the Ryder parents picked a name for a baby and decided not to tell each other what the names were until the babies were born.  Papa Ryder actually picked out Bellatrix (come on, an N7 picking a name that means “female warrior”? Makes more sense than Sara lbr) and Mama Ryder picked Scott after a family member.  Bellatrix was young, but obviously heard about Commander Shepard becoming the first human Spectre and kind-of idolized her, especially after she saved the Citadel from the Reaper geth attack.  In some ways, she looked up to her more than her own father.

Speaking of youth: I loved Ryder’s characterisation.  The Bioware team said the squad would be younger and less experienced, and I really felt that with Ryder.  She was definitely green and had a spunky personality that came from youth.  The characters all-around were excellent.  Jaal was nothing like what I expected: I thought he’d be this hardened warrior, but he was such a cinnamon roll giant spacekitten HONESTLY.  I went with him as a romance option and I regret nothing.  Gonna be honest, I really wasn’t expecting that much nudity or graphic sex from Mass Effect.  Not sure how I feel about it, but I’m more amused than uncomfortable.  I can see why some people got a “manic pixie dream girl” feeling off Peebee, but I think she has enough personality to contradict the stereotype a bit.  I feel like they could have done more with her, but maybe in sequels?  Suvi was lovely, of course.  I was worried about Liam, and though he, Cora, and Kallo were a bit weaker in comparison with the others, there was still enough to all of them that I wasn’t really annoyed or bored with any.  I can’t wait to romance Vetra with a future fem!Ryder, and as always, I love a krogan.  I really wanted to see what “Dating Drack” did, but not with this Ryder.  Next one, I’m totally seeing what happens.  Probably some quality comedy with my favourite salty space grandpa.

Overall, I fucking loved the game.  All of it.  Beginning to end.  It did have bugs and weird facial animations, mostly near the beginning of the game.  You could definitely tell where they spent more time on the details.  But I’m okay with it, because they’re only going to get better.  No game is ever going to be perfect.

And to me, that really didn’t matter as much as the rest of the game.  ME:A had diversity, representation, strong story, and wonderful characters.  It had mystery, twists, and gave enough answers to satisfy some questions but left enough open to leave me aching for a sequel. Among the humans alone, there were so many female characters - and female characters of colour.  One of my favourite moments was on the Nexus, when the angaran was speaking to the asari liaison in the cultural centre and he asked about pronouns, and she said some asari prefer male or gender-neutral.  Avitus and Macen weren’t explicitly stated as being in a relationship that I recall, but it was very obvious that they were definitely in love with each other - and I would love to know more about homosexual relationships among the turians.  (I didn’t romance Vetra this round because… because Jaal, but maybe next time.)

My biggest fear with this game was that Milky Way species, especially humans, were going to burst into a new galaxy and just colonize the fuck out of it and have it… what’s the word… but basically have it be seen as this awesome thing that humans can bulldoze their way into a galaxy and take charge.  I was worried that it would be… ignorant of the implications and negative impact of colonization in the past.  In a way, my fears were expressed in the kett, but thankfully I had no feeling of it in the main storyline of the Pathfinder.  At every step along the way, it was made clear we were there as explorers, and we weren’t going to make a home on a planet already colonized by the angara without permission (the exiles on Kadara might be… complicated, though).  The fact that we didn’t establish an outpost on Havarl or Aya was super important in this respect.  The angara welcomed scientists to Havarl, but it’s their home, not ours.

(Also - I’ve been light on spoilers so far, but here come some major ones.  Last warning.)

In fact, further into the story and the reveal of Papa Ryder’s knowledge of Reapers almost made it… a refugee story? Almost.  Not entirely, but in some small degree.  Which is an important story these days.

Ryder fixing the planets because of SAM made sense, then, especially with the reveal that the angara were created.  If the Jardaan created the angara and, as suggested in one of the post-game terminal emails, there may be “sleeper agents,” it might make sense that it would be somewhat “ingrained” in them to never try to create artificial intelligence, and therefore never interact with Remnant technology the way Ryder could.  Convenient storytelling, sure, but if your playable character in a video game isn’t the hero, then… there isn’t much of a point, lol.

I don’t know if there are major things I missed - and I hope not.  I’m hoping that there will be sequels with the Ryders.  Mass Effect is so unique because of the ability to import previous game data, so playing another game in the Andromeda galaxy without being Ryder might be… strange.  And they definitely set it up for a sequel.  Like, I have to know about the quarian ark, and the Jardaan.  Not to mention, Ryder has the upgraded SAM implant, so… that makes her stand out.

