I started a playthrough of Mass Effect: Andromeda a couple weeks ago.
It's been interesting to revisit the game in the aftermath of my disappointment in/DNF-ing of DAV. Is the Bioware magic there? In dribs and drabs, in streaks of light, sure -- but mostly it's just a lot of to-ing and fro-ing without much substance.
That doesn't mean it's not a fun game to play, especially since a) I know what I'm getting into, and have no expectations, and b) sometimes what you're in the mood for are a bunch of fetch quests. Which is great, because that's mainly what this game is.
As always, I have a bunch of thoughts, and where better to stick them than here on Tumblr!
The good:
The combat is so much fun! I am, as always, weak for biotics, and the "grab this guy and throw him at his friend so they both explode" maneuver still delights me, but I think the tech powers really shine, too. My biggest complaint here is that they got rid of Warp, which may have been a little too OP in this setting but I'm still bummed it's gone. Also Cora needs to stop stealing my kills!! Now we know how the squad felt in ME2 when the Vanguard class dropped.
Cora was kind of meh for me on my first playthrough, and I was kind of squicked out by how a lot of her asari hero-worship played out (granted I have never been a huge fan of the asari as a whole, and my post-trilogy headcanons spend a lot of time grappling with that). But! I made an effort to take her on more missions, and after her loyalty mission, some of the writing for her is really lovely. I like that she lets go of her bitterness about not being Pathfinder, and really starts to embody and take pride in her work as Ryder's second/bodyguard/Watson. And she finds other things to occupy her time, outside of that work! It's just good character writing, though it's a bummer it takes so long to get there. Her interactions with Drack are a delight, too.
There are some genuinely good moments, when Ryder and their squad have to reckon with the fact that the golden worlds chosen by the Initiative had people living on them, at some point; I think there's a lot to interrogate about having the best of intentions and making the best decisions you can with the information you've got, but still ending up as a colonizing force. Like -- okay, you've got the exiles. You can't feasibly imprison them, because you don't have the resources, and keeping them around threatens to kickstart another rebellion. So you boot them off the ship, and...the issues begin to cascade. When the game starts to dig into this, it's fascinating and the stakes are emotional, thought-provoking, and have actual weight.
Drack continues the Mass Effect tradition of krogans being both amazing and severely under-utilized. LET US ROMANCE THE KROGAN, BIOWARE. STOP BEING COWARDS.
The character banter is, generally speaking, a delight. I was especially tickled by how Jaal calls Liam out for quitting being a cop because he was bad at it, because it's a valid assessment! Also Cora is quite the subtle troll when you get her going. There's a nice arc, too, in the Jaal/Vetra banter, where you get the strongest sense of two differing cultures bumping up against each other.
I think it's hilarious all the asari look like each other, except for Peebee. Elcor DNA is just that strong, I guess.
Also it lends credence to my headcanon that all asari do look alike, and the various races just seem them as more attractive according to their societal norms because something something subtle mind influencing.
The bad:
I get (mostly) what they were trying to do with Liam's character, but they went about it in the most-boneheaded way possible. He's not a character so much as he is a collection of bad and/or incomprehensible decisions, and while you can have a character like that, you have to explore, eventually, what makes them like this. Otherwise, it's just poor writing. I do think there's an element of Bioware failing at writing Black characters (Jacob in the original trilogy is a mess of "oh no why would you write that", especially in his loyalty quest, but Vivienne in DAI gets smacked with it as well; it's really upsetting), but the issue with the writing for Liam is that he makes dumb decisions for reasons that are ostensibly well-intentioned, but never fully explored or justified. I'm not saying that he has to end up fully agreeing that he was wrong and that he needs a huge punishment for it, but more discussion of how he's trying to create connections that really take time and effort to build/how his crisis response training has made him look at things like problems that must be resolved immediately would have given him much-needed depth.
I still don't know why we needed to see Liam and Jaal shirtless. There's fanservice, and then there's...whatever that scene was. A worst-case reading of it is that Jaal wandering around with all his business out is the Heleus Cluster's first intergalactic sexual harassment encounter. Couldn't these guys have just insulted each other while clothed? I'm not arguing against fanservice whatsoever, but it always works better when it's within a proper context. As it stands, that scene is emblematic of a larger issue in the game: moments that want to be important and/or fun and/or meaningful and/or a wink to the fans, but that aren't earned whatsoever.
Okay, I know I will probably make her fans sad, but if there had been an option to bounce Peebee back to the Nexus, I would have done so instantly. Granted I am not an asari fan (as I said above), but I've come around to a lot of them! Liara has grown on me greatly! She'll never be in my favorites but I do love her now. But PEEBEE. UGH. Her introduction drives me up a wall -- here is a RAnDom PenGuIn asari who can't be boxed in by rules or categories! She's a cool scientist who gets bored! So be shiny and fun or she's out of here! She's the Cool Girl monologue from Gone Girl, as interpreted by someone who thought it was an instruction manual. Now, I understand there are reasons for her holding people at arms-length, and when I finally understood them, I felt awful for her, but...you discover them too late for them to have any real influence on the character or how you interact with them. Before that point, you just get a lot of her telling you she can leave at the drop of a hat, that not everyone has to be your best friend (true! But it could have been synthesized with the story better -- it's an interesting idea that not everyone has to like your character, but can still work with them), and her being really mean for no discernible reason to Lexi. I can tolerate characters making dumb mistakes, but alienating your medic? That's just...really really dumb. There's a ton of little things that annoy me -- "oh give me Jaal's medical scans! For REASONS"; the way she essentially kidnaps you for her loyalty mission; how she expects to be congratulated for no longer being willing to ditch the Tempest's crew at the slightest provocation -- but really it comes down to bad writing.
This has been done to death but: if her dad is an elcor, why does she have eyebrows? Why does she have to have a belly button, and why do I have to look at it? Why do her eyes haunt me in my dreams, those glassy, dead eyes?
The kett are...hoo boy. I can't take the Archon seriously when he has that little underbite. There's some delicious potential for body horror and psychological horror in there (the terminal entries you find about various kett remembering bits of their previous lives and being terrified by it are SO cool), but none of it is built up into any real menace.
It's similar to the main issue with DAI: by the time you're ready to face the Big Bad, they've been out of the story long enough that you kind of forget they were there to begin with. Granted, Corypheus had some Sovereign-level lines, and I think DAI handled the stakes better than MEA, but...there's too much filler and not enough plot to justify what the game wants us to think about the Archon.
The angara keep taking hits regarding their identity and these reveals (exaltation! The Jardaan!) would have been much better handled if they had been doled out over multiple games. I realize that's not going to happen, but if only!
Still pissed that all the other races just got stuck on one ark, and we never get to see them. JUSTICE FOR THE DRELL, JUSTICE FOR THE BATARIANS!
Yes, I know that the batarians probably didn't have much, if any, of a presence in the Initiative, but can you imagine?
I wish Bioware would stop trying to recreate the magic of their most popular romances. They tried to recreate Alistair with Cullen, and then they basically just said, "Hm, what about Garrus Again, But in Purple?" for Jaal. I mean. He's a sniper. With a visor. He wears blue. Bioware I beg you, let me write your next romances.
Odds are I'll have more to say as I finish the game, but here are my many-years-late thoughts!
Also: as always, I have been inspired to write a romance novel to process all my feelings. Gemma Ryder, get ready to be upgraded into an Original Bee OC (with all the torment that comes with it!)!
