Mass Effect Andromeda is six hundred years away from quality
Sigh. Well here we are, a new Mass Effect - a fresh start. Mass Effect Andromeda promises to take you to another galaxy, away from Shepard, from the reapers and apparently away from all the heart and charm the original trilogy had. In a crowded year with the likes of Zelda, Horizon and Persona 5 being released within a month of each other, Mass Effect Andromeda feels like the straight to DVD 'it'll do' release. It doesn't 'do' though, not at all, its problems are plentiful and only some of them can be patched. There's not enough thread on earth to patch up the cracks in the writing and narrative, not when it already feels like a patchwork of hastily thrown together first drafts. There's one big area where the game shines, so far as to surpass its predecessors. The criticisms come first though because, well we had to play 50 hours of this game.
Problems become apparent almost immediately, at the games introduction. Woe betide it's a mess of an opening; most games front load their best content, Bioware tried a different tack and choose to front-load Andromeda with some of the most inane writing witnessed in a game of this calibre. Highlights include "I think I pissed him off.... because I shot him in the face!" or "to whom, and your goddamn father. Sorry, my face is tired". The game's concept shows promise, tens of thousands traveling six hundred years through space, leaving their lives behind offers so many possibilities for creative writing.
The game shows a distinct lack of understanding when representing human motivations and emotions, the moral question concerning the magnitude of this decision is never well explored. Bioware instead spends an inordinate amount of time relishing in eye rolling quips and predictable narrative cliches, leaving the plot set up to suffer. At one point you ask a crew-mate why they left their whole life behind, the response is asinine; "I don't know, I didn't put much thought into it." You don't say Bioware? Creativity was left at the door, with jokes taking on extra duties. When the character you play as, Ryder, doesn't take any of the events of the game seriously, even after people die, the story lacks importance. The game's introduction lasts about six hours, during which characters barely have coherent lines of dialogue while voice actors deliver the script as if heavily sedated. Six hours is a long time to endure just for things to get better, 'better' being a relative term to how much patience you have for the likes of Liam's juvenile dialogue - unfortunately the airlock in the ship is occupied.
Introduction aside, the writing and script rarely show any signs of improvement, save for a few genuinely well thought out comedy moments with actual comedic timing. The narrative is uninspired, the few revelations are actively blundered by being signposted in advance. It's unfortunate, especially because of the studio's pedigree and the amount of time spent in character conversations. At the core characters don't talk like actual people, they spout tired hackneyed quips at inappropriate times, don't react to events with any level of believability, and some of their lines don't make sense as prose. The conversations struggle to string together naturally, leaving awkward pauses where there shouldn't be any, with the wrong inflections placed on words everywhere. The funniest moments in the game are where you laugh at cringeworthy dialogue or when one of the countless glitches interrupts an emotional scene, it provides enjoyment in all the wrong ways. For the most part though character interactions are just plain old dull, exposition is flatly delivered, threatening the very likely event of you zoning out through vast amounts of deluge. Similarly to most of the game's facets the writing is inconsistent, which means that you see sparks of promise and intrigue only for the next scene to shatter the illusion when the tone switches on a whim. Banter back and forth between crew members shows an understanding of character development. Equally side stories have their highlights, even if some are cut short. Disproportionately though there's about as much care put into the script as you would give to opening a packet of crisps. These issues follow into the characters.
Characters are hit and miss, most of the crew members have a certain amount of charm, excluding the continued tradition of making all the human characters as interesting as wet tissue paper. With particularly ineffective written characters such as Gil the engineer, with some embarrassing and oftentimes insensitive words flapping from his puppet driven mouth. The alien characters such as PeeBee or Jaal do a much better job of camaraderie and manage to convey relatable emotions on occasion. Romance options return and, well, I can't say I walked away very wet, aside from rubbing elbows with the damp human squadmates. Some romances work better than others but the option to flirt can come up at inappropriate times, not befitting the current tone. The biggest damp squib is in fact Ryder, the protagonist that the game asks you to project yourself onto. The root of the issue comes from the new dialogue system.
The established Renegade and Paragon system of previous instalments has been reevaluated, now being replaced by…. we're not quite sure. Choices are now dictated by ‘tones:, be rational, casual, emotional or professional. It's a great façade but frequently you are presented with two options to say the exact same thing; ‘this Is bad’ or ‘oh no [wink to camera]’. Sometimes you choose an option and Ryder goes ahead and says something completely different, as if every scene only has one outcome. Even further the game refuses you to let Ryder say anything clever or inspirational when appropriate, a bit of pragmatism would go along way between the barrage of one liners. You're often not given the choice to say anything you would want to in the situation, the illusion of choice is not well hidden. Once past staring at dead eyed characters Andromeda starts to show signs of improvement.
