Mass Effect Andromeda: Hardly Imagined

Let's start with the basics. I think the flaw with Mass Effect: Andromeda is that the developers didn't ask the right question at the outset. That question is this:



What makes Andromeda different from the Milky Way?



Obviously it has a different history, but what does that mean?



That means Andromeda has different races and cultures. That's obvious of-course but just how different would these races and cultures be? It wouldn't be something as trivial as details about customs or physiology, no, it will be a much more substantial difference and it relates to another important factor.



Andromeda has no Reapers. Of-course I'm sure somebody at some point at least pondered the idea of more Reapers in another galaxy but that would be boring and repetitive. So we must then consider what effect the Reapers have had on the Milky Way. I think the biggest effect is that every 50,000 years or so they wipe the slate clean of civilizations. No space-faring society in the original Mass Effect games is more than two or three thousand years old. However the Milky Way has been capable of supporting intelligent life, and thus space faring civilizations, for billions of years.



What would happen if nobody had wiped those civilizations out? Would humans or asari or quarians ever evolve? More likely, and this is pretty much a mathematical certainty, those races homeworlds would have been colonized by aliens eons ago. That means that without the Reapers the Milky Way would most likely see an early flurry of intelligent species arise and attain space travel and spread out into neighboring star systems. Until they develop the Mass Relays this process will be slow, even with FTL. However after just a million years or so, even without FTL, the Milky Way could be colonized by even just one race. Every single star system settled. There would then be no room for anyone else to evolve.



Instead, especially if some colonies are relatively isolated, you might see speciation of a single race into multiple distinct species or sub-species over time. Without the Mass Relays their interstellar civilizations will be limited in their structure over space and time because communication and travel to the distant corners of the "empire" will just be too costly and long. Given that the Milky Way seems to support many intelligent species at the same we can gather that in the Mass Effect universe intelligent life is relatively common and inevitable. So in the Andromeda Galaxy's early history there must have been several species that evolved and attained space travel and even FTL. Perhaps they never invented the Mass Relays because that might have been a unique invention of the Reapers, the product of their infinite lifespan and machine intelligence. Or perhaps they did invent them, but the resource needed to construct them is rarer in Andromeda, or some other reason. Instead Andromeda could be a galaxy-sized city of sorts, with every single star, every one, bearing the marks of intelligent life. Several civilizations, spread out from a single origin point in their particular region of the galaxy, and each broken down into several sub-races or mini-empires or civilizations only dimly aware of one another.



There is no Mass Relay network and so no Council. No true "Galactic Civilization" just a galaxy filled with dozens or hundreds of little empires spanning a few clusters at the most, with gulfs of more disorganized space in between some of them. Contested systems perhaps? Some wiped clean with terrible super weapons (think black holes and stars turned into directed energy beams). The societies are at the oldest more than several billion years old, or at least, they can trace their ancestry back that far. You'd have aliens specially evolved to live in zero-gravity environments, who did so in the eons before artificial gravity was ever discovered and thus never had a use for it. Some might have replaced themselves with machines, be they hostile or passive. Swarms of self-replicating bots, no less destructive than the Reapers but not so haughty, might have also turned swaths of the galaxy into dull, dim, wastelands of grey goo and burnt-out stars, their spread stopped only by the deployment of rival replicators that neutralized one another.



With tens of millions of years to plan vast work projects, some societies must surely have achieved constructs that vastly dwarf the Citadel or Omega. Entire stars, even solar systems, covered over with swarms of solar panels (a dyson sphere/swarm). Ring worlds that stretch across light years. Disc worlds and artificial planets with an individual size and mass so great that time differentials at the surface and the inner core are significant. Some would be occupied by jam-packed societies that number in the trillions, who long ago converted entire planets into space-born habitats. Other star systems might be barren ghost towns... filled to the brim with the relics of ancient and advanced societies that died out for one reason or another.



Imagine driving the Nomad across a field of grass, alien organisms darting out of the way, alien trees swaying the distance... but as you gaze toward the horizon the ground curves upward, and then over your head. Rather than a mere uncharted world you are exploring a bottled up wilderness in a vast O'Neil Cylinder. An entire ecosystem, filled with rivers, lakes, and mountains, contained with an an abandoned super structure. When you dig into the ground you eventually break into long lost service tunnels and access shafts. Somewhere down there is the machinery that keeps this forest-in-a-bottle running and if you can find it and use it, this place would be ideal to settle. A mobile planet. Or a fleet of them.



