#ive been working on this all day hopefully i dont regret expressing Opinions online

[paragonraptors]

Hello, I absolutely adore that last piece of yours. The one from Andromeda. My question is - what are your favourite aspects of the game. I played the demo version (first ten hours) and I have mixed feelings about it. So I would like to know what kept you hooked on it if that's alright?

Thank you! You've just asked me the one question I have spent the last like 5 years thinking about. So, well...[cracks knuckles]. As much as I hate saying it, I feel like the first 10 hours are a poor representation of the game, depending on how quickly you progress through the main story. For better or worse, Andromeda's first act frontloads you with a lot of side quests, and I think a lot of the ways it presents its setting and ideas in that time can leave someone apprehensive about how it grapples with its themes later on. If you're willing after reading this, I'd grab it on sale for super cheap or borrow it from a friend/the library and give it at least until finishing the mission to rescue the Moshae on Voeld. (This is around the 15-20 hr mark.) Loyalty missions begin to trigger after that and you really start getting into the thick of it. Though I think they're worth doing as you progress (you are rewarded for it in the final mission), anything that's not in the main quest and companion tabs of the journal can pretty much be ignored without consequence and completed post-game.

Despite all the online shit, it was love at first sight for me. I played at launch and got close to finishing before the first major patch came out. A lot of what probably kept me in my first playthrough was that the idea I had for my Ryder fit really well into what the game gave me, so I was deeply invested in my PC. I think that can really influence one's enjoyment of an RPG.

Ryder is not Shepard, and Ryder's canonical backstory as a 22 year-old nepotism baby who, from what we can tell, had a fairly cushy life growing up on the Citadel until fairly recently is kind of essential for the story to work. I joked in a caption that ME:A is a YA dystopia, but I'm also completely serious about that. It still has a lot of the core cosmic horror themes of the original trilogy, but with a much more scrappy, unexperienced, underdog flavor that you get with a younger protagonist. I liked this in contrast to Shepard being highly and unquestionably competent and having already experienced significant trauma before the story starts via their origin or psych profile. It almost forces you to create an entirely different perspective on Mass Effect's universe as a whole.

Beyond that, it really hit on things I felt were missing from the original trilogy, and especially in comparison to ME1, it's an incredibly compelling introduction to a new trilogy. (I believe it is a disservice to compare ME:A to the original trilogy as a whole, and have come to these opinions by almost exclusively comparing it to 1.)

I really enjoyed the roleplay system. I think the casual/professional/logical/emotional wheel and the impulse actions were a good move away from the paragon/renegade thing. It allowed for choices to not get locked into the appearance of being "good" and "bad" or a kind of set personality type. I like that Ryder gets a psychological profile and relationship bios that are updated as you progress.

I'm a huge fan of all the characters. They carry this game. I think their flaws are interesting and add depth to what's appealing about them. I think the voice performances are just fantastic across the board. I really loved how the NPCs interact with each other and that they have distinct and active relationships outside of Ryder, which is something we didn't really get for the Normandy crew until 3. I love that the Tempest is a small scouting vessel with a crew of 11 all sharing *one toilet*. It's a MIRACLE they are not actively trying to kill each other! Especially when you consider the Normandy was so big it had a whole staff you just straight up didn't really get to know, and Shepard's squadmates were sometimes actually trying to kill each other-- And they at least had three toilets!!

The male characters were written with a vulnerable emotional depth we rarely get to see, especially in video games, and especially in the Mass Effect universe. Hearing them openly talk about their emotions without deflection, and sometimes even gawking at the idea of deflection, was really refreshing. Its easy to get caught up in Alec's whole thing, but the themes of masculinity and fatherhood in other characters' stories (Drack, Vetra, Gil, Jaal, and Liam particularly) offers some nice balance and reflection to that narrative to the point I believe they are intentional supplements/foils to what Alec's got going on.

This game is PACKED with ambient dialogue and text, and it makes the world feel so alive. The message boards, emails, and data pads you find throughout are so good. The ones on the Tempest and New Tuchanka in particular are my favorites, but even the text you can pull up from the forward stations have some delightful little bits. It's unfortunate that ambient dialogue/banter can get cut off by the slightest thing, and the only workaround is to just stop dead in your tracks the second you hear someone talking, but I love listening to the dialogue. It's crazy to me how much made the cut to be recorded and put in the final product despite the known time crunch issues of the game's production.

I've always favored Bioware's map design over of a lot of open-world games, and this one isn't any different. Though I wish they were more fleshed out, there's a solid attempt at introducing different mechanics for different areas of the game to switch things up. I lament the loss of controlling squadmate powers, but the combat is still fun and I enjoy the fluidity of the class system for mechanical and narrative purposes. I really enjoy Remnant sudoku.

For all the flack Andromeda caught about bad animation, it has some of my favorite bits of animation in an AAA video game. For every awkward animation there is a wonderfully charming and well-done one. I wish I could get into specifics without spoilers, but there's a list of ones that get me every time. I've also always considered these cosmetic flaws to be a feature I enjoy in games. So what Ryder runs kind of weird up and down stairs? Geralt Witcher3 can't walk stairs very well either, yet that somehow never came up when people would compare the two.

Your mileage could greatly vary when it comes to the main story. Upon several replays (through the whole series), really getting into the codices, and reading the novels, I think they were setting up a lot of really cool things that expanded on the ideas of the first three. Cosmic horror, creationism, the integration of organic life and artificial intelligence, regulation vs deregulation, autonomy and self-governance, resilience against entropy and destruction. However, I can see how it could come off as half-baked, thoughtless, even irresponsible. It's not perfect. It's clearly rushed in places and unfinished. I don't really have a counter-argument to this as it does also deal with sensitive topics- specifically colonialism and genocide- where people's tolerance can vary significantly. While Ryder can be fairly principled about the problems you encounter, and can often speak out or refuse to be complicit, not everything is handled delicately. Sometimes you will say "Man, I wish I could do this other thing instead of the options I'm given." or "Oof, that could have been written A Bit Better." It struggles to balance the shoot-em-up gameplay with the Moral Questions. I take it as the necessary, but flawed, result of not hand-holding and spelling everything out for an M-rated open-world RPG that can only offer so many variables, but not everyone feels that way, nor do they have to.

With all that said, this is just one of those games I keep coming back to and finding something new to love about it or a detail that illuminates something in an entirely new way. I think it's a shame that as far as we know, subsequent sequels have been cancelled. Much like ME1, the ending left me ready for more.