The Mass Effect Andromeda trial came out via Origin Access' "Play First" scheme last night, offering 10 hours of play in the lead up to its full launch on the 21st. And my love for Mass Effect is so strong that I have sidelined playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for now (I'll still get some playtime in here and there thanks to the Switch's potable nature).
So far I have been able to play about 4 hours of the game and my excitement and desire to talk about this game demands I write up my thoughts so far. These will be SPOILER FREE single player impressions (have not touched multiplayer yet), so unless you are uber sensitive to even vague descriptions of scenarios then you should be fine...
THE VERY GOOD
For PC gamers the first thing that matters is performance. And the great news here is that this game performs excellently! After some worrying early news about the game needing some serious specs to get 30fps at 1080p, I can confirm that the game seems pretty well optimized and most half decent set ups should easily outperform the game on PS4 or Xbox One and even the PS4 Pro which runs the game checkboard upscaled to 1800p at . My GTX 1080 powered rig is rocking a solid 60fps with everything on Ultra except shadows (set to Very High) and the resolution set to 4k at 60% render scaling (which means about 2k resolution up-scaled to 4k). And thanks to the fantastic use of TAA the anti aliasing is fantastic and the image quality is outstanding. This should mean any respectable card will get you 60fps at 1080p with ultra settings and even lower cards that still meet the minimum specs should be able to get there with moderate tweaks to settings or resolution scaling.
Oh and the game is really beautiful (mostly anyway, more on that later)! The first planet is especially good in the eye candy department. I also think the art design is fantastic as usual, the armor looks fantastic for instance.
The first hours of the games story are very strong. Despite the massive departure for the series (both figurative and literal), taking the entire series narrative to the Andromeda galaxy; it very much still feels like Mass Effect. The game starts off in a way that invokes feelings of Mass Effect 1 in all the right ways. While the opening has shades of Mass Effect 2 to them the game really gets going when you land on your first planet and that exploration really feels like those opening moments in Mass Effect 1. And I found the unfolding of the plot is every bit as intriguing as the series' first outing. Bioware's trademark character dialogue is in full effect here too, with companion characters quipping and commenting on everything as the game unfolds. I usually find that Bioware's cast of characters are among their games strongest assets, and everything in these first 4 hours leads me to believe that will continue to be the case here. I immediately liked Cora and Liam and look forward to getting to know Dr T'Perro (voiced by Game of Thrones star Natalie Dormer).
As I said before the constant character chatter that Bioware do so well is on full display in the opening hours and after deciding to replay the first hour after I was happy with my graphic setting tweaks (and wanting to try a different class); I was very happy to discover some of the impressive dynamic elements of the character interaction. On my second play through I made some different choices and found some very clever changes to how the scenes played out based on my choices. Gone are the black and white Paragon/Renegade dialog options. Now replaced with more nuanced "tone choices", Emotional, Logical, Casual and Professional. These allow you to choose how your character reacts to specific situations in a way that gives you a chance to craft more of a personality. One early scene gives you the opportunity to respond to a question on how to handle a possible alien threat, if you advise a calm "by the book" approach then when you get control of your character back Ryder hold up her hands as she walks toward the alien in a none confrontational way. However if you choose to advise being on guard and expec the worst, you will start with your gun drawn. Now regardless of which you choose you can adjust as you go, if you go hands up you can still pull your gun at any time and if you have gone with your gun drawn you can simply holster your weapon. The confrontation plays out differently with different dialogue between Ryder and partner depending on how you handle it. All very impressive and dynamic. In fact it is a shame this will be overlooked by many simply because they only see it one way. Not realizing how well the game adapted to what they chose to do.
The next thing that really stands out as excellent is the traversal. With the addition of the jet pack that allows you to boost jump and dash through the air, exploring rocky terrain is far more fun than in past entries in the games when Shepard was stuck to the ground. Although this is not Breath of the Wild levels of freedom, I simply can not wait to explore all the new planets in this game. Especially if what I hear is true about getting some the same style of expansive and explorable maps that we saw in Dragon Age Inquisition. And this is before I have even gotten my hands on the Nomad! A prospect that excites me as a huge fan of the Mako in Mass Effect 1. I also loved the more open none linear map exploration of this starting planet. In my first play through of the first hour I completely missed an entire building of things to explore, missing vital plot clues and dialog. Which means exploration will be rewarded beyond the joy of traversal too.
