Choices: The journalists' "garbage" is my kind of treasure.

Sit back and enjoy this for context of my opinion:



For everything that Andromeda does to disappoint fans of the trilogy or BioWare or whatever, the one thing thus far Andromeda gets RIGHT in my opinion is that when you're faced with choices and ultimatums (as opposed to roleplaying with tones) it has the appropriate effect a choice should have.

The game uses choices to support its themes and world-building. Do you settle a science-lab outpost or do you make it military? Do you shut down an unethical experiment or keep it for research. Granted some of it is retrodden ground but much like how Mass Effect 3 found its greatest moments of causality of choices via the smaller, less memorable decisions as opposed to the "YOUR CHOICES WILL MATTER... (eventually)" decisions is a testament to how those kinds of choices are more grounded to work within the interactive narrative in the first place.

As in the video I linked to MrBTongue explains that to him the most effective form of Choice & Consequence is when it is used as an effect to the setting and used to build immersion as opposed to being a marketed slogan that eventually doesn't even fulfill the promise (as in ME3).

As much as Andromeda seems to be BioWare downplaying the aspects that didn't ultimately work in the trilogy, such as the lofty choices made in ME1 and ME2 that got all but retconned in 3, so far I actually like the choice & consequence design better in Andromeda than any previous BioWare game (sans... DA2 I think?) because of how subdued it is. It does downplay the overall excitement-factor of the game. If you put in a serious "live or die" ultimatum or some larger-than-life decision it would ramp up the stakes and increase the emotional resonance with what is going on but the approach they chose is surprisingly (maybe not even intentionally) high-brow.

Now, to get back to the title. I was watching the Gameinformer podcast and some other stuff regarding the review of this game, and I was, as always dismayed at how contrary my opinion really is to those journalists. People gave 10/10s to ME3, didn't comment on the ending, said it was "the perfect way to wrap up the story" and I couldn't disagree more. I was so disappointed in BioWare that I hoped this game, unless it would be really good, would kinda flop critically so they could learn a lesson. Initially I was like "gotcha!" with the 74 metacritic score but upon further inspection It seems like the biggest reasons critics dislike the game aside from technical jank are for completely misconceptualized, trivialized and downright subconscious thinking. To list a few bulletpoints they often criticize that I find to be somewhat false.

1.  The characters are not as memorable as in the trilogy.
2. The choices didn't seem to be as epic as in the trilogy.
3. Mass Effect 2 and 3 were much better than ME1. 

See, critics are probably the absolute worst at the whole "instant gratification" thing. They have a family to be with and kids to feed. They have friday night drinking and they have 10 more games to cover next week. Fandom aside they're not THAT into these games, so naturally from a dumb marvel moviegoers perspective (ha!) ME2 and ME3 are better games because they look more stylistically consistent to themselves, the mechanics feel tighter and the story feels more dramatic and less janky... sorry, I didn't mean to talk about this actually, I just get triggered when people discredit ME1 so completely. Anyway!

See, critics are probably the worst at the whole "instant gratification" thing.   They want immediate impact and feedback. The game has to be more epic than the last AAA summer blockbuster kind of game or they'll fall asleep playing it. The fact that choices don't seem to be as epic is in my opinion a misconception in the sense that they don't need to be as epic because epic in the first game may just lead to complete disappointment in the second game, and epic in itself, may not really serve a purpose for a game that is a slow start because not everything has to be turned up to 11 you know? The characters not being as memorable is another misconception. This is where my italicized "in the trilogy" comes into play. Whether it's Gamestop, Gameinformer or IGN, they're all shockingly subconscious about the fact that they're comparing 3 games's worth of character arcs here when they should be comparing to ME1; a game they already have forgotten everything about because its shooting was bad. The obsession with one-upping the trilogy is a bad precedent to impose on BioWare's vision that I hope BioWare does not bite at, but if they do I hope they do so lethally and bite back at it rather than to gobble it up and bend over backwards in fear for it.

In short, Andromeda's choices are fine, maybe even more than fine compared to ME1, because they don't set up too many crazy promises despite there being room for a sequel and more importantly they serve the purpose of Ryder's arc and the Andromeda Initiative in a world-building sort of way rather than being about "YOUR DECISIONS WILL MATTER (TM)!"

TL;DR: I respect that Andromeda vouches for more realistic choices that contribute to the setting rather than to create superfluous dramatic decisions that will eventually disappoint, and I think it makes it more immersive than in the trilogy.

That said... the crit-path itself (the one you cannot influence with your decisions) is definitely not as good as ME1 (arguably 2 and 3 but I dunno)