Mass Effect Andromeda: an eventful landing! (Test – PC)

5 years after Mass Effect 3, the arrival of a new Mass Effect was expected, perhaps too much. There was a double challenge for Bioware: to create a new trilogy behind the excellent classic and to reconcile the fans. Because Mass Effect 3 has generated a deep split between lovers of RPG-oriented space opera as was the first Mass Effect, and players looking for action sprinkled with slamming cinematics but devoid of the interactions specific to the RPG.Needless to say, this was not an easy task. After several postponements, Mass Effect Andromeda offered an early release on March 16 for EA and Origin Access holders. This ill-advised choice has triggered a collective hysteria whose title is still paying the price. The reason? Dated human animations that have been widely mocked by the internet god and his apostles social networks.

The hatched Mass Effect Andromeda was preparing for the starting line, the adventure started badly. However, is the game good to throw away as it excels in mediocrity? Some will be surprised to read the test so late and yet… Just Focus does not have all the resources of our competitors. Then, as a player, I didn't want to write a test without looking at the game from every angle. So it is after getting the 100% completion and digesting the PC gaming experience that I finally give you my opinion.

Mass Effect Andromeda: the history of humanity is the story of tools becoming machines

Forget the Milky Way, scene of events in the Mass Effect trilogy. In Mass Effect Andromeda, the essence of the project is the exploration of the Andromeda galaxy, located 2.5 million light-years away. In 2172, the extremely rich human Jien Garson sets up the "Andromeda Initiative", an expedition that will aim to colonize the Andromeda galaxy. After establishing that planets were habitable in the Heleus sector, the Initiative began building colonist-carrying arks and the Nexus. No less than 100,000 Asari, Krogan, Humans and Turian settlers were selected for this great expedition. In 2185, the arches and the Nexus embark on a journey of more than 600 years. It is therefore during Mass Effect 2 that the Initiative leaves the Milky Way.

Leave behind the N7, the Reapers, Cerberus and the Geth…. Andromeda gets a makeover and sends you into the tight-fitting suit of a pioneer in the making. Thus, you play as either Scott or Sara Ryder. We will also regret that the character creator is so poor, especially after a generous Dragon Age Inquisition. Note, however, that you will have the possibility to customize your brother or sister. Alec, your father will be randomly generated based on his children. This gave rise to some pretty amazing combinations and an Alec not always successful. You have to believe that the god of virtual creation appreciates me rather well, my fictitious father being credible at first! You are awakened from your sleep of sleeping beauty, but here, no prince! What was supposed to be a promising expedition got off to a bad start and forced Sara Ryder (my base choice) to assume the role of pioneer at the head of a team. Unlike the first trilogy, you are not Commander Shepard, an experienced soldier of the Alliance, you are a young woman who will learn to become a leader on the job. The initial premise seems to me to be relevant and rather well thought out. With Shepard, a page is turned. There is nothing better to start the arrival in a new galaxy than new blood. It would have been easier to take someone with unquestionable experience and legitimacy. With Ryder, it is a whole metaphor of the player who goes on exploration and even more of the initiatory journey, a theme dear to adventure novels.

But the story then? Since this test is not intended to be a spoiler, I would just put it this way: the fantasy colonization is going to turn out to be a nightmare. If Sara Ryder's goal is to find habitable planets for all colonists, she will have to deal with unexpected encounters, blows of fate and especially threats and mysteries. Just know that the major themes dear to the Mass Effect saga will be part of the game: the duality of artificial intelligence / organic life, ancient civilizations with advanced technology, the cycle of life, evolution and the clash of cultures. Some players will find the plot very modeled on Stargate. Should we consider in this case that any SF work that has as its theme a confrontation between an evil Empire and a handful of resistance fighters, is certainly a copy of Star Wars?I would rephrase, "Does Star Wars have a monopoly on the conflict between Good and Evil?" Not. Similarly for Mass Effect Andromeda: "Does Stargate have a monopoly on ancient and alien civilizations?" Not. This would be to ignore the history of Science Fiction, because recall the concept was even codified with the theory of ancient astronauts in the 60s and largely colored the cultural creations of the time. Mass Effect Andromeda can be blamed for many things, but when it comes to inspiration, it feeds on its own universe. We could at the limit criticize part of the end of the game to take some moments of the end of Mass Effect 1. But that being said, we can't complain about Ryder's lack of charisma because he's not experienced and at the same time constantly argue that Andromeda copies Mass Effect 1.

