mass effect vs my gpa
The first Mass Effect
Alright, let's go back to the year 2007, where Britney Spears shaved her head, Transformers was the summer's blockbuster hit, and the first iPhone was released. People still crowded the magazines/newspaper aisle looking for the latest news for their favourite hobby or the latest fashion trends. I was in the fifth grade, and Bioware had just released a new original sci-fi video game exclusively for the Xbox 360, Mass Effect.
It was marketed as an action RPG, because during that time, RPGs were still somewhat of a niche genre, but it's been given more attention thanks to the success of Bethesda Softworks' The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion. Therefore, when Mass Effect was about to release, it was actually nicknamed "Oblivion in Space." Keep in mind this was long before Skyrim, the 3D Fallouts, or Starfield ever existed.
I don't really like describing this about myself, but all my classmates love Star Wars and Harry Potter, and I have tried so hard to get into these worlds - watching the movies, reading the books - yet, it never clicked.
However, I love the world of The Elder Scrolls when I first played Oblivion on my Xbox 360, and it was my equivalent of Harry Potter because similarly, it had robes, mythical creatures, magic, and fictional gods.
Therefore, when I heard about "Oblivion in Space," I wanted to give Mass Effect a chance. Maybe it'd be my equivalent of Star Wars.
Before I talk about Mass Effect further, I want to give a brief overview about the developers of it, Bioware.
It was founded by three newly graduated University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry medical students who wanted to tell stories through video games instead of practicing medicine. This sounds like the opposite of my medical school personal statement, where I stated I wanted to learn patient stories to help heal them.
Thanks to these physicians, we had the first two Baldur's Gate games, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, and Jade Empire. If you've heard of Baldur's Gate 3, which is a very popular video game currently, it was developed by a different studio, Larian Studios. However, without Bioware, we wouldn't have gotten the beloved third game that everyone loves.
I always thought Bioware's founding was fascinating, and they eventually earned a reputation as the company that focuses on writing and storytelling but had average gameplay.
Okay. Let's jump back to Fall 2007, when Mass Effect hits store shelves. A wee Amber begs her father to buy the first game he does.
So what was this game even about? In short, it's basically about a dormant alien race called the Reapers who come back after every 50,000 years to wipe out all organic life in the Milky Way galaxy. You play as Commander Shepard, who could either be male or female, and you must stop this threat as the Reapers have returned. Along the way, you learn about other sapient alien species, get to know your squadmates, and become a helping hand for those who might need help.
I remember making a male Shepard. I believed I named him Ryan since that was the male name I always used for custom male characters. For some reason, I was always fascinated by the Asari's design and enjoyed learning about their advanced civilization through their diplomacy and long lifespans. I found the Salarians rather fascinating as well, since they're like these frog-like, bipedal creatures who only live for 40 years but talk fast and are very intelligent. However, they don't look ahead towards the future, so they could make some rather reckless decisions as opposed to the Asari who just wait for everything to be resolved in a long time.
I played as a nice paragon character who tried to get along with everyone, minimize bloodshed, and just be the Milky Way's favorite errand boy. I believe I romanced Liara.
Because the universe was so expansive, there was a whole codex section in the main menu that was entirely narrated to help players recap all the comings and goings. Some great fans even uploaded the entire codex with the audio files online that you could access anytime.
Coming back to being in the fifth grade, it was a terrible time. I was being bullied, yet unsupported by the teachers. I never got to see the school psychologist until the spring semester when I just refused to go to class because mean girls were just making my school days terrible. Mass Effect was a better memory of that time.
Bioware also released novels to supplement the rich, vast world of Mass Effect. I remember getting the Revelation novel at Barnes and Noble. It was probably the first book that actually made me enjoy reading. It was written by the game's lead writer. I honestly just hated a lot of the books we read in class and did poorly in English.
The following year, a second novel, Mass Effect Ascension, releases, and my dad also gets that copy for me.
It is thanks to these Mass Effect novels that I actually got into reading because ever since then, I would branch out and read other video game novels, most notably Hitman and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, as well as other science fiction works such as Death Day and City of Pearl.
I guess if you're going to take anything away from this, it's that if you want to make a kid a reader, give them something they're interested in, not force them to read something you like or is popular.
The Sequel, but on the PS3
Fast forward to 2010 and Mass Effect 2 releases.
I unfortunately didn't play it at launch, but I remember it being marketed much more than the first game. It's probably thanks to EA being a bigger publisher than Microsoft, and it was being on all platforms instead of just Xbox 360.
I think it was in 2013 I've actually finally played it, but I brought the game on a PS3 instead. Therefore, unfortunately, the choices I made in the first game on a different console were not imported. It upset me that I had to deal with Bioware's default choices as a punishment for not playing the first game, even though I actually did.