Combat is further improved over the previous games and feels really great right away in Andromeda. I tried both the Security and Biotic class last night and as in previous games I found the Biotic to be by far the most fun. To be fair I only tried the Security class at its starting level which gave me a single ability that translated to a charged gun blast. Where as I found Biotic to be more fun right away with the ability to "Push" enemies with my force-like powers. Once I added 2 more skills (Pull and Shockwave) every encounter was pure bliss. I have not even scratched the surface of the RPG upgrade systems in this game but my initial impressions were very positive. On top of the combat being a decent upgrade from 2 and 3, it looks like the best parts of the RPG elements of Mass Effect are back in spades. While Mass Effect 3 is my favourite entry in the series, I felt the simplification of the RPG elements maybe went a little further than I would have liked. Andromeda seems to be headed back in the right direction. I hope this holds up through the game.
THE GOOD
My tendency with RPG's and especially Bioware RPG's is to spend hours creating my own perfect character. Usually because I like to play as a women and I am not usually very happy with the default women in these games. Mass Effect 1 was especially egregious in this area. While the default female Shepard in Mass Effect 3 was a big improvement, I still thought she looked odd and besides I was 100% attached to my Gillian Anderson based Shepard at that point. However despite seeing an unusual amount of hate from some of the hives of scum and villainy we call the internet, I love Sara Ryder and have chosen her default look as my Ryder. Now I do wish I was able to modify her a little, mainly because I would prefer her to have red hair and maybe a different hair style. But I am pretty smitten with Sara Ryder so far I think she looks great. She cute, spunky and her face works great with the voice actress that is also doing a great job stepping into the huge shoes left by Jennifer Hale.
The soundtrack is by John Paesano this time (as apposed to Jack Wall and Sam Hullick) and it's pretty good but maybe not as good as past soundtracks. It certainly feels like Mass Effect, meshes well with the past games, and is suitably epic. However after giving the soundtrack a few listens (I'm listening as I type this) and playing the first 4 hours of the game, little of it stands out. It's all good, pleasant sounding and true to Mass Effect (unlike the track chosen for the release trailer which felt all wrong to me). But at this point I feel it has no single track that matches the iconic themes of the original games. Maybe they will grow on me more over time.
THE NOT SO GOOD
It breaks my heart to report anything negative about Mass Effect but the facial animation issues need to be addressed. Especially the eyes. Not sure what is going on here as past Bioware games never had this issue. Sure there was some stiffness at times but some of this just feels unfinished. Now I do not think it is anywhere near as bad as some are making out on the Internets, but there certainly is some jank to the facial animations. The lip syncing some times feels off and characters sometimes "pucker" while speaking and that looks... strange. Also what is going on with the eyes!? This seems like a bigger issue than the lip syncing to me (which is not that bad and easily forgotten). First the eyes do not look right, like they are missing some post processing, they lack gloss and reflection or something. But more distracting is that Bioware seem to have tried to replicate natural human eye movements to the point where they are either over exaggerated or are at the rock bottom of the uncanny valley. They often seem to look far too far in a direction than a normal human would and also dart around far too much for me.
Now in the grand scheme I think these are small issues and hopefully Bioware can fix them with patches. Seems to me a patch to limit the range of eye movements alone would go a long way. Reduce pucker and add some eye light reflections and you would almost solve all these issues. So I hold out hope these issues will be fixed. The Witcher 3 has really unfairly raised the bar in the character animations area for RPG's (and many other areas).
OVERALL
I could not be more excited to further explore the Andromeda galaxy. So far it feels like a worthy evolution of the series and I am really excited to get to the huge exploration game play later in the game, not to mention see how the story unfolds. Not sure if I will post more thoughts as I play through he game, but I expect that I will be taking my time to enjoy this game for as long as possible. My intention is to sign up for another Origin Access account so I can play another 10 hours, probably of multiplayer as I expect I will hit the single player limit before 10 hours are up. May report back with multiplayer impressions later in the week
