The game hits Xbox One, PS4 and PC on March 21.
Mass Effect Andromeda feels like that. You’re no longer the legendary starship captain bringing peace to the galaxy. You don’t automatically command respect and devotion. Your crew isn’t a bunch of old friends.
Instead, you play Sara (or Scott) Ryder, a rookie attempting to fill some very big shoes. And it turns out that’s a pretty good metaphor for the entire game, too.
Mass Effect Andromeda — coming to Xbox One, PS4 and PC this March — is all about a fresh start for the Mass Effect sci-fi franchise, to the point that no characters from the original trilogy will appear. The whole game is set in an entirely different galaxy, some 600 years later.
Fearing the destruction of their home planets, humans and friendly alien races have sent giant 20,000 passenger Ark ships in search of a new home among the stars, and that’s where the game begins: You wake up from a 634-year cryogenic nap as a headstrong young explorer, faced with a new frontier.
Everything goes wrong. You deal. Eventually, you become captain of your own super-sleek ship, the Tempest. Oh, and there’s a jetpack, a badass six-wheel rover, crew members to romance, choose-your-own-adventure decisions to make and a whole lot of sci-fi gunplay.
How do we know? Two CNET editors (and big-time Mass Effect fans) were among the first people outside developer BioWare to play the game for several hours last week.
Here’s what we think.
It seems like a bit of a cop out to say it’s too early to tell, but hear me out. Honestly, the best part of Mass Effect for me [Me too! -Sean] has always been those little moments where the characters interact and feel like real people. It’s something BioWare is good at across pretty much every game it’s ever released, and here… I’m just not sure yet.
I’ve gotta agree, the fact that you can take cover anywhere didn’t add a whole lot to my time with the game — but launching into the air, boost dashing around enemy cover, and picking off supposedly safe foes definitely made my day.
OK, not exactly. But you won’t be picking your class out of the gate. Your Ryder isn’t necessarily a Soldier or a sneaky Infiltrator or an Engineer. Instead, you’ll have access to every skill in the game. As your proficiency in certain skills increases, the relevant class profile also becomes more powerful.
If you’re a stat junkie, just wait: There’s a truly dizzying array of weapons and weapon upgrades in this game. Maybe too many, even, including silly things like “aerial lubricant” that makes weapons fire faster — but only when you’re hovering in the air. And once I’d built my full-auto sticky-grenade firing sniper rifle, I wasn’t immediately sure why I’d use anything else ever again.
