Marketers of Electronic Arts – are still stupid. It was difficult to come up with an idea worse than releasing the first hours of Mass Effect: Andromeda in relatively open access in advance (just for a paid subscription to Origin Access). You know what the most impatient gamers have been introduced to shoals of facial animation, incoherent storylines, and boring ATV rides on a desert planet. The new Mass Effect was released in the face of general ridicule and accusatory excitement. Such a negative background would not harm only an unconditional masterpiece, and Andromeda definitely does not fall into this category. But does the game deserve that kind of treatment? Yes and no.
Belka and Strelka, where are you now?
If BioWare didn’t need to move as far as possible from the Milky Way, knocked down by the notorious “traffic light”, then the events of the new game could well take place in some poorly studied corner of the familiar galaxy – the local frontier turns out to be too habitable. After all, the ark ship with the main character on board arrives in Andromeda after the builders of the Nexus support the space base. It took a little more than a year for some of the personnel to riot, get out of the station, become local bandit groups, and settle in a couple of relatively habitable star systems. And the first planet after the prologue meets us with terrestrial landscapes, abandoned outposts, and crowds of aggressive aliens. Pioneer, you say? Oh well.
Directly with the exploration of locations in Mass Effect: Andromeda, at first, too, everything is so-so. It’s hard to stop yourself from mindlessly rushing your ATV from one point of interest to another, rolling past bases with ever-respawning opponents, and trying to end the excruciatingly long trips through vast spaces as quickly as possible. One planet replaces another, and the gameplay does not change in any way. Moreover, even when Andromeda surprises with something new, it quickly turns into a routine: an unexpected encounter with a really impressive enemy – repeat three more times on other planets; descent into the mysterious structures of the forerunners – there will be another twenty of the same; an exciting capture of the enemy base with a “boss” that makes you run hard – for the third time you will not even sweat. And this fucking space sudoku…
Surprisingly, behind this facade is not the worst research process. Interesting places are hidden on the planets that are not marked on the map at all, so a leisurely search still bears fruit in the form of a spectacular natural phenomenon or a generous treasure of equipment. This is especially noticeable in the local jungle, for which an all-terrain vehicle is not provided – the territory turned out to be more compact and well-developed than the rest. Fans of climbing every corner will find something to do in Mass Effect: Andromeda, but there are two problems: anyway, in terms of the level of saturation of the world, this is far from The Elder Scrolls from the same Bethesda Softworks, and the Mass Effect series itself went a completely different way after the first part, turning into a corridor action movie with a spectacular setting and bright characters. And on this field Andromeda plays with great difficulty.
If we talk about the mechanics of battles, then on paper it looks great. The hero has come off the floor, hung a jump pack on his back and is no longer obliged to hide in shelters. Weapons – the sea, and it is really diverse. If you want, take your favorite from the time of the second part of the “Black Widow” and shoot off the heads of the enemies; if you want, grab a chic quarian shotgun that mows down opponents with an electric arc. Don’t like to recharge? Here’s your autoloader. Don’t like counting ammo? Build a cannon based on relic technology without it! The character development system has finally gone from class, and no one bothers to play as a biotic with a heavy machine gun – the only limitation is the weight of the weapon, which slows down the reloading of abilities. It would seem that this is happiness.
But we have huge open spaces, remember? Most of the battles in Mass Effect: Andromeda do not take place indoors, so why all these tricks when it is easier to shoot enemies with a sniper rifle from a safe distance, especially since opponents do not react to such shooting in any way? At a medium distance, the fights are also often bewildering: you can kill a dozen enemy dummies running to the same shelter in the order of a live (ha ha) turn. With battles in closed spaces, things are better: computer opponents do not become smarter, but they are already capable of delivering problems. However, even the premises here are spacious enough to find a way to pull off a trick with a sniper rifle, and it is easy to jump away from the aggressors who have run on a jetpack. As a result, in a single player game, a variety of combat options for Mass Effect:
Gray mediocrity
However, we flew to the new galaxy, not only for battles and research. The developers boasted that there were almost more voiced dialogues in Mass Effect: Andromeda than in the second and third parts in total. And it would be better if they cheated! Such a number of completely empty conversations will be difficult to find anywhere else. Why monotonously voice over a thousand characters, if most of them play no role and can only tell the dull everyday details of their boring life? Who cares why another faceless colonist flew into this damn Andromeda? Learning from the natives about their way of life is a little more interesting, since for the player they are at least a little new, but by the time they appear, a strong aversion to empty questions is already being developed.
The orders of these characters are no less empty. The content of all tasks, without exception, comes down to either mail quests, or multiple scanning, or clearing packs of enemies. The lion’s share of time is spent on trips on an all-terrain vehicle, and if you’re not lucky, you’ll also have to fly to another planet, once again watching the annoying takeoff and landing animations of your native ship and waiting for the end of a long journey to the destination and back. In a fascinating form, the developers more or less bothered to clothe only the main tasks.
With the key characters, too, not everything is going smoothly: the leaders of the Nexus are uninteresting, the leaders on the planets are not much better, and the traditional chief gad learns villainous pathos only at the end of the game. The first impression from the crew of the ship “Storm” is at best nothing: the partners also suffered from the emptiness of dialogues about everyday life and personal problems, and it takes a long time to get to the disclosure of their characters. Most of the companions’ lines are background skirmishes on board the ship, which are funny but don’t make any sense. It’s only when you’ve come to terms with the fact that Mass Effect: Andromeda can’t offer anything other than CW teenage characters that the Tempest team starts to show character in personal and story missions.
The same is true for the protagonist of the new Mass Effect. Ryder Jr., who inherited the position of a pioneer, half of the game gives the impression of an infantile mattress against the background of both the charismatic Shepard and his father, who quickly disappeared from the plot. Having pulled out the “paragon/renegade” system from Mass Effect, the developers did not compensate for the loss: without branded polar replicas, the illusion of choice became completely illusory, and the character’s character became sterile. The idea of showing the rise of a new hero is commendable, but its execution is hard to see behind the hours spent traveling across desert planets.
Song of the Alien World
Closer to the end, Mass Effect: Andromeda gives solid positive emotions: the awakened plot gains momentum and allows you to enjoy cinematic entertainment, the main character finally forms the character, and the Tempest team becomes close and almost dear. But what to do with the previous dozens of hours of monotonous play? To understand and to forgive? Ah, if I could erase from my memory the boring running around with the scanner and the gray meaninglessness of most of the dialogues…
Of course, you can make a feint with your ears and present Mass Effect: Andromeda as a direct continuation of the ideas of the first part, which the game sometimes strongly resembles, moreover, mainly in shortcomings, not in virtues. Only it is unlikely that the developers actually tried to return to the roots of the series – it’s just that the Canadian variation of modern sandboxes is not far from the gameplay of a decade ago.
Before us is the worst game under the guise of BioWare in the last few years, but Mass Effect: Andromeda is not a failure yet. At its best, adventuring in a new galaxy is joyful, at its worst, it’s an annoyance, but for the most part, it’s just boring. And few people will endure a very average and secondary running around the planets for the sake of rare bright flashes of that same Mass Effect.
