What Did You Do Today in Andromeda

Replaying Andromeda right now and really enjoying it.

With my last Trilogy playthrough more than 2 years in the past, I have a bit of an easier time disregarding all the glaring lore violations that constitute the Andromeda Initiative. I mean, I still cringe here and there but I can take it (I keep telling myself ).

So that lets me enjoy the positives of the game and there are quite a few. First of all, the entire beginning of the game (all the way past discovering Aya) is really fantastic. I love the whole opening on the Hyperion. That shuttle ride to Habitat 7 is a true wonder to watch and the first steps on this truly alien looking and feeling world really make you feel like an explorer out in the deep unknown, dealing with the unexpected.
The pacing - with only a small fraction of Eos accessible at first) is also really good.

It was only once I was on Voeld that the pacing starts to fall somewhat apart. I do not quite understand the reasoning behind some of the design choices. I mean, I get that the devs want to open up the world a bit and give you choices but if you don't go to Hawarl first, it really is tough to justify why one should go there at all. The story always makes it seem like there are other fairly urgent priorities. It would have done the game good if - say before going after the archon - there was bit of a pause in the excitement that allows the player the peace of mind to really explore (like in ME2, when they urge you to build your team before proceeding for example). But anyway, you just have to take a break for yourself and go back to finish up tasks on Eos or Hawarl or whatever, it's not a big deal, just a small annoyance.

I did rescue the Moshae already and found the traitor's transponder on Kadara. So right now, I am trying to finish up some stuff before going after the Archon's ship. Voeld, Kadara and Eos are pretty much explored completely (though I didn't choose a regime yet on Kadara). Just did Liam's LM yesterday, which really for me is the low point of the entire game (who tf wrote this BS?). Thinking of going after the Asari Ark next.

The gameplay is super fun, I speced for a Vanguard this time (did an Infiltrator on my first PT 2017) and he kicks some serious ass. The synergies between Charge, Annihilation, Nova (shield powered) and siphoning strikes are pretty insane. I barely even fire my shotgun anymore.
Also fits well to the slightly cocky military minded personality I go for for this male Ryder (bottom left is my default choice with some bottom right thrown in and usually the right option of I only get top options).
It's interesting because my first (female) Ryder was more of a logical science oriented person. When she conversed with SAM, it felt like they were working together. With my current dude, he is so dependent for everything but the shooting, it's more like he couldn't even flush a toilet without SAM's help.
My favorite quote so far was at the end of the Moshae mission, when - after a fairly lengthy explanation of what the Kett are, how exaltation works and so on and so forth - he just goes: "So, SAM, how do we shut down this horror palace?"
It was auto-dialogue but it was perfect in that moment.

Also, still just love the galaxy map, it's so gorgeous!


Oh, but btw, I came across the most ridiculous quest in the entire ME franchise yesterday, which unfortunately reminded me about everything bad in Andomeda all at once. It's the one where you find those satellites in the GM and you have to scan three of them (yawn). Then you find a shuttle with a comm relay that lets you speak to this super smart engineer. She fled the Nexus because she wanted to become pregnant (which she is now, 8 months, no less) and the Nexus authorities wouldn't allow procreation until they had some form of stable presence. She didn't want to wait, so she defied orders, took the medicine that would counteract that contraceptives they all got in stasis, stole a shuttle and fled with her boyfriend.

There is so much wrong with this quest! First, just the "gameplay" execution, which just consists of you scanning on the GM. Then the story and dialogue.
I mean, the Nexus was supposed to arrive in advance of the Arks and the people there were supposed to be an explicit advanced team to construct the station and scout the area for when the Arks came along. They knew that they would be there alone for at least a while and that their job was to build, not to churn out babies. If this lady is 8 months pregnant and since we know the Nexus was there for about a year, that means that she couldn't even wait a few months?
And she made all these decisions in the middle of a really dire situation, when there were basically no supplies, everyone was on rations, there was an uprising with armed conflict going on and no viable planets in sight? What kind of person is this?