I decided to play as a female Shepard this time. The game was still a blast and everyone survived the suicide mission.
I think that same year, 2013, Mass Effect 3 released and there was a lot of vitriol online in regards to its ending. The hate was bad enough that Bioware had to release an "Extended Cut DLC" that would enhance the ending a little bit more, even though it was a bandage on a gunshot wound at best.
Regardless, while I was aware of this controversy, it wouldn't be 13 years later I would actually play Mass Effect 3.
Basically, after playing Mass Effect 2 back in summer 2013, The Last of Us came out a month later on the PS3, and I was obsessed with that game instead.
The years passed, I graduate high school and play other video games in the interim.
"My face is tired"
Fast forward to 2017 and Mass Effect: Andromeda is released.
Unfortunately, Andromeda fell short of expectations at launch, with the most glaring problems being the poor writing/storyline, facial animation, and glitchiness at launch.
Compared to the original Shepard trilogy, where the default female model didn't have a face model, the female protagonist of Andromeda, Sara Ryder, did get one. She was marketed the most, so she ended up being the character model that most people end up playing as. Because of the bad animations, her face was memed to death on the internet. (On a side note, the male Shepard did have a face model for the first three Mass Effect games and was heavily marketed.)
Another infamous meme to come from Andromeda is when talking to the Director of the Andromeda Initiative, Addison, for the first time, and she says the line "my face is tired" as an excuse for being rude to your character. She lacked any expression when she says that line, as well as the the sentence being rather absurd, so it spawned a lot of internet rage.
Andromeda came out when I was in sophomore year of undergrad and in between studying, I'd watch a bunch of critiques or just straight-up hate videos on YouTube about this game, where people would hate-play this game and nitpick every single detail of it. Unknowingly, I'd form a spiteful opinion of this game without ever playing it myself. I also didn't even know what the game was even about.
Three months after Andromeda's disastrous launch, the video game journalist website Kotaku. released an article detailing the "development hell" of the game. In short, it was that Bioware wasted the first two years trying to make a No Man's Sky-like procedural generation algorithm where you could have limitless exploration of different planets in the Andromeda Galaxy, but this algorithm ended up not working out, so they had to handcraft the very few explorable planets and then try to make the whole game in the last 18 months. Moreover, a lot of skilled staff had to work at Bioware's main studio on Anthem. There was also staffing shortages for the animation department, and they had to outsource animation to countries like China and Egypt.
I guess that sort of excuses the poor animations. To be honest though, animation is pretty hard.
At least it's not Concord
Andromeda actually sold well, but it received a lot of backlash on the internet. Thus, Bioware and EA unfortunately ended up abandoning it, and Bioware's sub-studio that developed it got folded into EA Motive to make different live service games. Bioware shifted their focus on Anthem after basically abandoning Andromeda. Mass Effect as a whole was placed on the backburner.
Something interesting I learned about Anthem is that when Casey Hudson, the project director for Mass Effect 1-3, pitched it to EA, he said he wanted to tell stories through live service gaming. He thought this would be the greatest thing since Bob Dylan, and that this game would be the game that everyone would talk about for years to come.
Well, it was, just not in the way that he'd hoped.
When it was time to showcase the game at E3 2017, Bioware barely had a product and ended up "fabricating" this nice cinematic clip that was not reflective of the final product.
I remember in between physics homework sets, I watched videos on YouTube about people saying Anthem was Bioware's last chance at redeeming themselves. When it did release, it flopped. It legit did worse than Andromeda and remains Bioware's worst game to this date.
Let's temporarily skip to January 2026. EA decided to shut down Anthem's servers as part of its online purge. Because it was never a single player game, it's now unplayable. If you have a copy of it, whether digital or disk, it's now a nice piece of decoration. I guess the entire game now lives in a digital void.
However, Mass Effect 3's and Andromeda's servers are still up, so I guess at the end of it all, you could say Andromeda won.
Anyways, so yeah, that's a brief overview of Bioware and Mass Effect and how it intertwined with my personal life at certain points.
I have never played Anthem so I can't comment any further about it.
Enter: Mass Effect Legendary Edition
Let's fast forward to 2022 since neither Bioware nor Mass Effect were not in my life between 2017 and 2022. I honestly didn't play a lot of video games during that time either, except for random Call of Duty campaigns.
During the summer of 2022, I was 6 months into my new research job as a clinical research coordinator when a coworker quit on the spot and sent everyone in the entire department a lengthy email detailing how the workplace was toxic and citing a bunch of screenshots as evidence.
Throughout that whole summer, our team was only down to another workmate and I.
