One airborne rodent's running commentary

Thought I'd start a thread to collect some of my thoughts as I progress through the game. I would love to hear what others think, but I would request that people not give away important plot or character points if you can tell I haven't gotten to them yet - I don't plow through games at the pace some seem to.

Most of the preset faces, especially for female Ryder, are pretty bad. The default is OK but it makes her neck look bizarrely long, and the generator doesn't allow me to edit the default appearance for some reason (I remember this happening with male Shepard in ME1/2 as well). Though actually, the Asian preset 1 face isn't bad, but unfortunately it reminds me of someone I know, which I'd find distracting, so I picked one of the other ones and after a couple tries designed one that I was happy with. I also don't much care for most of the hairstyles. The ponytails seem weirdly suspended in space, a couple of them seem like they'd partially block her field of vision, and at least one of the longer ones looks like she just woke up or got a really bad haircut. Finally, why can't we adjust eyebrow color to match hair color? None of this is game-breaking, but it seems like Bioware somehow managed to take something that was working reasonably well for Shepard and make it worse.

I actually like the idea of a purely exploration-based mission in theory, though I'm struggling with how this fits into the Mass Effect universe. For one thing, it seems nearly impossible that all this was planned and implemented in secret, which makes it hard to reconcile with it never being mentioned in the Shepard trilogy. You'd think that a trip to another galaxy would be a pretty prominent conversation topic, especially among characters who know that the Milky Way races could be facing extinction in the near future. Plus, the technology feels a little more advanced than what we saw in the first three games.

I gather that the Andromeda Initiative's funding and resources are a topic of some ambiguity. OK, *please* tell me this has nothing to do with Cerberus. I wasn't even that strongly in the "oh no, not Cerberus again" camp re: M3, but enough is enough with them. (On the other hand, is it possible that this *is* the Citadel races' backup plan to avert extinction via Reapers and most of the crew are in the dark about this? Though that would make them real speciesist assholes for leaving so many other races behind.)

I kind of like playing around with Ryder's scanner so far, though I can't tell yet if I'm adding to the codex or picking up XP for using it.

Acknowledging a cliche (in this case "hostile aliens who try to kill you the minute they see you") doesn't really make it less of a cliche. I know this is an action RPG, but did we really need to go down this route right off the bat? The Hyperion crew are in enough trouble just from running into the big energy barrier thing and having one of their shuttles crash-landing, so we don't have to get all shooty right away. And then Ryder is already saying (can't remember if it was a dialogue choice or auto-dialogue) that "peace isn't going to be possible here" or something like that. Because it's not as if humans ever had an initial conflict with another species that turned out to be a misunderstanding and the other species became an ally. *Cough* turians *cough* First Contact War *cough*.

Speaking of which, do my choices for Ryder's optional dialogue also end up shaping her autodialogue? I'd have liked to see if there's a way to avoid that "peace isn't going to be possible" line, except for...

...this stupid checkpoint system. Seriously, Bioware - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. There was nothing wrong with letting us do quicksaves or regular saves in between combat scenes in the original trilogy. In fact, for a game with dialogue choices where we don't see the actual words that the player character is going to use, frequent saves are important for those of us who sometimes like to try out different dialogue options before proceeding. Why was it necessary to do this? Now, I guess I'd have to quit to the main menu and hope I have a recent enough checkpoint that I don't have to replay half a mission just to see the other options. And if I don't happen to notice when the autosave icon pops up, I don't know how much replaying I'm in for if I need to stop and quit quickly.

These aliens look a little like protheans. Probably just a coincidence and/or Bioware messing with us as opposed to an actual tie-in, I'm guessing.

I'm not sure why the species would decide to go on separate arks - it seems that their different cultural backgrounds and historical perspectives would help and complement each other when exploring this new galaxy. Given that they did, however, is there really just one single asari on the Hyperion with 20,000 humans? If the idea is that no human doctors are smart enough to do Lexi's job, then maybe humans shouldn't be undertaking this mission in the first place. 

Despite all the above, I don't dislike the game so far, but it's not yet in "I can't wait to get back to that game!" territory. I might try replaying a bit of the first mission (which I had to stop in the middle of) to get a better feel for the dialogue and checkpoints and try to figure out what I can and can't influence as a player.