11 Ways Bioware Should Have Made Mass Effect Andromeda
How to write a story worth five years and 40 million dollars.
If there was ever any game primed and ready for a "How it should've gone down"-type analysis, it's Mass Effect Andromeda. Because despite the many things fans will appreciate or the more overt ups and downs that come from playing the game itself, this is one of the richest mythologies in gaming history - one Bioware played it very safe with when revisiting.
To that end, Andromeda's main story is a supremely basic 'stop the evil alien' setup, twinned with some (weirdly optional) backstory elements, the notion of exploring and terraforming a variety of planets and getting lost in endless side-missions as you do so. It's not for everyone by a long shot, but thanks to Mass Effect as a mythology being a veritable sandbox of enjoyable alien relations, political posturing and interspecies philosophy, Andromeda occasionally shows signs of genuine brilliance.
They're few and far between for sure, but when you think back on just how much the whole world was flipping a middle finger towards EA back in 2012, how it's taken five years and 40 million dollars to develop, and how the status of Mass Effect as a franchise meant this had to be an immaculate game, there's a TON that should've gone down differently.
Starting with...
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Note: Full spoilers for Mass Effect Andromeda within.