At no point does Mass Effect 1 ask you to colonize the galaxy. Everything is already done. The Council's civilizations are at their peak and all this little world lives more or less in good understanding. In Mass Effect Andromeda, it's a struggle for survival, everything remains to be done, everything is to be defined. But the two Mass Effects echo each other as two sides of the same coin. That's kind of what a prequel could have been. Luckily for us, Bioware decided to make it a different story. After all, the universe is big enough to invent. For my part, I welcome risk-taking, at a time when licenses prefer to alternate between prequels, reboots, remakes. So, yes, some parts of the plot are easy to pin down or even guess. But the fact remains that the further we advance in the game, the more the questions multiply. The end also leaving a lot of questions unanswered. An end that I appreciated and that leaves a cathedral door ajar (at least) for the rest!  

Writing dialogues: jump into the urinal to look for gold. I am alive and you are dead.

Mediocre dialogues and bland companions. That was what we could hear and read here and there. To believe that all the games are a mixture of Shakespeare and Proust and that the players are all aggregates of literature. Mass Effect Andromeda had the merit of making me smile and even laugh many times especially by its dialogues. Dialogues carried by colorful characters. It's hard for Andromeda not to stay in the shadow of her elders, especially when they have been cheered. It was feared that the companions were only caricatures of Garrus, Tali, Liara, Ashley… And yet… Mass Effect Andromeda managed to get out of all this little world to impose a new team and it works! I would even say that a feat was achieved by making a character like Drack, a worthy heir of Wrex. At no time does the Krogan fall into caricature, on the contrary, it allows another reading and approach to Krogan culture. Similarly, Vétra is at no time worried by the iconic weight of Garrus. It must be admitted that the companions are successful and that we quickly become attached to them. I must even admit that for the first time, I do not hate any character. A feat, I tell you! Some leave me indifferent, but I do not come to wish for a suicide mission to get rid of it. Not like Kaidan Alenko who tirelessly dies defusing the bomb or the midge James that I would dream of seeing crushed by the Reaper. These characters, moreover, all have a background that is interesting and a loyalty mission that allows to definitively fix the links. Missions also necessary to unlock the last rank of your teammates' skills. The crew members at Bioware have always been a strength in their RPGs, which is what makes the player have real interactions and that a hero is never alone to complete his quest.         

To return to the writing, if I readily concede that the main plot is sometimes clumsy or at least awkwardly brought, sometimes a little easy too… However, I can in no way let it be said that the characters are poorly written. While exploring with his Ryder, you have to travel the planets with two other companions (as often in Bioware RPGs), and it is at this precise moment that the dialogues are truculent! Depending on the team members selected, the exchanges will not be the same and this will give punchlines and epic conversations.

"A krogan would look like a whale dancing a ballet"
"It's better than a galarian hanging on a fan."

It is these kinds of details that give meaning to the feeling of belonging to a group, to a universe. This is probably what I have always liked in Bioware's RPGs, the fact that a hero is not alone against a threat, alone to carry out a quest, that he is deeply a "social animal". Like Ryder, we get attached, we smile, we sad… That's exactly what I experienced 10 years ago with the first Mass Effect! Besides the companions, there are some recurring characters who carry their personalities well. Thus, the leaders of the Nexus could be a wonderful subject of study, as they fit perfectly to the reality of the politicians of our world. Tann is for example a textbook case while Addison, whose plastic beauty would make the Grevin Museum pale (we will come back to this later), would be an excellent guinea pig for modern psychiatry. Mass Effect Andromeda distills reflections on politics and its leaders. Moreover, in this opus, everything will always be played between the immensely large and the intimately small. Thus the plot alternates between the macrocosm of the Andromeda galaxy, its stakes and the microcosm of the Nexus and the family. Alec Ryder as such, is indeed an important character, to understand it, I will leave it to you to do the quest "The secrets of the Ryder family".