That might not be so easy though. The Andromeda Initiative met with problems on the long journey. Some systems had to be sacrificed and so when you awoke you found supplies drained, people lost in cryo-sleep. A desperate situation. In trying to cope with disaster the real heroes and experts of the expedition, the best of the best, were killed. Ryder and his/her compatriots aren't the A-team... they are the B-team. Back up. Temporary replacements to fill in for the main characters while they are doing cool shit on away missions... but since they are dead you have to fill in double duty. Ryder and co are younger than Shepard and his companions. Less experience. Not so famous. Not the best of the best or the top of their class. Never destined for greatness. Not the son or daughter of an Admiral, legendary cop, or Matriarch. Competent, but nothing special. Now they'll have to rise to the occasion. They bring youthful enthusiasm and touching naivety to this expedition... but will that optimism survive the struggle that lies ahead?


You are stranded in foreign territory with no allies, infrastructure, and no way back home. Limited amounts of water, limited amounts of raw resources to manufacture omni-gel and or medi-gel. The Initiative had counted on the ability to extract raw resources from the natural environment... but the planners of this project didn't think things through. You find that, as described above, Andromeda is an ancient and used up place. A barren ghetto where all the easily obtained minerals and raw elements were long-since used up. Think of the game Total Annihilation; a galaxy of derelict scavengers who constantly recycle the aging machinery all around them because there's almost nothing left to dig up out of the ground. Water bearing comets went extinct 200 millions years ago. Metal rich asteroids? The last of those was pulverized into dust and pounded into some many deck panels 30 million years ago. Even gas giants have become withered husks in many cases, their atmospheres processed into needed fuels and chemical compounds in ages since long forgotten. 


Alone and afraid, on borrowed time, you are but an inquisitive ant probing a decadent but decaying mansion. A pest, but also the first new thing to inch its away across the floor tiles in half a billion years. The residents find you interesting, at least for now. Very interesting.



Over the course of the long voyage the VI's managing the sleeper ships had oh so much time to run simulations and calculate pi. Using what was given to them in the aftermath of 2183, specifically the scans of the Conduit and its counterpart on Ilos, your VI's have developed schematics for your own mass relays. You need only enough element zero and some other assorted materials. Find some hospitable planets (or whatever else) in the local clusters and link them up. You'll need to since you have to search so far and wide to find anything remotely hospitable or usable. Since most everything has been looted already you'll have to make contact with the locals and start trading.



At first it is easy make some bargains for basic essentials. The locals are plenty curious about you and your original home just giving them cultural data is enough. That won't last though. In going on an expedition to uncharted territory, far from home, we are going to experience shortages on basic necessities. Water, food, medical care, mundane comforts. Andromeda should have embraced this aspect of exploration by thrusting the player into a position of intense responsibility, with a monumental task to achieve, and not enough resources to accomplish it. Challenge the player as the narrative challenges the characters to figure out the right balance of pragmatism, diplomacy, and ruthlessness to survive. Not only are the explorers on their own with no hope of resupply or rescue, but they're also a destabilizing element in this new environment. Over the billions of years an equilibrium was reached and we have just disrupted it, just by being there. Our arrival has sparked wars and unrest and people are dying. Ryder and co come to realize that their responsibility is not just to the members of the expedition, but to the people of all this new (old) civilization. Our choice to venture out into the unknown and explore has had consequences for us and for the people we meet. You could tip the balance for this side or that side... you have new technologies and new ways of thinking. You have Mass Relays. Soon everyone will want one. Whichever group can get them from you first, either by transaction, by theft, or by outright conquest, will have in their possession the key to crafting Andromeda's first true galactic government (or empire).


Who will that be? Just by coming to Andromeda it is clear you will forever shape its destiny and its future history. The Mass Effect principle at work here as we see that little things have long, complicated consequences. Everything is going to change and it starts with you. A new golden age could begin with your arrival, or a dark and terrible one. Only your decisions will determine what history will be written.