10 Ways Bioware Can Still Save Mass Effect

6. Ditch The Combat Focus & Restore Paragon/Renegade

Back to gameplay, and while the combat in Andromeda was some of the best we'd seen, taking the series down a route where the overall 'loop' is "go to place, clear out checkpoint, interact with item, repeat" is not why we play Mass Effect.

Indeed, as games like Uncharted Lost Legacy have proven - and as Mass Effect 1 and 2 did too - less is more. Granted, the first two Mass Effects still had their fair share of gun battles, but there was just as much time to peruse social spaces, reasons to interact with various elements on the ship, and overall just 'take in' the galaxy before you.

This was lost in Andromeda thanks to a lack of planets, basic crafting systems and gameplay loops that encouraged getting lost in combat, rather than anything more meaningful.

As for Paragon/Renegade, whilst you could see what Mac Walters and the team were going for in giving us more 'emotion-based' responses, the reality was a series of conversation options that didn't actually mean anything or go anywhere.

At least when we had binary 'good or evil', it let the game track our choices, also letting the player fundamentally know whether they were signing off on a positive or negative outcome.