Then, Ryder asks the most basic question about the entire issue (to Addison), like "How long were those contraceptives supposed to last?" I mean, there are a lot of situations like this in the game but it's stuff like this that makes me think, wasn't anyone briefed before they crawled into their cryo-pods back in the Milky Way? If even top tier members of the Initiative have to ask basic questions that should be on page 2 of the brochure under the headline "general game plan", my suspension of disbelief goes out the window.

This whole situation and the people, presented in this quest are just so absurd.

It's stuff like this that fuels my downright schizophrenic relationship with the newer BioWare games. I really really want to like them and there are so many aspects I love but sometimes it feels like they deliberately want to kick me in the brain.

Anyway, onward!

Yeah Havarl is by far my favourite planet in MEA. 

For not giving them the drive core. They do their best to make you give it but I can see not doing so because of morda. Her entire tone about how letting you out an outpost and you’ll be friends now is not very confidence inducing. It felt more like, give us what we want then we will let you build a outpost so we don’t have to walk far when we murder everyone.

But, they lean so heavily into you doing so I suspect almost everyone does and if there was a mea2 they’d have nexus negotiators do it for you behind the scenes. It’s too big of a story point to have a divergence. Though I guess if they do the krogan revolt as a story they could have mea2 open up to that outpost being wiped out by the krogan. So that would bring world states between choices in line. Either way you are at war it’s just a we lost x people vs we didn’t.

And yes bringing the krogan makes 0 sense. Helping cure the genophage makes less sense.

As for the gameplay drag, by itself it’s not bad imo. But you land on eos. It’s a desert. You go to voeld. It’s a ice desert. You go to H2whatever. It’s a low grav no atmosphere desert. Eladin another damn desert. At least h2etc had a cool enough gimmick to distract from the empty landscape. Eladin is late enough in the game you are just done with big open nothing environments with x environmental effect that keeps you in he nomad.

A volcanic world would have been better. But I think they needed more diversity. Maybe a mid point between hvarl and eos like forests or maybe a archipelago with land bridges available at certain tides. Or maybe a planet almost completely covered in intact but empty cities from a civilization long gone.

World design is one area where their lack of time really showed.

I dunno. Cannon fodder can be useful.

Have you heard what any of the sales figures are, have heard the game was a big hit in Japan.

Yeah the trees looked good in particular.

I think it makes perfect sense, true representation of the MW species except for the Rachni I suppose but in a foreign galaxy why wouldn't you want their muscle? Plus they were perfect for the shifts awake on the trip to Andromeda.

Curing the genophage, why wouldn't they. With a new start, the Krogan getting their own planets and less pressure on them in more favourable environments that might be enough for them to reduce their impetus to want/have to reproduce so much.

You know, I really like the geth idea actually. Would also fit perfectly with Legion's dialogue in ME2, when he tells you how the geth did interfere with organics via false transmissions and such. Since the geth are also one of the very few parties that did know just about everything about the reapers, that makes sense, too. Hell, even the weird FTL telescope they used to get Andromeda info was a geth construct that conveniently fell into the AI's lap. They also always see a somewhat larger picture and are not prone to discrimination, so one could see them wanting to include all races without prejudice.

One could use this to explain a great deal about Andromeda's inconsistencies with trilogy lore, not all (especially the technical stuff) but some (finances, why was a human so successful so quickly, etc.). Not sure I still have enough faith in BW writers to think this might have been a plot idea but as a head canon it certainly has its perks.

Yeah I am a big fan of the Geth in conjunction with SAM being the MB, The MB says in one their speeches I think to Alec that "Your AI has the potential to help a lot of people other than just your wife) or something like that.

The Geth FTL telescope was a big prompt to me re thinking about the Geth being somehow involved, especially the WHY THE HELL DID THEY BUILD it and when they did, did they see evidence of an advanced civilisation using AI (if that was at all possible) or was it ppurely that they knew the Arks would need sophisticated AI for the trip to Andromeda.

I believe SAM was in some way complicit (as an agent of the Geth) because there is no way I can see Alec being able to build such an AI, even with Shadow Broker tech which could only have been Geth technology anyway.