Andromeda's biggest strength comes as quite the surprise: the combat. Mass Effect has always been a narrative rpg first and a shooter second. Mass Effect 3 made several improvements to gunplay but Andromeda nails it down for the first time. Combat is fast, impactful and most importantly fun. The new jump jet lets you wiz around the battlefield and deal devastating damage and combos upon unsuspecting foes. Shootouts are all about movement, cover no longer plays such a big role. During hectic battles there's an elegant rhythm and flow to encounters. You can throw enemies around like pieces of paper while your squad coordinate with your attacks, using their abilities in sync with yours. The AI isn't particularly clever and the ‘pathfinding’ (it's no wonder Cora didn't attain the rank) leaves a lot to be desired. Some systems have been stripped down, you can no long control what abilities your squad use in battle and you're limited to only three active powers at a time. Overall though, the combat surpasses many games of the same ilk and even shows up many dedicated third person shooters, if you go into this game for the action there's enjoyment to be had.
Other gameplay systems fare less well. Scanning is back, hurray. It's worse than ever, yeah…. wait what? Arduous is one word for it, you now scan in space, in the Nomad and even on foot. The worst being the planet scanning, where you very slowly travel from system to system, planet to planet with needlessly long unskippable transition scenes. Worse still is that most planets hold nothing more than a text bio, you spend more time waiting to get there than you do actually looking at the planet. It's something the entire game suffers from: needless padding. The game clocks in at about 50 hours, only around a third features meaningful content. The rest? Collectathons, busywork, and running back and forth between two locations, threatening to damage your sanity. Keeping track of everything is equally taxing due to the shambolic state of the menus and the UI, it's cluttered and cumbersome, screens are filled with noise.
Less populated are the planets. Level design follows on from Dragon Age Inquisition, Andromeda is home to a handful of open world planets. The planets, while looking gorgeous are mostly empty, dotted with copy and paste outposts and scanning zones. Discovery is null when all the locations are marked on the map, the game shows you where anything of note is. Apart from the aesthetics of the planets - Hoth planet, jungle planet, desert planet and… another desert planet – there isn't much variation in what you end up doing on each one. The Nomad is an invaluable resource to getting around them and luckily it controls in a joyous way, gliding through sand dunes can be a pure treat to the senses, sans music.
Music is an aspect that often passes you by when playing a game; it's noted that the music is doing it right if you don't actively think about it. If that's true then Mass Effect Andromeda is certainly doing it wrong. The decision to have vast quantities of the game in utter silence is baffling, emotional scenes sit without any musical accompaniment to enhance them. Important scenes feel stark with no music swelling in the background, breaks in dialogue are void of anything, it makes you feel detached from the events on screen. The music should pull us in, invest us into this world, these characters, these intimate moments. The quality of the music itself is serviceable, it's the least memorable of the entire series, mostly because it fails to connect to stand out scenes. The music that accompanies the resurrection of the Normandy in Mass Effect 2 still stirs up a whirl of emotions.
Elsewhere in the audio department, the voice acting is one mixed bag. Many actors deliver their lines as if reading from the page, they're flat, even monotonous at points. It's an inevitability when you have so many characters, but quality should always win out over quantity. Fill the cast of characters with affable personalities or cut them out, edit down not up.
What doesn't help the delivery is the way people look; character models and animations are a shambles. There's something unnerving about how they look, from the way they talk to the way they move, it feels unnatural. The state of the animations has been well chronicled but it bares repeating that at release, they're not fit for a final finished product. It's not only the mouths and lip syncing, it's the emotions displayed on the faces or the lack thereof. Characters smirk when talking about the death of a loved one, grinning inanely while the game asks you to care. The technical problems don't stop there, unfortunately.
The lack of polish in Andromeda is phenomenal, verging on insulting for a full priced game. We were hard pressed to go a single hour without encountering problems; at one point the Nomad disappeared from under us while we were driving it, leaving us in the middle of nowhere. Character models clipped through objects and other models during cutscenes frequently, squamates talked about events that had yet to happen, duplicates of character models were found side by side, we dropped through space when entering the airlock room. On their own these are small niggles but they all add up to an experience that never feels more than just a first draft on the way to a finished product.
A first draft, that just about sums up the entirety of Mass Effect Andromeda. There's promise here, but it's not pulled off in this game. At it's best you find yourself smiling at expertly designed combat, or grinning when the characters start to come together. You get hints of genius, moments where things all seem to work, where it shows you why Bioware still matter. We just wished more of the game elicited these feelings.