Graphics and technique: reality is what continues to exist when you stop believing in it…

Let's address an essential point that crystallizes many criticisms: animations. In all honesty, the animations of humans are missed. It would be difficult to pretend otherwise, the mouths are often rigid and the expression destabilizing. Add to that Asari that are obviously modeled after humans, which gives them adolescent looks. It would have been better for Bioware to postpone several months to fix this technical indiscretion. It is also incomprehensible that EA has set up a 10-hour demo with a discounted start. Because it must be admitted, it is especially the Nexus part and early Eos that appeals. In the case of Pee Bee, there is a real change between the first meeting cinematic and those that will follow, where it goes from Smurfette to Asari with gradient hues.

Nevertheless, the bashing on the technical aspect of the game has really been disproportionate when we see other AAA coming out with flaws and yet widely acclaimed by critics. If I can not excuse the sabotage done on the animations, the bug of the mouse pointer that freezes on the screen or the drop of framerate when arriving on a planet, I can go over it. After two hours of play, Addison's tics become an embodiment of his personality. I abandoned the mouse for the controller and I must say that the Nomad and the gameplay during the fights lend themselves much better. Graphically, there is confusion between modeling and animation. Most species are well modeled with striking details like Angara eyes or Krogan scales. In ultra on the PC (and even high for that matter), the textures of the environments and wildlife are fine. The light is well managed and there is a lot of work on the reliquate technology that is appreciable. The level design oscillates between the inspired and the most mundane. Note in this regard that terraforming brings an important work on the changes of atmosphere and atmosphere. On PC, bugs are apparently two to three times less frequent than on console. If I take my game, out of 200 side quests in addition to the main one, I have 4 quests blocked. So I can hardly claim that the bugs have affected my gaming experience. On the other hand, in multi, it is common to have untimely bugs such as the sound of the PC that stops working. Not just the sound of the game, no, no, the entire sound on your PC! Playing with the headset in absolute silence is unsettling. Notice to the claustrophobic! Another major problem in multiplayer, recurring desktop returns! Indeed, when you play with friends, it always happens at some point that one of you is literally ejected… It's not limited to the game. No, no, the game sends you back to the office, without any error message, it would like to give you a middle finger that it would have no better way to manifest it! 

Exploration: the silence of the world could no longer hold back its thirst to swallow everything

The nerve of war in this Mass Effect is exploration. If the system of probes of the 2 has been retained, it has been reduced to its simplest use. This is not a bad thing since we avoid passing the radar and toothpicks for hours. Within seconds, the anomaly on the planet is detected and it is folded. Some will find the movements of one star to another long, others like me will appreciate the 3D modeling of the stars and the panoramas that it gives. That said, the update has brought the ability to skip the trips and it is undoubtedly more convenient to save time. In fact, there are 5 explorable planets including 4 in Nomad and more than 150 planets to observe in the Heleus sector. Mass Effect Andromeda is organized like a Dragon Age or a Mass Effect 1, there is the main frame that we can follow at our own pace and around a multitude of side quests. The quest log is monstrously messy, everything grouped according to starting planets and tasks. Most are not fedex, they enjoy contextualization and narrative input (often written) but the main point I would like to emphasize… This is the false good idea of tasks with random appearance goals. How frustrating it gets! Quests that have a more visual narrative are undoubtedly loyalty quests. In any case, Andromeda relaunches the RPG soul that the license had lost with the 3, here you can talk to many NPCs, discover unmarked quests, talk and talk again to your characters in the Tempest, your mobile HQ. The movie night being the culmination of your bonds, too bad Ryder disappears at the end of the cutscene! I personally enjoyed rolling, jumping and crossing different and consistent biomes with its lot of vaults, survival beacons, minerals, dungeons (1 per planet). I fully understand that this may be repetitive. Personally, while reading and fully living the adventure, I did not feel bored, especially since each planet to be serviced has a major problem related to its situation. Nevertheless, I would have liked more diversity in the leftover vaults, even if some puzzles make the neurons work. Moreover, the decryptions remdoku are rather fun to solve!

