Mass Effect: Andromeda 2017

Mass Effect: Andromeda Fallout

There are apparently 3 versions of MEA floating around.

It seems like critics have been fairly in-line for the most part. One reviewer said MEA was Inquisition in space and another explicitly said MEA was not Inquisition in space, which was a little confusing, but overall, it’s clear they’re all playing the same game. (My takeaway: lots of Inquisition-style questing and item collection, a soft ending [e.g. the player can continue playing after the ending], and hours upon hours of side-quest content.) Queerbaiting is being rightly panned on Tumblr. I think there was some confusion over one male character in particular and that character has now been confirmed straight. It doesn’t actually make sense for aliens to be “straight” in terms of attraction to humans, but that’s another post I guess.

Meanwhile, the Dudebro contingent tanked MEA’s metacritic score, and for a group who is so upset over the politicization of games, their reasons for hating the game are overwhelmingly political and generally only skim issues with gameplay and story. My favorite: “the females” do not have enough white presets.

This is actually one of the reasons why I do not understand why publishers insist on catering to this demographic. It is textbook gamer entitlement, right down to finding the one woman responsible for all of their problems so they can threaten to rape her. Everyone knows that a 0 or 1 on metacritic is a protest rating and is therefore worthless. 0 or 1 should mean the game actually does not function or the player cannot play without crashing, and that’s clearly not the case since these guys played long enough to realize there aren’t enough white people in space.

Personally, I do not want to play DAI again and it does sound like the MEA team took a huge nod from Inquisition’s “gotta catch em all” approach to content. What MEA has going for it is the story mode. So if I decide I’d like to enjoy a little Ryder weird-face for myself and I get tired of the reported 130 hours of gameplay I can skip to the chase. I like knowing that I have direct control over how much of a slog a huge RPG is.

Jaal Ama Darav is Now Bisexual

And now I shall buy your game.

You see how easy that was? Actually, it probably wasn’t that easy, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a developer do this before. Contrast this with how romances were handled in Dragon Age: Inquisition.

The two straight romances, Cassandra Pentaghast and Cullen Rutherford, were characters many players wished to romance with bisexual, gay, and lesbian Inquisitors. It looks like Cullen was somewhat similar to the Jaal situation–the game data suggested the character’s romance was bi in the earliest stages, but as development went on Cullen’s male romance was cut.

I personally believe there was a calculus to the decision for these two characters to be “gated” and only accessible for straight relationships. These characters were set aside for a certain contingent of player. They were not intended to be “shared” or tainted with bisexual cooties. Unless you have access to insider development information from that time, which you do not so please don’t waste my time, you will probably not be able to convince me that they weren’t thinking about these things. BioWare understood they needed to make sure female players had exclusive access to a certain type of male character and male players had exclusive access to a certain type of female character.

*gently removes tinfoil hat and puts it back in its protective glass case*

At the time, BioWare argued that the characters’ orientation was integral to their characterization. Thus, Cassandra’s straightness was integral to her characterization, as was Cullen’s. A backlash against “straight erasure” built up on Tumblr. I still have a hard time typing that with a straight face (ahem).

Having lived through the Dragon Age: Inquisition Dark Ages pre-release and the Dragon Age: Inquisition Crusades post-release, and not being entirely sure which was worse, the fact that the Mass Effect team was even willing to consider making one of their straight characters bisexual in response to fan interest is pretty huge as far as I’m concerned. The circumstances are different in that it is impossible to provide a Watsonian explanation as to why a genderfluid alien who has never seen humans before would be “straight” and MEA doesn’t have 8 different player models to complicate staging romance scenes.

What have we all learned? Well, nothing probably, but I just want to point out that unlike overarching storylines, character romances are supplemental content that exist purely to enhance the player’s enjoyment of the game. Players shouldn’t dictate the direction the game storyline takes or the romanctic subplot itself, but they should reasonably be able to access this type of game content with the protagonist of their choosing. Romances should be accessible whenever possible. “And he never liked men, ever, he was super straight, straighty mcstraight, the most heterosexual person you’ll ever meet, the end,” is not compelling characterization that needs to be safeguarded at the expense of players being able to access and enjoy game content.

In summation, there’s no point in ever having a straight romanceable video game character. It unnecessarily blocks players from content for no good reason.

Also, the game’s on the list now.

Carry on.

Mass Effect: Andromeda - Well, At Least it RUNS Unlike Some Games I Could Mention

I few days after I picked up ME:A BioWare announced they will not be releasing any more patch updates for the single-player campaign and confirmed no DLC. I figured as much when I saw they’d dropped the MSRP to $40 in advance of releasing additional content. I got this game for $20 which is frankly ridiculous.

I will say this about Mass Effect: Andromeda. After having a lot of trouble getting Dragon Age: Inquisition and Fallout 4 to run these past weeks it was REALLY NICE to be able to download a big game and play without having to fiddle with a million things.

