So I recently started playing mass effect andromeda. I know it’s older now, but I tried playing it when it first came out and was so shaken by it’s departure from the original series that I lost interest.
Now, with fresh eyes, a bunch of mods, and lots of free time on my hands due to the 2020 apocalypse, I’ve decided to dive back in. And you know what? If you don’t compare it to the original masterpiece that was the first trilogy, it is okay. Sure, the facial expressions can be off, and I had to remake my character twice because her expression in game was different than the character creation screen, making it look like she was making a constant duck face, but the game is mostly fine. Although, even after you get it right, my character is always sticking their neck out like they are slightly deaf. Also the UI is a cluttered mess that feels like searching a bucket of legos for that one gun you want.
The crew is also dramatically less engaging, though that could have to do with the fact that I spent three games getting to know the old one. I suppose what really drags the game down for me is this tone of frustrating optimism. Sure, everything initially goes wrong and you are trying to save your people from starving to death, but it is all subject to this cheery undercurrent of scientific discovery.
That ties in to the illusion of choice, the thing that really bothers me about this game. See, you don’t really have a lot of choice on how your character behaves. Unlike the original mass effect, where you could choose between a hero, a pragmatic soldier, or a vicious asshole, in Andromeda you only really get the option to play as a starry eyed child.
This is normal in a game like the Witcher, where the character is predefined and can’t be changed without ruining the established plot. But in a game like this, where you make your character, and in a series known for choice, I find it very disengaging.
Let me give you an example. In almost any game that lets me, I play as a monster. Not a wishy washy mean person, a monster. I like to make a female, who I paint pale, give dark creepy makeup and hair, and act like a standoffish aggressive psychopath the whole way through. Extra points if I can cover her in tattoos and dress her like a mortal combat character.
This is something that the original mass effect games got right. If one of your crew members disrespected, threatened, or in anyway annoyed you, you could tell them and I did. In this game, people openly threaten my character and my only options are back down or back down with a lame joke.
In another bioware game, the old republic, this is not a problem. My sith lord responds to insubordination with all the grace and subtlety of a polar bear trying to catch a seal. Hell, I’ve skipped whole quest-lines by flying off the rails and threatening to gut someone who had the audacity to expect me to compromise on something.
For me this problem was most glaringly obvious when I landed on a vaguely hostile planet and unlike Commander Shephard, who would have had the option to walk out of the ship heavily armed to brazenly threaten their way through a tense standoff, creating a massive diplomatic meltdown, I just walked outside with my hands up, like some kind of wimp.
I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t surrender to aliens. Why would my supposedly badass character? And then, I have to play diplomat and pretend to respect their alien culture. Who is this person I’m playing and why can’t I call the aliens degenerate fish people and nuke them from orbit?
When the annoying blue woman wants to join my crew, why do I have to pick between welcoming her or welcoming her with a groan. Why can’t I just tell her to shove it and maroon her on the dying planet with my middle finger up? This could trigger an interesting stowaway quest where I have to choose between forgiving her for eating my provisions, shooting her out the airlock, or selling her to the krogan as a slave. In case you couldn’t tell, I really don’t like Peebee.
Sure, the game has to retain a plot, but can’t I at least have enough agency to determine how my character FEELS about something? Can’t she bitch about doing diplomacy with the fish people? Or make a few crass jokes about pulling a British on them and nuking their planet from orbit?
“Do you think they’ll agree to help us?” asks the generic comic relief guy.
“They better, or the ruins of their civilization will be buried under three miles of slag when I’m done bombing those slimy blue freaks,” says the character I would make.
Who’s to say I wanted to come to Andromeda for a noble reason? Maybe I wanted to pull a Christopher Columbus and learn what alien steak tastes like. Maybe I wanted to be like a Viking, pillaging weaker civilizations, crushing the skulls of lesser alien species between my rock hard muscular thighs while stroking my ego with the barrel of my steaming machine gun. Only then, after signing up do I realize I have to play the role of a spinless doormat and I’m really unhappy about it.
I guess what I’m saying is this, why bother having a game with branching dialogue and an illusion of character choice without the option to role play as a character you find genuinely relatable, namely, a the doom slayer. Hell, I’d settle for a deadpool esque detached mercenary.
That is all.
Diary of a Malcontent 