Well friends, I am doing a thing that I didn’t intend to do… but it seems like the AggroChat crew has finally realized that Mass Effect Andromeda exists. This game was released in March of 2017 and heavily panned by the most vocal YouTubers. It was so heavily memed that pretty much everyone ignored that it launched, and I am going to tell you that in spite of all of the bad press you probably missed out on a damned good game. The AggroChat crew, specifically failed to engage because following right on the heels of this release was Persona 5 with a lot of folks doing replays of Persona 4 right before that dropped. The end result was that I was the sole member of the crew that ended up playing it, so I never really got to get the discussions about the game out of my system. It was only years later when I found out that my friend @Pixel_One_ was similarly desperate to discuss the game that I finally got that out of my system.
All of that said it seems that Tam at least has finally seen the light and is knee deep in a playthrough, which prompted me to want to re-experience the game as a bit of a refresher. I figure I won’t ACTUALLY beat the game a second time given that Mass Effect Legendary edition is landing on May 14th, but it might get me back into a Mass Effect mindset. I honestly expect the retooled ME Trilogy to feel a bit like Andromeda since Andromeda also feels more than a little bit like Dragon Age Inquisition. So getting back used to the particular quirks of this combat engine might due me well, to at least lower my expectations after the relatively high combat and movement fidelity of the Outriders engine.
I feel like one of the things we need to get out of the way for those that did not play the game are the memes. These very public and very prevalent images almost destroyed the Mass Effect franchise. The game did not launch in a great state, and as I understand it much like with Cyberpunk 2077 these issues were significantly more prevalent on consoles. The very first patch solved most of the glaring issues, including the extremely creepy facial animations that seemed to hit poor Sara Ryder way harder than it did her brother Scott. Bioware was using this game as a test to roll out a new facial animation system and from what I can tell it just needed more time to bake. By the time the time the paper launch date actually rolled around the game was in a pretty solid state.
The problem however is that EA decided to do some fuckery with the release of this game and instead of just launching the title on March 21st when most of the issues had been resolved… they instead ACTUALLY launched the game on March 16th through the Origin Access program. If you were subscribed to their games on demand service, you got the ability to play 10 hours of the full game starting almost a week earlier. It is those five days that seemed to make all of the difference in the world as to the trajectory of this title. Making it even worse it seems that the early release copies that were sent to press outlets were even in a less completed state than the one that came from early access. The memes hit hard and fast and carpet bombed the media landscape to the point that I doubt ANYONE who was even vaguely interested in the game had not heard about them.
So all of this taken into account… Mass Effect Andromeda was one of my favorite games of 2017 and quite honestly… were it not for some pretty stiff competition in the form of Horizon Zero Dawn and Destiny 2 I could have easily seen it elevating to the top of that list. Coming back and playing the game again has refreshed a lot of these memories. Andromeda was trying to solve some problems most specifically introducing vertical movement into the isometric shooter formula. The end result feels now more like a prototype for some of the things that the Anthem engine absolutely nailed, but the first steps were taken here in Andromeda. The other major takeaway is just how generally likeable the cast of characters is in this game. There is not a single character that I didn’t like… aka I didn’t encounter a Carth/Corso/Kaidan character that I love to hate and desperately want to shove out an airlock.
Unfortunately it took me until this morning to sort out the optimal screenshot settings… and ended up filling a directory full of completely black images so you are not going to get a lot of variety here. The game does a game about exploring hostile terrains extremely well. I have fun checking off the boxes planetside and visiting the various nooks and crannies of each area. Since I have played through the entire game before however… I am already looking at the possibility of trying to some mods to tweak that gameplay experience. Largely I am here for a story refresher so that I can competently talk about my thoughts on the game when we eventually do discuss it again on the podcast.
If you have never played this game and consider yourself a Mass Effect franchise fan, then you really owe it to yourself to give it a shot. It is permanently “value priced” due to its poor reputation, but it was worth every penny of the premium I paid for it when it initially launched.