Going forward, I’m not going to uninstall any game that I think I might ever return to at some point, regardless of how many gigs it takes up. I’ll just buy another hard drive, I’m not even joking. This has been such a PITA. Also, if I use dark arts to get a game to work I need to write the incantation down somewhere.

I spent hours trying to get DAI to work and it’s still not running smoothly. I’m really glad I encountered all this trouble now, when I’m dicking around, and not on release. It sapped my enthusiasm for a Hawkequisition game unfortunately. Honestly, FO4 probably works about as well as before, I just happened to crash twice in a row as soon as I started and that put me off. Probably just bad luck but whatever.

MEA: First Impressions on Crew

MEA does a good job of making one feel responsible for the welfare of a crew. I like the crew a lot and so far I think they did a good job of having a communal atmosphere. The Tempest and crew are definitely one of the strongest aspects of the game.

The Tempest is just big enough for everyone to have their area without being a pain to traverse; the ship design is good. Each crew member has their own space and the door to their room is closed if a dialogue scene is ready to trigger. Otherwise they routinely move about the ship. The crew-to-crew encounters are good and the message board system and emails add interesting tidbits. MEA really does feel like DA2 in terms of companions having lives of their own that the player catches glimpse of. This was a feeling DAI lacked.

I really like Drack. Jaal is a tremendously sweet person, I hate to say “precious” because that sounds condescending but he is precious. He also has this hypnotic fluttery cape thing I can’t really handle. I get what one of my mutuals said about Vetra having a mom vibe. She does have a den mother quality, but she also has a fantastic smile that is definitely worth coaxing out with a bit of flirting. Cora is A+, if anyone does anything to her I’ll rip their head off. Peebee is fun, Liam is sweet in a different way than Jaal (he seems so young), Gil is great. Kallo, Lexi, Suvi are all very likeable.

I actually love Cora’s relationship with a female Ryder, but am a little bothered by how I imagine the dynamic would play out with a male Ryder. Hypercompetent, loyal, experienced Asari-commando trained ultrapowerful Biotic female officer passed over in favor of the Pathfinder’s inexperienced son without any type of explanation? Uh, yeah, no thanks. Whatever Alec’s reasons are, it sucks and Cora is being so professional and supportive about it and I just ugh. I’m sure they’ll throw a curve at me, the game has already told me Alec has Secretz, but it rubs me in all the wrong ways.

BioWare’s insistence on gender-gating characters means if you’re interested in the romance content you have to guess and hope for the best. I chose fem Ryder because I thought I might like to romance Liam, who is straight. Well, surprise, surprise, it turns out I’d actually like to date Cora.

Cora implies she’s had relationships with her Asari colleagues, and the Asari present as female and use female pronouns. So, gating Cora makes no Watsonian sense and I refuse to contemplate the Doylian reasons I’m just tired of having to jump through gender hoops to get what I want in these games. Like can I get a break? Even in the virtual world? PLEASE?

Protip: No straights in space, BioWare. Just saying.

MEA: BioWare Games in a Post-DAI World & and Open World Bloat

Playing DAI has prepared me for this game experience. None of this is spoilery IMO, this is mostly game mechanics discussion and my general crustiness.

The Mass Effect team fooled me once in ME2 with a brilliant video game trope subversion and I decided they aren’t gonna fool me again so I did my due diligence make sure the Eos colony was reasonably advanced in the event of, oh, I don’t know, a massive invasion or something? I got the viability up to 80% but that’s not what I’m going to talk about today.

I was checking out the map and saw how huge it was, and how the side quests were piling up, and said to myself, oh. This is their Hinterlands*. And as we all know, attempting to complete the Hinterlands leads to madness. I resolved to play the main quest and loyalty quests and just ignore anything that didn’t sound super-interesting (that guy who broke into my comm channel did pique my curiosity). MEA doesn’t go out of its way to make side quests terribly interesting.

The map is a designer’s nightmare, a dozen symbols are on the legend. Side quests, ruins, mining, caches, ?, whatever. This is actually a significant problem with modern open world games. The player is supplied detailed maps to the extent completing an area becomes a matter of going down a checklist.

The backbone of MEA is a spreadsheet. The game dutifully tallies all manner of points–research points, Nexus points, resource points (quantities of various metals generally), something or other points–and the player is tasked with dutifully shifting these numbers to different columns in the spreadsheet.

MEA has a hell-inventory and a crafting system. I cannot be assed to figure out the weapons and whatnot beyond “Is it a sniper rifle?” and “Does it shoot good?” You spend points to research a blueprint, then spend a different kind of points to make the thing in the blueprint. I need different resource components, which I must mine or find in random boxes. None of this shit means anything to me and I refuse to care.