Besides the stress at work, I still managed to make time to skateboard and even date. Unfortunately, a date flaked on me while I was taking the 45 minute train into the city. I had no choice but to waste another 45 minutes on the train back.
At that point, I was done being a nobody and being nothing.
It was time to commit more seriously to the medical school path.
I didn't want to waste my time working some mid-level job with no further career prospects.
Therefore, when I got home, I applied to different scribe jobs. A few days later, ScribeAmerica got back to me.
I remember one day in July where I go into my research job but did the ScribeAmerica interview in a telephone booth. My interviewer had their camera off.
The Friday following this interview, I get a site assignment 35 minutes from my home to work in the emergency department. I do the virtual Zoom classroom trainings and medical clearance in the upcoming weeks because onboarding took forever with some dodgy communications.
It's now September 2022.
At this point, I was burned out from carrying a research project on my back so I asked management for a week off which was granted.
I didn't go anywhere during this week off because when I asked for vacations in the past, I would go somewhere and just not enjoy myself so I figured: I'm just staying put this time, and I'm doing things on my own terms.
I had just received the first iteration of the Steam Deck during my week off. You know, the one with the LCD screen. They didn't have the OLED one yet.
A year ago, I put down the deposit for the deck. Now, I finally had it, just in time to jump to another universe.
I decided to start the Mass Effect Trilogy again. I had the the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which was all three games with all their DLCs in one package and with enhanced graphics, in my Steam Library, and I was eager to really finish the trilogy and finally play Mass Effect 3 after all this time. I don't even recall when I purchased it, but I do remember my brother telling me about it and according to my Steam purchase history, I brought it at full price at $60.
I make my character. At this point, it's like 9 years since I last played Mass Effect. Since then, I have played as a woman more than a man in different video games, so I make a female Shepard. I named her Alice Shepard since Alice was a name I tend to use for all custom female characters I played.
Another hobby I do is drawing, and there's this fashion model named Elise Clark I drew often. I try to replicate her face using the character creator.
I make her an Earthborn War Hero, Soldier class, since I am more into shooting than messing around with biotics/magic at this point.
I am not sure if it's age diverting me away from mythical elements, or maybe it's because Skyrim nerfed the magic system so much that I am no longer interested in it. It's quite a shame how Skyrim ruined the magic system since creating your own spells in Morrowind and Oblivion was probably one of the best parts of The Elder Scrolls, even if it could break the game.
Anyways, throughout that week off, I get lost in the wonders of space.
I even did that XP glitch after rescuing Liara and yeah, I managed to get max level in Mass Effect 1. I saved everyone on Feros.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and I was only halfway through the first game before I went back to work.
I believe a week later, I finally had my first floor training with ScribeAmerica, and I get the bulk of my clinical hours and really committing my decision to go into medicine through the scribe job.
Mass Effect was present for that jumpstart and I will always be grateful for it.
Looking back, maybe it was the universe trying to tell me something.
Picking up where you left off
I didn't finish The Legendary Edition until four years later in February 2026.
The four years in between were just grinding to build a decent medical school application with three MCAT retakes, getting clinical experiences through the scribe job and hospice volunteering, as well as doing research, and just doing some non-clinical volunteering by helping out the local community.
My yearly steam wrap year after year from 2022-2026 was bare except for Forza Horizon 5 since I would play that with a close friend and race against others.
A military contract, some interviews, and a medical school acceptance later, I finally booted up Mass Effect Legendary Edition again on my Steam Deck in February 2026.
I picked up where I left off instead of starting another new game. I finished Noveria, spared the Rachni Queen, saved Kaidan, and am reminded of why I fell in love with the game in the first place. At this point, I don't know if it is my second or third playthrough of the first game. I just know that it never gets old, and I love its soundtrack.
Mass Effect 2 pt 2
After finishing the first game, it was time to start the second game but this time, it will have the decisions I make. I know I have said this multiple times, but it was really important to me.
I love how Wrex ruled Tuchanka, Shepard's and Liara's first reunion on Ilium, and meeting random characters I've helped and spared from the first game.
I also liked the new cast of characters introduced in this game as well. My favorite squadmate was Miranda since my character was a soldier, so Miranda's biotic skills were definitely useful. In the scenes she had with Shepard, it kind of felt like she had a crush on Shepard even if you couldn't romance her as a female character.
I love visiting Ilium and Omega and just seeing different hub worlds and eavesdropping on the different characters. The world building in this game was amazing and getting to know your squadmates and their stories was awesome.
However, the one feeling I couldn't shake was how little progress this whole game did to the overarching Reaper's plot. It just felt like a big side mission and unfortunately, the Collectors that you built a squad for weren't that important in the third game either.
Still, getting lost into this world was amazing.
