When it comes to video games, nothing gets me excited quite like Mass Effect. It was announced during NVidia’s CES presentation that Mass Effect Andromeda would be released on March 21st, of 2017 (the Andromeda portion can be viewed here). Ryan, David and I talked a little bit about this game during our game of the year podcast as one of the most anticipated games of the upcoming year. I wasn’t expecting to play this until the Christmas season of ’17 but a spring release has me doing back flips.
Thoughts on the Video:
The ship that the player will be navigating, “The Tempest”, looks like a sexier version of the Normandy from the previous three games. My understanding, from reading the December issue of Game Informer, is that every time you go to a different planet you’ll see a different landing sequence.
What we see next is a cut from the Tempest landing, to a hard cut to later in the mission and the “Pathfinder” (read: protagonist) being cut off from the Tempest. Before heading into the battle the player changes their abilities and goes into battle. Let me stop right here and talk about this: Bioware is changing the way RPG’s have been played for years. Being able to change your skill tree whenever you want (commonly referred to a ‘respecing’). Typically, in RPG’s you live and die by what choices you make when it comes to what your character is going to specialize in. Normally, you can’t reassign skill points without a special item or a completely new playthrough. My gut reaction is to hate this, but I’m saving my full thought-out opinion for when I play the game.
Next, we see combat in full effect. The eye-popping feature is the jetpack. The last three Mass Effect games had a cover based fighting system. It takes the relatively straight forward/2-dimensional fighting in the previous Mass Effects and ups the ante.
Closing Thoughts:
It’s been 5 years since Mass Effect 3 and all the controversy surrounding the ending to that game. I’m in hook line and sinker for Mass Effect whatever, but there seems to be a lot changes to the core of the Mass Effect gameplay. I am nervous, but I have already pre-ordered the game.
