When thinking aboutBioWareMontreal’s entry in the stellarMass Effectseries, it’s important to remember that just because you’re not as good as the best, it doesn’t mean you’re not good. As the follow-up to the iconic Mass Effect Trilogy, it almost feels likeMass Effect: Andromedahad too much to live up to. BioWare Montreal is now gone — merged withMotive Studio— but Andromeda remains, and when you look at the game on its own, Andromeda is actually much better than some would have you believe.
Many would agree with me in saying thatMass Effect 2is the best game of all time, withMass Effect 3being a close second.It’s not that those games are perfect by any means, but because they made you care about things as big as the fate of the galaxy, all the way down to things as small as Shepard’s personal relationships with their squadmates and crew. Mass Effect 2 didn’t have the best combat or RPG systems, but it told a character-focused story with an incredible climax — and all the while, your choices as a player influenced everything.
All of your choices in Mass Effect 2, and to a lesser extent, the original Mass Effect, came together in the third entry in the trilogy. Everything about Mass Effect 3 is determined by the choices made in the prior games, including which of those friends are still alive. If you rushed through Mass Effect 2 and a lot of your squad died, it has lasting effects on the entire galaxy. If Mordin died, a cure for the krogan genophage can’t be made. If Tali and/or Legion died, it’s impossible to save both the quarian and geth peoples and get them to make peace with each other. And all the while, Mass Effect 3 greatly improved on the combat of the prior game and made the journey through the story that much more explosive.
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Where many felt Mass Effect 3 stumbled was its ending. Unlike its predecessor, it felt like all the choices you made throughout the game weren’t particularly impactful at the end. While this isn’ttechnicallytrue, you didn’t really get to witness the consequences of those choices the way you did in Mass Effect 2. You didn’t get to see the krogan thriving and their birthrates exploding, or the quarians and geth working together to rebuild Rannoch. There wasn’t really time for BioWare to show those stories beyond a slideshow in the game’s free Extended Cut DLC. It would have taken an entire additional game to really explore all that.
But rather than telling that story, BioWare decided to take the Mass Effect series outside the galaxy we spent three games trying to save. It was a risky choice right from the beginning. We were all very attached to our Shepard, the friends we made as that character, and the galaxy we gave up damn near everything to protect. But Andromeda, just as in the game’s lore, was meant to be a fresh start.
Mass Effect: Andromeda had us create an all-new hero, Ryder, and tried to have us make new friends and build new romances. It was almost like being a kid who just moved to a new town and is expected to make all-new friends in an all-new school. But many of us, rather than appreciating Andromeda for what it was, couldn’t stop thinking about Liara, Garrus, Wrex, Jack, and the others we left back in the Milky Way. It simply can’t be understated how important it isto have amazing charactersfor us interact with in these games.
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Meanwhile, in Andromeda, many things were actually better than ever before. The fourth game in the series undoubtedly has the best combat and character leveling/customization in the series. Rather than forcing the player to choose a class and miss out on a sixth of the game’s abilities, it was possible for Ryder to mix and match as they saw fit. You could essentially create your own class, and the powers that were available to you were easily the best the series had put forth.
Combining that with the game’s vast crafting system, which included nearly 70 unique and customizable weapons, and it was possible to do some insane buildcrafting in Andromeda. My particular favorite was combining the Tactical Cloak, Turbocharge, and Invasion abilities with a Piranha shotgun I’d tricked out to have high-damage homing shots. Tactical Cloak allowed you to get right up to an enemy without them noticing and provided a damage boost, while Turbocharge increased the rate of fire and gave you a bottomless clip, and Invasion lowered your opponent’s defenses. Used all together, it was possible to completely melt the game’s big bad bosses in a never-ending full-auto flurry while being invisible for half the fight.
Mass Effect: Andromeda was also the fist game in the series to have a vehicle that was actually fun. Many of us remember the hilarious frustration of driving around the first game’s Mako, but Andromeda’s Nomad was an excellent ride — which was important, seeing as Andromeda wasalsothe first Mass Effect game to have huge, open locations to explore. The gameplay in BioWare titles has beenexcellent in its more recent offerings, and when you consider all these factors, it’s hard to understand why we didn’t all love this game right away.
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But remember, Mass Effect didn’t make its name because of great gameplay. It made its name because of great storytelling, and this is where Andromeda comparatively faltered. To be clear, its story wasn’t bad. Compared to the vast majority of games out there, it was downright great. But it wasn’t as good as the trilogy, and our expectations weren’t met as a result.
All of that said, I would advise any fan of the Mass Effect Trilogy who didn’t give the Andromeda Initiative much of a chance to try it again. If you’re able to play it while forging new relationships with PeeBee and Jaal, and do so without thinking about Tali the whole time, you’ll find a story worth experiencing. And you’ll do so withby farthe best gameplay the series has offered.
As for what the future holds, it will probably still be a while before we know. But if we’re really lucky, the upcoming fifth entry in the franchise will let us go back to the Milky Way and see what’s become of the galaxy we fought so hard to save. But playing Andromeda in the meantime makes for a great game in that incredible universe we learned to love in the Trilogy.
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