Why Andromeda's Side quests are awesome. And why games should imitate it.

So as always some ground rules:  

First of all  I am not talking about invididual quest quality or the writing or any individual quests.  There are some bad quests in MEA, there are some poorly written lines and the occasional errors in continuity.  I am talking about the structure of the game's side quests, and to an extent the main quests, as a whole.  The way the game is structured.  

Second of all I am not talking about the Tasks.  One of my favorite things that BioWare did with MEA is it removed its fetch quests from the normal quest system and called them 'tasks'.  Tasks, are purposefully, not quests.  They are literally things you do.  No real story, no real character arcs, very straight forward go here and do this.  Though there are a couple of very good Tasks too.  But not talking about them.  

With that out of the way...

When I first got into RPGs I really did not know what I was doing.  I wasn't a serious gamer back then, I was at one time, got away from it, but video games were mindless entertainment where you just relax and take out your frustrations on visual pixels.  I hadn't considered games as meaningful, deep, entertainment.  Not until I played Mass Effect 2...and to a great extent ME 3 and all the lessons that came with it.  

Now another thing I realized around that time, with my studies and looking into writing in general there were two distinctive forms of writing in the media world.  There was movie writing, and there was television writing, both were charateristically different.  

Movie writing was characterized by its relatively simple arcs.  It was over and done with in the span of a very short time.  Until very recently the longest movie story was pretty much trilogies, done in over in the span of roughly 6 hours of story.  Not a lot of time to crunch huge meaningful stories into their framework.  

Television on the other hand is characterized by its much more long term story and character arcs.  With dozens of episodes per seasons, and a lot of modern stories lasting anywhere between 5 and ten seasons that is a lot of time to devote to a story, or a lot of individual stories.  Even the smallest television program tends to have more time to devote to its story(ies) then even the most longest movie.  Again until recently.  

Now video games have always tried to imitate...movies.  Video games, again until VERY recently, took more story ques from movies then they have from television writing.  Even the longest and most complicated RPGs in recent years are relatively simple and straightforward series of stories.  in other words tv writing from say...the sixties.  Writing where the events of one installment (quest) really did not neccessarily have anything to do with any events outside of the relationship to the quest.  Straightfoward, simple stories.  

This never made sense to me, upon realizing there is a difference, I was like 'well why don't games...especially RPGs...try and imitate...say tv shows rather then movies?'  Afterall modern games especially you can get lost to them for up to two hundred hours at a time.  But often enough the world is disconnected from one another.  There are lots of individual stories, but they don't really have much impact on the overall game itself.  Sometimes yes.  Not until Mass Effect Andromeda, and quite probably the Witcher 3 came out.  With these two games, finally, video games are starting to do long term story arcs with its quests, and quests relating one to another in surprising ways.  

Mass Effect Andromeda's side quests, and tasks for that matter, are intentionally separated into four separate areas.  Main plot, allies and relationships, Heleus Assignments, and Tasks.  It is structured like...well a season of Farscape.  Main plot, the overall arc of the series, the season finales and the whole stuff with the whormholes and Crichtons character arc.  The Allies and relationships, the episodes that focus on expanding the lore, the world, and focusing on each invididual member of Moya's crew, or even some of the bad guys in the series.  And the Heleus assignments, random adventures, throw away episodes that don't REALLY tie into an overall story arc, relatively one off and you can even skip them and not miss too much, but sometimes they do relate in surprising ways.  

Its all about continuity, and this is why I think Andromeda is well written.  Because there is a huge sense of continuity in it.  The main quest is wonderfully tight, with each bit contributing to plot and character developments later on.  But even in the dialogue line, how a throwaway line by Jaal sets up the exact ending scene of his loyalty mission, or how a throwaway line by Peebee relates to something like three quests in the game, and the whole subplot of the game that there is something really shady about the Andromeda Initative.  Something you probably would not notice without a second PT.  And this is not even touching on all the relations, and the evidence for it, within the game for the Remnant and the Angarra.  

And yet, Andromeda gets a lot of flack for its writing? Why? Well one reason is because there is some elements of poor writing here and there.  The romance dialogue can come off especially cringy...but I think its mainly because its different.  Its something new.  And its something that forces you to play it because there are so many hmm moments which paints a larger picture in the game, and maybe even for future games.  So many lines that are like 'well that's intersting, so that is what that means, what does that mean?' and there is a lot of payoff in the game, and a lot I hope in future games.  

BAnd all this comes together at the end of the game, the ending, if you put the effort in and play the game, the ending feels special.  Your hardwork is reflected.  Exactly like some of the best tv shows.