#arlathahn

how is everything you make so GORGEOUS. love you. 💕🌸😍❤️🌷

oooow thank you :3

ooh, replaying Andromeda, eh? how is it? 🙃

It’s pretty good actually!  I think a lot of my less-than-fond memories were influenced by all of the negative press it got - some of which was fairly earned, and some of which... really wasn’t.  Fair cop on the facial animations being... off, especially for a big triple A publisher like Bioware, and some of the level design was way too big and scattered.  (Although I probably would have enjoyed driving around and doing fetch quests more if the controls on the Nomad weren’t a friggin’ crime against humanity.  WHAT’S SO WRONG WITH JUST BASIC FORWARD AND BACK JOYSTICK, BIOWARE???  HUH???  TELL ME THAT!!!)

(ahem)

But the character writing (aside from poor Cora) and narrative was still really solid, and whatever visuals were lacking in facial animations clearly all went to the environment, because the game is genuinely fucking beautiful.  Standing at the top of the ascent in Havarl, looking out on the monolith framed against the big red moon?  Looking up at the clear sky on Voeld?  Coming in for a landing on Aya?  That first time docking on the Nexus, the sense of scale and grandeur set against the wide empty black of space?  Encountering the Archon for the first time on the way to Aya???  Those moments were all as awe-inspiring at any from the original trilogy, for me.  The visual design was fucking-top notch.

It’s interesting, though; with a little space from the game (and some growth of my own as a writer) there are definitely some structural issues with the writing that I don’t think I could clearly identify before.  The pacing, for example: the game wants you to take the time and do the side quests, and you’re rewarded narratively for doing so (people who show up to help at the end, Dunn being saved, etc), but the narrative structure is all push-push-push go-go-go.  But that’s a problem with just about every big RPG I’ve played; no one seems to know how to build some breathing space into their story in a way that creates urgency without causing narrative dissonance if you’re actually playing the entire game.  DA:I did a pretty good job lampshading it off as all being part of the general war effort, and I think they were trying to do the same thing with the Andromeda viability system, but the Archon wasn’t sufficiently interwoven into the other half of the narrative to pull that off.

That being said, I still think it’s a pretty solid game.  The combat is just fun - I never get tired of vanguard-ing around, smashing people in the face with my face - and I really like the characters, especially Ryder.  I’m currently playing through as bro!Ryder and it’s fascinating to me the little differences in their voice acting choices; Sara is a lot more informal and emotive whereas Scott tends towards more restrained responses.  (Although that’s not just the voice acting, some of it’s writing, and that I don’t like so much.  When Alec dies, Scott’s emotional response is “he died a hero” and Sara’s is “I can’t believe he’s gone!”  And the one that really got my goat was in response to Peebee and Drack moving in: Sara’s logical response was “Whatever, I don’t care,” which was Scott’s emotional response; Sara doesn’t even get the chance to say Scott’s ‘let’s be professionals and establish some rules,’ which I find unreasonably infuriating.)  One of the reasons that’s funny to me is because there’s a lot of side responses (from both siblings) that are like “Sara’s the good one, Scott’s the troublemaker!” where based on actual gameplay I can only assume that’s an in-joke between them because Sara is clearly the actual troublemaker of the two of them and Scott is the long-suffering voice of reason.  Break free of your petty gender constraints, Bioware!  Let Sara be the feral little chaos goblin she was meant to be!

this is gorgeous!! ����❤️