T w e n t y S i d e d

There are a total of five (eventually) viable planets in the game, and early on the game makes it clear that your goal is to heal them all using the alien monoliths. Each planet has some sort of environmental problem: Radiation, extreme heat, extreme cold, caustic water, and out-of-control wildlife. We’re fresh out of the introduction, and already these alien gizmos have lost all sense of mystery. We know what they do and we’re confident we can use them. They’re reduced to obvious mechanical contrivances.

Fine, we’re not doing a sci-fi mystery anymore. Instead we’re doing simple action adventure. We can argue about whether or not that’s a good idea for a Mass Effect game, but it’s not an inherently bad idea for a story. But even if we’re going to use Andromeda’s galaxy-sized canvas to tell a simple story, there’s no reason to portray it in such a boring way. Everyone just assumes that the alien monoliths can fix the planet and they assume they’ll be able to figure out how to use them. You could make this plot significantly more interesting by just having the characters show some level of apprehension or uncertainty.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Andromeda Part 10: Eos”

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.

One of the goals BioWare had for Andromeda was to make a game about being an explorer. That’s what the whole “Pathfinder” thing is about. Strange new worlds, new life, new civilizations, boldly go, etc etc. It’s a great thematic fit for a sci-fi series like this.

But then apparently someone else on the team decided that the Pathfinder should be fourteen months late to the party. The Nexus exiled a bunch of people and now they’re scattered all over the cluster. In the course of the game, you will never be the first person to set foot on a world. For the major worlds, you’re not even the first person from the Milky Way. You’re not even the first human. Everywhere you go you’re bumping into existing human communities and structures.

You’re not the Pathfinder, you’re a tourist.

Squad

Before we take off in our shiny new spaceship, let’s look at our starting squad members. Like Mass Effect 1, you begin with a couple of humans and then add aliens to the crew as the story goes on.

As before, your crew members have special “loyalty missions”, which are quests dedicated to their character. In Mass Effect 2, you had to do someone’s loyalty mission to enable them to survive taking part in the suicide mission. It felt a little arbitrary. How does settling Garrus’ grudge enable him to survive a rocket to the face?

Here in Andromeda, you can’t unlock the top-tier abilities for a character until you make them loyal. I like this better. It makes a little more sense and it makes them more generally useful. If I make Garrus loyal in Mass Effect 2, that’s only useful in specific circumstances during the final mission. If I make Cora loyal here in Andromeda, she’s more useful every time we’re in combat together.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Andromeda Part 9: The Squad”

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.