{"id":45485,"date":"2019-02-19T06:00:33","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T11:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=45485"},"modified":"2020-01-15T03:31:37","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T08:31:37","slug":"andromeda-part-18-choose-your-own-misadventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=45485","title":{"rendered":"Andromeda Part 18: Choose Your Own Misadventure"},"content":{"rendered":"

I said earlier in this series that the dialog is a mess. I’m not going to document every single non-sequitur, cringy one-liner, false binary choice, and incoherent bit of exposition. We’ve already established that this game is lacking in polish and there’s no need to belabor that point. But even beyond the lack of polish you can see problems that couldn’t be fixed by throwing more time at them. Even if the game had been fully baked, the cutscenes would still be clumsy and inefficient. There’s a conversation here on Kadara that really drives home the crude way the dialog is put together.<\/p>\n

You head to Kralla’s Song, a local dive bar. The goal is to to meet with a contact who will go by the name “Shena”. But before we talk about the cutscene, let me ask some rhetorical questions about this bar…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

How Does This Place Work?<\/h3>\n

At some point in the last 14 months, someone took the time to make a sign that says "DRINKS" in English.<\/div>
At some point in the last 14 months, someone took the time to make a sign that says "DRINKS" in English.<\/div><\/p>\n

How did this particular Asari bartender come to “own” this bar? Who supplies her alcohol? How do her customers earn a living so that they can be her customers? This city is already divided into haves and have-nots, complete with slums. What is this wealth based on? Are they basing their economy on money they brought with them from the Milky Way? Why do smugglers exist in this quasi-lawless city? What could they possibly be smuggling? From where?<\/p>\n

Hey Shamus, no fair demanding details from this drama-first world! Do you need to know where the bartender got his booze in Mos Eisley spaceport<\/a>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Star Wars, we were shown a little corner of a great big universe and we were able to assume all sorts of things existed just off-screen. The problem in Andromeda is that the writer put in just enough details to paint themselves into a corner. We know that this city is basically it for humans in this galaxy. This is the most advanced settlement we have. In Star Wars you can assume a wide galaxy full of breweries, gambling dens, competing government powers, some sort of institution to manage galactic currency, and so on. We know that none of those things exist in Andromeda. Kadara Port isn’t some obscure corner of a sprawling complex society, it’s the first tiny foothold of a new one. This place isn’t Las Vegas, it’s Plymouth Rock<\/a>Actually, it’s more likely this would end up being Roanoke<\/a>, based on how Sloane is running things.<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Again, the writer is shooting themselves in the foot by offering just enough details to make the world implausible and confusing but not enough to make it interesting. It’s not like this setup is horrible<\/em> or anything. I’m just trying to show that this team didn’t seem to know what kind of story they were trying to tell.<\/p>\n

Meet With Shena<\/h3>\n

Pay up or I'll continue to vandalize my own property!<\/div>
Pay up or I'll continue to vandalize my own property!<\/div><\/p>\n

Like I said, we’re here to meet with someone that goes by the name “Shena”. The scene plays out like this:<\/p>\n

As the cutscene begins, we see the bartender shouting at a Krogan that he needs to pay for his drink. The Krogan shrugs her off and walks away. Then she pulls out a knife and stabs her own bar, and he comes back and pays.<\/p>\n

Ryder takes a spot at the end of the bar. A guy comes in, buys two drinks, and offers one to Ryder. The player can accept the drink, or refuse and the guy will drink both.<\/p>\n

The guy introduces himself as Shena and then immediately tells you his name is actually Reyes. (After the cutscene, SAM will refer to him as Mr. Vidal. That normally wouldn’t be a big deal, but we just arrived on this planet and the game has been throwing a lot of proper names at us for several minutes. Having one character with three names in two minutes is perhaps making things needlessly convoluted for our poor player.)<\/p>\n

Reyes gives you the exposition you need and then leaves. Then the bartender demands that you pay, even if you haven’t had anything to drink. Ryder then uses her omnitool to pay while saying, “Keep the change,” even though she’s paying digitally and there wouldn’t BE change.<\/p>\n

“I always do,” says the bartender who works in a world that runs entirely on digital currency with no concept of needing to make change.<\/p>\n

-Fin-<\/p><\/div>\n

I hate code names too. Which is why I don't USE ONE.<\/div>
I hate code names too. Which is why I don't USE ONE.<\/div><\/p>\n

