T w e n t y S i d e d

I was hard on Mass Effect 3 because it was supposedly the conclusion to the story that began in Mass Effect 1. My main problem with the series was that the later team did not understand or respect the world built by the first game. This is different from (say) the jump from Alien to Aliens. Yes, the two movies were vastly different in terms of tone, style, and pacing, but they were two different movies and either one of them could stand on its own. I can accept the idea that two different authors could make very different stories in the same setting. What I couldn’t accept was that the storyteller was changing genres in the middle of a single adventure. The trilogy was all supposedly one story, and so I judged it as such.

In the case of Andromeda, I’m more inclined to allow that the new writer wants to take the series in a new direction. I miss my details-first sci-fi, but I realize it’s not fair to hold an entire franchise to the tone of the original. If the new writer wants to make a new story about lifting the space-curse on the space-forest, then fine. I don’t find the Andromeda story to be particularly interesting, but I’m willing to judge the game on the merits of what it’s trying to do and I’m not going to lambaste it for failing to live up to the idealized dream game I keep hoping for.

Before we Start…

From playing the game I can tell there must have been multiple writers working on Andromeda, and some of them are much, much better than others. As with the last two Mass Effect games, the worst writing is found at the core of the story and the best writing is found in the squadmate side-missions.

During this series I’ll often break from analysis to explain how I would have done things differently. You can decide for yourself if these sections are indictments, suggestions, or fan wank.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Andromeda Part 2: The Andromeda Initiative”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I’m sure most of you remember the novel-sized retrospective I did on the original Mass Effect trilogy that ran from July 2015 to June 2016. At the end of the series we were still looking forward to Mass Effect Andromeda and wondering how that would turn out. Since then the game has been released, received mixed reviews, became an industry-wide joke due to bugs and glitches, was patched up by the developers, and then faded from public memory. It began as a hot mess and ended as a disappointing footnote in the history of BioWare. Now I’m finally getting around to playing it, over two years after my original Mass Effect series ended.

Frustratingly, this game is neither as good nor as terrible as I’d hoped. This is not a return to the energetic worldbuilding of Mass Effect 1, but neither is it an affront to reason like the final act of Mass Effect 3At least, not the main story.. There are a few good ideas here, mixed in with the bog-standard gameplay, open-world busywork, and cringy dialog.

While Mass Effect 3 was at times frustrating and irritating, Andromeda‘s great sin is that it’s merely disappointing. There’s not much to get worked up about here. Mass Effect 3 had the problem where its story unraveled right at the moment where it should have started wrapping up, and it was the conclusion to a story we’d been following for three games over the course of five years. This game tells a stand-alone story. The stakes were lower this time around, and so were our expectations.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Andromeda Part 1: So What Happened?”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.