Where do I begin? To say we waited five years for this mess would be to admit we hoped it would be good. The Mass Effect games are noted for epic story lines, larger-than-life characters and some pulse pounding action sequences. Even ME3, with its lousy ending, was good for 95% of its playtime. Andromeda, however, has none of those things.
It's a game that espouses width over quality. Huge open worlds to explore (providing that you don't go too near the "edge" and get warned to go back) and hundreds of people to talk to (providing you don't want any of that dialogue to be meaningful in any way). There is an abundance of shooty-bang-bang sequences (so long as you don't mind it all feeling like you've done it a thousand times before - because, by the end, you will have).
In all things, Mass Effect Andromeda (ME:A) is a stellar example of why devs should adhere to the old comment "less is more". Here, of course, they did the exact opposite.
Huge open planetary worlds filled with the same four or five types of animals in a variety of colour shades. Let's go to another planet! Yep, the same dinosaur and lizard monsters to shoot.
Then there are the faces. Oh God! The faces! I hope someone does a comparison with side by sides of this, and the first Mass Effect game, because the animation here is laughably bad in places. It's all done by an algorithm, you see, and not facial capture. Accordingly, the NPC's eyes dart about manically during conversations. Their faces are all rigid with the digital equivalent of Botox and when they blink, it is with their entire forehead/brow, not just the eyes. Benny Hill blinking, manic eyes and frozen faces. For a game whose pedigree relies on the interactions between the PC and the many NPC's in the game, this is unforgivably bad.
But if the animations were the worst of it, that could be overlooked. But the writing... man the writing. It is bad in the same way that SyFy channel original movies are bad. Lame dialogue and a flimsy plot, with not even a vestige of pacing. It plods along, tasking you with endless boring side quests that accomplish little except to gain your character experience. There is no satisfaction to completing any of it.
Did I mention the combat yet? Recall how you used to be able to control your squad-mates in the earlier ME games? Yeah, me too! But not here, because....progress! So you start a fight and your squad-mates just do their own thing, which is usually not very helpful, all the while dropping awful clangers of dialogue that are meant to be witty quips. In some cases they even say entirely inappropriate things during combat.
You squad-mates also have developed the ability - a la Aliens: Colonial Marines - to teleport about the battlefield. This often result in one of them teleporting on top of flying enemies, only to fall down and carry on as if that were the most natural thing in the world.
The voice actors mostly sound bored reading their lines, as if they had no actual direction when they were in the recording studio. The end result, along with the lack of animated faces, is to make any conversation seem like one between two heavily sedated (or stoned) people.
And the ending... I won't spoil it, but you end up in a boss fight with an enemy you have fought before and playing, essentially, an extended horde mode battle that goes on far too long. It is not a moment of exultation and delight when you complete it, just one of relief that it is over.
And that last sums up ME:A pretty much. It is dull and repetitive with mind-numbing side quests and some unbelievable dialogue (e.g. "My face is tired"), poor animations, facial and otherwise (I didn't mention the Ministry of Silly Walks, did I?) and an overall feeling that you could be spending your time playing a number of better games.
So what went wrong? My money is on over ambition. They tried to run before they could walk. This game was made by a B-string team from Bioware and they tried to get too much in, and end up with doing none of it justice. Too many conversation with NPC's probably led to them deciding they could not afford facial capture, so they went with the hilariously awful algorithm for animation. Not enough time to make enough variety of enemies (in addition to the few animals, there are about the same number of Remnant creatures and then a couple of generic alien baddies. Too many voice actors recording too many lines with no one giving proper direction led to all the flat deliveries you get in-game.
It wasn't ready for release. That is the bottom line. A Triple-A game rushed out the door to meet the financial year-end, full of bugs and glitches, unpolished and with no sign that any QA team even looked at it.
Bioware should be ashamed of this. No wonder they closed down the Bioware forums last year. It's almost as if they knew the fallout would hit them hard, just as it did with the ME3 ending and decided not to have to deal with people "impugning their artistic integrity" again.
Either way, the game is an embarrassing mess that seems like it was created by people who had never seen Mass Effect before and had only had it described (badly) to them. Bioware? Buyer-Beware, more like.
SUMMARY: Unfinished mess. Terrible facial animation, lousy dialogue, MMO-style busywork side quests. Poor writing, buggy, glitchy and utterly charmless. Not worthy of the Mass Effect name and not worthy of your money.
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