What would exploration be without a fight? A walking simulator at best, a meatless Bolognese sauce at worst! Andromeda makes the confrontations dynamic, you can as in the old ones, ask your teammates to maintain the position, place yourself in a certain place and attack a priority target. On the other hand, big downside, we can no longer manage their equipment (weapons, outfits) and very quickly, superfluous skill points accumulate without being able to serve. The idea of Mass Effect Andromeda is to allow you to build a build, minimalist certainly but still. To do this, you can draw from the 3 categories : biotic powers, techs and combat. And this wide choice of skills goes hand in hand with profiles, which influence your statistics and will depend on the strategy you want to deploy. The powers are often visual, and they can be combined with those of your teammates for even more damage. The enemy AI is far from stupid, the Kert will come to get you if you are safe and the observers will be able to call you to order if you are too reckless. The few bumps you will encounter will not necessarily be complicated, they will just require vigilance. The craft is rather well thought out, if you want advantageous and low-cost weapons and armor, this is what you will have to exploit. This time Bioware has learned the lesson of multi. With Mass Effect 3, the solo was impacted by the multi, and by "impacted", we mean that it influenced the active forces and therefore the end. On the other hand, in Andromeda, multi can be bypassed solo with APEX missions. You deploy groups from a terminal to assign them to a bronze, silver and gold difficulty mission. At the end of each mission, groups earn exp, bonuses and penalties and above all bring you crafting resources, credits and items. A small side of command table that is appreciable without being revolutionary.

Exploring also means finding treasures and weapons caches, returning to colonized planets to discover other quests and falling into bottomless holes with the Nomad. And what a vehicle! Handy, enjoyable and customizable, the Nomad will make you forget the Mako. Servicing the planets and doing certain quests will make the Nexus gain experience, points that you can invest in benefits. Andromeda's music is often absent to return only during key moments such as fighting. The choice is open to criticism, especially since it is always more appreciable to be driven by music to peregrine! Especially since, on the whole, they are far from bad. Let us say that they are mostly underexploited. In the end, how many hours can you expect? By taking the time to do everything and according to your desire to use fast travel or not, count between 80 and 120 hours. As I said in the preamble, it took me 120 hours to reach 99%. A more than honorable lifespan, especially since after the end of the game, you have access to new quests and those you had not yet completed!

By betting on a new opus focused on an inexperienced pioneer and the exploration of a new galaxy where everything remains to be done, Mass Effect Andromeda takes risks. Risks dearly paid in view of its release in half-tone. Due to lack of time, lack of organization or internal problems, it appears that Andromeda should have been pushed back a few more months. This would have allowed him to correct rather rigid human animations. Corrections made in part with a recent patch. Everything is far from being settled, stability is indeed what sins the most in Mass Effect. Between the drops of Framerate on landing, the harmful cursor and some buggy quests… It is always difficult to make a good impression. But that would be denying what the game really offers! The story gains crescendo in intensity with its share of impressive space cutscenes. If we often know where it will take us, it nevertheless distills some surprises that make their effect. The companions do not suffer from comparison with their predecessors and are even the strength of the title. With the Nomad, exploration becomes a quest whose only limits will be your patience. Will you take the time to discover the Héléus sector for more than 80 hours?

Mass Effect Andromeda is a bit of a beautiful book whose cover was damaged during transport. If at first glance, we retain only the bent corners, when opening, we discover that the body of the text is intact. There are some typos, some repetitions but the spirit is there. It's up to everyone to read and let themselves be transported to another galaxy…