This kind of new-idea-oh-never-mind problem can be found all the way down into the game’s smallest details. One of them is a very common convention found in many games — the “loot” system, i.e., the mechanic by which the player accumulates tools and treasure throughout the game. Usually there are stores and/or merchants where gear can be purchased; in addition, sometimes the player is gifted with new objects and valuables on completion of a challenge, or sometimes the player opens chests or smashes boxes, or searches the bodies of dead enemies, to find and collect the guns and doodads. The first Mass Effect employs all of these mechanics, resulting in an overloaded inventory system that requires an aggravating amount of micromanagement. By contrast, the sequel, Mass Effect 2, dispenses with loot entirely, limiting the player to gear purchased directly from in-game vendors.
Andromeda goes back to the original Mass Effect model, featuring a huge amount of collectible “stuff,” but very sensibly segregates weapons and other usable objects from sellable “salvage” that doesn’t count against the inventory limit. The problem with Andromeda, though, is that the typical loot system doesn’t make sense in the context of the story, and breaks the suspension of disbelief necessary to maintain the player’s interest and emotional engagement. See, as the Pathfinder, you are responsible for helping these intergalactic colonists cope with the challenges of their new environment; people are struggling with resource shortages, limited food and water, and other problems. Which makes it very strange when you roll into somebody’s camp, agree to help them solve some dilemma, and then ransack their storage containers, stealing their weapons and water filters and raw mineral resources and anything else you find, and leaving them, apparently, with empty boxes. This makes sense in a story where you’re going behind enemy lines and raiding your adversaries’ supplies to sustain your offensive, but here, you’re supposed to be helping these people, and it’s strange and jarring.
You might even be able to accept it as a convention of the genre, a necessary mechanic that doesn’t bear close consideration, except that BioWare seems to be aware of it, and includes moments where it’s directly commented on. On a couple of the big worlds, there are scavenger camps where desperate people are scrabbling for survival; the moment you roll up, they start shooting, trying to defend their stash. But occasionally, the scavengers don’t react with hostility; indeed, they don’t react at all, milling about their camp and ignoring you. Until you crack open a container, at which point someone shouts, “They’re stealing our stuff!” and then the scavengers open fire. This is obviously something the game’s designers recognized as an issue, and thought about, and considered building into the game as a departure from the norm: can you still be the hero protagonist if you’re freely mooching off the people you’re supposedly trying to help? Except that they don’t commit to the innovation, sticking to the conventional “unrestrained looting” model most of the time, while occasionally deviating to the apparent alternative, which does nothing but call attention to the weirdness of the convention.
The game displays, in general, a strange fear of committing to anything that might challenge or alienate the player. One of the most noticeable problems, popping up over and over, is how it abandons the “meaningful choice” model established by the previous trilogy, and in BioWare games in general.
One of the hallmarks of Mass Effect is the frequent requirement for you, as the character, to make a choice, the impact of which can be felt on the story that follows. There are two kinds of choices: One is simply a story branch, where you choose between actions, or allies, or other alternatives that cause the narrative to play out in different ways (for example, consider the number of paths you can take to get permission from Noveria authorities to leave their HQ and go check out Peak 15). The other type of choice is intended as a moral or ethical challenge, requiring you to roleplay Shepard to reflect the type of character you want to be, without major impact on the story (e.g., after you defeat the Thorian on Feros, what do you do with the asari it was holding captive).
In a handful of situations, the choice combines a story branch with a moral component. And sometimes the impact is small, but sometimes it’s significant, and is even “remembered” from one game to the next. In one of the best-known examples from the first game, you have to choose between two characters: one of them lives, and one of them dies, with no possibility of saving them both. And then the survivor continues in the story, while the other one is gone, never again seen or heard. Now, it’s arguable the degree to which these choices represent truly meaningful moral quandaries, considering that they usually play out simply as mechanical actions that affect game state and open or close different narrative branches, and many players treat them as such; but at their best, they do invite a genuine emotional investment in the game’s story.
There’s something else to consider about how these choices work, too, which is probably best illustrated by looking at another BioWare game, Dragon Age: Inquisition. At about the two-thirds point of that game, you are required to decide which of two rival factions will be your ally; as a result of that choice, all of the locations and story missions associated with the unselected option disappear, in favor of the locations and story missions associated with the option you did choose. This kind of game design has a massive resource overhead, in terms of development time and cost, as you realize if you replay DA:I and make the other choice and see just how different the game becomes at that point. By doing this, BioWare knows they are creating a huge amount of content that a significant portion of the player base will never experience; most people don’t replay the game, so whichever story branch they choose, they won’t see any of the other branch. That’s expensive, and for understandable reasons, the corporations behind game studios don’t like spending millions of dollars creating material that most players won’t ever see.
Andromeda, though? Andromeda doesn’t do any of this.
Yes, there are several places in Andromeda where you seem to be making a choice, but with one middling exception it doesn’t materially impact the flow of the story. There are tiny cosmetic effects, like which of two minor characters is picked to occupy a functional role in the plot, or how many support-team members pop up during the final battle, but that’s really it. And in the few places where the choice you’re making does, actually, seem significant? The fallout from that choice is invariably punted to the next game. Just as all of the primary narratives fail to conclude and will drag on into the continuing franchise, you don’t even get to affect this game the way you expect. Who’s going to be the leader of Kadara Port, Sloane or Reyes? Who controls the water source on Elaaden, Annea or the Nexus? What should happen to the ancient angaran AI found on Voeld? What’s the impact on the angara if Akksul is allowed to live, instead of being martyred? Is there a downside to taking the deal offered by the Primus to betray the Archon?
You get to make all of these choices, and maybe some or all of them would have mattered in the next game; but we’ll probably never know, and for damn sure none of it matters much here.