You can probably see how this scene was constructed. The writer is using tropes as shorthand to fill in the world. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. As TvTropes will tell you, tropes are tools<\/a>. The problem here isn’t the tropes themselves, but the careless usage of them that makes the situation incoherent or simply immersion-breaking.<\/p>\n

Having a bartender threaten the customers is good cinematic shorthand to show that this place is dangerous and a bit of a dive. Except, having a Krogan<\/i> be afraid of a woman stabbing her own bar is just… off. I admit that it’s not impossible for a Krogan to be cowed by threats, but was this really the best way to construct the intended mood?<\/p>\n

Having someone use a codename is a good way to convey that they’re into cloak-and-dagger stuff, but having him casually blow his cover because he “hates nicknames” makes the entire codename feel like a childish waste of time, both in and out of universe.<\/p>\n

I can't really capture how awkward the cup-handling and drinking animations are in these screenshots. Trust me, they're off.<\/div>
I can't really capture how awkward the cup-handling and drinking animations are in these screenshots. Trust me, they're off.<\/div><\/p>\n

Having someone pretend to buy you a drink but then stick you with the bill is a time-honored tradition in moviesEven though I doubt its usefulness in the real world.<\/span> but it doesn’t work here because the player has the option to refuse the drink.<\/p>\n

Having the protagonist tell a server to “keep the change” is a common way of showing they’re honorable and generous, but it doesn’t work here because this world would have no concept of change.<\/p>\n

Sure, with more time someone could have fixed these stiff faces, the unintentionally comical animationsReyes holds the cups like a three-year-old, which doesn’t mesh with the suave characterization the writer is going for.<\/span>, the janky camera workThe bartender ends up ducking out of the shot when she puts the drinks on the bar.<\/span>, and odd posesRyder’s pose to lean against the railing doesn’t line up and makes it look like she’s doing a bad mime routine.<\/span>, but the problems with this scene go all the way down to the script, and you don’t fix script problems in the polish stage.<\/p>\n

It’s not a horrible scene, but it’s not a brilliant one, either. It’s trying and failing to be stylish. One scene like this wouldn’t be a big deal, but as the hours wear on and all the scenes feel wobbly like this, it degrades the quality of the world itself. Nobody comes off as interesting, witty, intriguing, or surprising. The bad parts feel amateurish and the good parts feel merely functional.<\/p>\n

Choose Your Own Misadventure<\/h3>\n

SEE? This game has roleplaying.<\/div>
SEE? This game has roleplaying.<\/div><\/p>\n

Choice has always been a big part of this series. That’s not to say the choices always made sense or were satisfying, but the effort was there. The choices were a means of roleplaying, a means of self-expression, a way to explore different points of view, and a way of empowering the player by giving them direct agency and a little sliver of authorship over the world.<\/p>\n

Sometimes choices are big and far-reaching in scope, like when you chose to save the galactic councilEven if Mass Effect 2 \/ 3 didn’t really follow through, it was still a big deal at the time.<\/span>. Sometimes it was personal, like when you had to choose between saving Kaiden or Ashley. And sometimes it was just expressive and ephemeral, like when you decided what Shepard should say to the crew before they embarked on their mission in Mass Effect 1.<\/p>\n

Sometimes choices just existed to create tension. You’d find yourself dealing with (say) a hostage situation. Or perhaps that one time<\/a> in Mass Effect 1I didn’t cover it in my write-up, but it’s a pretty good vignette.<\/span> where you have to confront the dangerously suicidal woman who spent most of her childhood as a prisoner of Batarian slavers. You don’t get to make “choices” in the sense of choosing the fate of a species or a companion, because the stakes are personal and you’re not really in control of the situation. But rather than have the dialog play out as a fixed cutscene, the writer has the player choose their responses. This creates the impression (sometimes real, sometimes an illusion) that it’s possible to say the wrong<\/b> thing. This tends to focus you on the scene in a way that just isn’t possible in passive media.<\/p>\n

Based on context, it looks like my options are: 7) Explain to me the concept of divine creation. 4) Yes! I also believe in God. 6) No, your beliefs are wrong. Also, who devised this numbering?<\/div>
Based on context, it looks like my options are: 7) Explain to me the concept of divine creation. 4) Yes! I also believe in God. 6) No, your beliefs are wrong. Also, who devised this numbering?<\/div><\/p>\n

Here in Andromeda, this new development team seems to be aware that choices are important to Mass Effect, but they don’t seem to understand why. Or perhaps they just didn’t see player expression as a priority and they think of choice as this mechanical obligation.<\/p>\n