The planet scanning mini-game once again returns. I actually don’t have a problem with it, now that you can skip travel cutscenes, but it’s an example of a somewhat pointless franchise feature that most players dislike. It exists so you can at least do something with the other planets in a system. And you know what? At least it’s legacy bloat, and not godawful Skyrim/DAI-inspired genre bloat.

The planets are interesting and fun to explore, even though the way enemy camps are strewn about breaks immersion in some areas. (Oh, look, another mini-base doohicky. It looks almost exactly like the one I saw a half mile back, and the one I will see a mile ahead.) The Nomad is great, it’s a lot of fun to drive, and I think taking more of a Hissing Wastes approach would have worked well here. The environments are one of the best aspects of the game for sure, and I would gladly remove most of the side quests and simply keep important colony-related quests and have a few interesting unmarked enemy bases and leave it at that. Seriously, a tiny camp with 2 enemies or a tiny sliver of a ruin doesn’t do anything but cramp my style.

I’ll take a moment to add I love scanning with my omni-tool. They added this feature as a way to get research points but I just like getting the additional lore and I’d happily do it for that reason alone. It adds to the exploration feel.

I’ve put the idea of a Hawke-eque protagonist behind me. MEA feels a lot like DAI in that I suspect dialogue choices don’t actually matter. Instead of three boilerplate choices, I’m often given two. A serious one and a emotive one. Pick one. Those choices work fine for roleplaying Ryder and I don’t have any expectations about it affecting the relationships with my companions.

If it sounds like I hate the game, I don’t. I am enjoying the core game and the crew dynamics. But this game has a LOT of bloat, just like DAI, that does not add anything to the player experience and in some instances it actually detracts. MEA never forgets it’s a Game with Things that need to be Done. So far there’s a pretty decent game underneath a lot of AAA garbage, and I, a Serious Game Expert, should not have to deal with this nonsense.

I guarantee you, five years from now I’ll be griping about whatever godawful microtransaction hell AAA has devolved into and I will look back and say, gee, remember when they made Games with Things that need to be Done? DAI will be the good old days. Fuck my life man.

* Turns out they’re all like this.

MEA: Flirt Early and Often

If there’s one thing we can count on in Bioware games, it’s lots of opportunities to flirt in ways that are embarrassingly awkward or inappropriate.

I think the worst one I’ve seen in MEA so far is the “I didn’t tell you to put your shirt back on” flirt with Liam, which I heard about beforehand and purposefully triggered to see how bad it was. I actually reloaded my save because I felt unclean, like some cloven-hooved non-ruminating animal.

MEA has casual and committed relationship options and some characters have both, which I didn’t realize. You can casual as much as you want, but apparently after you commit you can’t flirt anymore. I think you can flirt again if you end the relationship, and it might be possible to have two full romances in tandem, but I have already accidentally spoiled myself twice looking for totally innocent non-cheating information so I am leery of digging around any more to confirm this.

Anyway, I flirted at least once with everyone for science, and when I started feeling weird and slightly guilty about all the special attention I sealed the deal with Peebee. It’s all about the innuendo so pointedly strong it’s awkward but also hot.

Zero-G with PeeBee was one of my favorite romance scenes. At first I thought by picking the “casual” route I’d locked out her romance, and I was sad, but I didn’t, and now I’m happy. She is THE BEST, even if her facial animations are all over the place.

For a time, there was a brief second contender. I really like what the writers did with the Reyes friendship/romance. I liked his flirts, so I kept doing that and I really started to warm up to him. The reveal has an excellent one-two punch with two reaction decisions that are actually seem important. My Ryder saved Sloan, and thus nipped a budding romance with Reyes, and it kinda got to me, man. The writing for that whole bit is good. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d locked him out or not (I didn’t shoot him in the back, of course) so watched the romance on YouTube. Ryder asks Reyes why he didn’t confide in her and he says, “I liked the way you looked at me.”

what the FUCK why do I have all these weird confusing feels for this bad, bad man? oh my god BioWare what have you

So it’s a great romance whether it works out or not IMO and I don’t think BW has done one quite like that before. Ryder is forced to make a split-second decision and face an LI’s Bad Action before they can actually start the romance, it seems like the decision point for accepting the actions of a Problematic Lover usually comes after the relationship has started. Since you can’t kill Reyes I assume he’ll show up later or in a future game. There was some speculation he was actually supposed to be a companion in the next game but who even knows where a rumor like that comes from.

So far, two decisions really stick out for me. The Sloan choice, which is optional, and the decision between the Salarian Pathfinder and the Krogan, which was such a deliciously loaded decision I honestly sat there and thought about it a good five minutes.

I don’t really remember too many other choices to be honest. A lot of the reaction choices feel so fleeting and unimportant, usually “Am I an impulsive asshole in this one isolated event or not?” But IIRC the original trilogy had a lot of moments like that. There were a few times you could do something major, like shoot a person, but there were also a lot of times you could just be an asshole. Having the option was always refreshing, even if I didn’t use it.