As for my personal theories, not all questions were answered - I don’t think?  Unless I missed something fucking huge, we didn’t discover the truth about Jien Garson’s murder (my working theory is that she’s not really dead), and we didn’t find out the benefactor’s identity, though I’m 100% convinced they had Cerberus ties (not sure about the Illusive Man - seems like he’d want to be more directly involved in the project, even with his Reaper obsession).  Did the Reapers have influence on the project itself?  WHO KNOWS.  Despite nothing actually… happening… I don’t fully trust SAM.  I feel like the game tried to push in the direction of trusting him because EDI turned out fine, but… I dunno, I got a bad feeling off SAM.  Wonder if I’m the only one.

For big decisions, I’m hoping I made some interesting ones.  I chose to save the krogan over the salarian Pathfinder and her small team, and… this one may prove fatal, but I also chose Morda as the ambassador.  In hindsight, I should have chosen the Moshae, but I fucking love the krogan and kind of had this feeling of “it’s now or never,” you know?  Like, if Ryder didn’t nominate them to have a position like that, they would never have one because space racism.  And, like, after the scene where you talk to Drack in the med bay, like… no way am I not siding with krogan.  That scene had me in actual tears.  I’m hoping my decision doesn’t bite me in the ass but the problem with playing a brand new game with no announced sequels is that you really don’t know the impact of your decisions.  It’s great, but also stressful.

Every callback to the trilogy basically had me in tears, though.  I will gladly let Bain Massani call me “little duck” all day, every day.  Throwbacks to Project Overlord, Gavin Archer, the Illusive Man, Miranda Lawson, and Project Lazarus were so great.   Seeing Papa Vakarian and hearing him talk about Garrus and Shepard, and hearing Liara’s logs… like, it was the perfect amount of references to the trilogy to acknowledge its relevance without overtaking Ryder’s own story.  Really, really well done.

I do have some criticisms, besides the facial syncing and some bugs with additional tasks.  Bioware got a bit better with hair options, but I felt like they could have had more for women of colour.  I have four additional tasks I’m unable to complete (which is why I’m stuck at 98% and the completionist in me is distressed), but hopefully a patch will fix those.  What I liked in this game is that no mission, not even the additional tasks, felt tedious.  Like the side quests in Mass Effect got really draining after a while, and so did collecting minerals in ME2 - thank god that system was much easier in this game.  Basically, I was invested in the entire game, which is really fucking great for a semi-open world game.

My biggest… complaint, I guess?  Is the soundtrack.  I felt like I was never really moved by music, even in combat.  In this sense, the game felt a little incomplete.  I don’t know if it was a time issue because I don’t know how this process goes in game development, but I was actually really disappointed in Andromeda’s music - or lack thereof.  The suicide mission in Mass Effect 2 is something that has stayed with me since I first played the game, and the entirety of Mass Effect 3′s soundtrack was just… I mean, it moved me.  From Leaving Earth, to Aralakh Company, to An End Once and For All, it hit every emotion and every drive.  I just didn’t feel that with Andromeda.  What was there was… fine.  Like, it was adequate.  But I felt like there should have been background music in places where it was otherwise silent (the love scene between Ryder and Jaal was a little awkward because all I could hear was their breathing, for example).  I didn’t feel the “video game drive”, like the music was propelling me forward, that I felt in the previous games.  

I really hate saying that, though, because I know the soundtrack people do work just as hard.  I just feel like in this game… there could have been more?

(Edit to add: One other thing I missed… I loved the new dialogue options with the emotion wheel rather than paragon/neutral/renegade, but I do miss aspects of that system, like opening new dialogue options if you have enough paragon or renegade points. I’m not sure how to incorporate that into a game like Andromeda or if it would even work.  Maybe it’s just nostalgia?)

On a final note, Movie Night was a blessing.  If you complete it post-Meridian, I wish you had the option to bring Scott aboard to watch it, but that’s me being super nitpicky.  This game really had an ME3 Citadel DLC feel to the squad, which shows that Bioware really listened to what the players wanted and loved and improved on that.

Definitely going to be playing this again.  Weirdly, though, I feel like replaying the trilogy first…

Gonna do that.