Another minor issue I had was just how "dumbed down" it felt compared to the first game. There's no more inventory system. The bartering system was just buying guns. You don't loot anything except for ammo and credits. It felt more streamlined compared to the first game, and honestly, a corridor shooter with some RPG elements.
Regardless, I can understand why this is almost everyone's favorite Mass Effect game. Overall, it did feel very polished and organized. The combat was definitely improved. It was well-written and was set up in such a way that you really don't need to play the first game to really understand the story and get lost into the universe.
A month later in March 2026, I get three of my wisdom teeth removed. I remember after getting them removed, I would play Mass Effect 2. I was advised to stay awake for an hour after the procedure, and I feel like if I didn't play this game, I would have fallen asleep as soon as I came home from the operation.
I remember napping for four hours after staying awake for an hour.
When I did wake up, I had a mac and cheese, and then I launched Mass Effect 2 again on the Steam Deck, and I was just fading in and out as I'm trying to play the Arrival DLC laying on my bed.
Well, let's just say Shepard did manage to nuke an entire cluster later on that night.
That part was an important part of the DLC and Mass Effect as a whole (people meme how Shepard committed a Batarian genocide), but I feel like it'll always be a little more special to me because of the wisdom tooth recovery.
Unfortunately, for the next two days, it would my last two days at my scribe job. I'll have a whole post on my pre-med jobs after this one.
Mass of Gears of War Effect 3
Alright, so now it was on to the third game. I feel like I have waited a decade or more to finally play it. Well, I have a lot of mixed feelings about this game.
I love parts of it, but there were parts of it which weren't too hot.
I really did not like the first mission because it reminded me of every third person shooter that was released in the late 2000s-early 2010s for the Xbox 360.
It just kind of felt like I was playing Gears of War or some other popular cover shooter instead of Mass Effect with how flashy it tried to be with the maneuvers. I know this third game was really trying to get a new type of audience to play it, evidenced by its trailers in taking back Earth to an "action mode" where the game automatically makes choices for you. Once again, there was no inventory management or bartering system. I do think the weapon weight system was good addition and emphasised on a proper loadout instead of randomly choosing weapons.
That aside, I also felt Shepard was a little intolerable in this game because it just felt like she cared more about saving Earth and disregarding other species needing to worry about defending their homeworlds.
However, there were some good parts. First, you finally get to resolve the genophage and Geth/Quarian conflict that were present in the first game. The Thrasher Mal fighting the Reaper and the happiness of the Krogan when the genophage cure was raining from the Shroud was an amazing sight. Moreover, being able to kill a Reaper head-on was crazy since you mainly fought derivatives of a Reaper. I was also happy for the Quarians to finally get their homeworld, Rannoch, back, and even have the Geth help them and be apart of the war effort.
My only nitpick with the resolving this conflict is how Shepard straight up told Tali that it was her people's fault for making the Geth the way they are. It just felt so out of character for how I envision Shepard. Maybe this was just the result of poor writing or rushed development ?
Unfortunately after Priority Rannoch, I felt like the game really fell apart because Thessia definitely should have been longer than just going to the palace where the Prothean Beacon is and then Thessia is overrun with Reapers, yet you end up doing nothing about it.
However, the Citadel DLC was definitely very fun. It was great to see the whole gang together again. I also played a lot of that Armax Arena, so besides the clunky cover system, combat in this game was pretty fun and addicting.
I feel like the game really hit the high notes very well, but the lows were very low. That's how I saw the game described in some Reddit comment, and honestly I think that's the best description of Mass Effect 3.
Priority Earth itself was just quiet, and there was no final boss fight. The end scene with Shepard and Liara was definitely very emotional, and when Garrus tells Joker to leave Shepard, that really hurt.
I had a really high EMS of over 8,100 at the end of the game, so I did get the Shepard breath ending.
Regardless of my complaints, I loved these games. When I finished, for the next few days, I took a break from video games and just drew characters from Mass Effect, mainly Asari. I drew enough Asari to tell you that Councillor Tevo's markings are reused for a lot of Asari from Falere to random dancers.
Giving Andromeda a chance
During the time period when I was playing Mass Effect 2 back in February, I decided to rent the Mass Effect: Complete Comics Collection from my library since I was getting really immersed in the universe.
I liked how the comics went over events that happened off-screen, such as Liara retrieving Shepard's body with Feron and Jacob and Miranda working together. Since I hadn't even started Mass Effect 3 when I read the collection, I was confused who Rasa/Maya was and didn't understand why Cerberus took Omega from Aria. Anywho, the collection also had the Andromeda comics in it.
So I honestly wanted to skip it just because my perception of the game was clouded by all the online hate rhetoric I've read over the years. Even nine years later, a lot of people still ride the hate train for this game.
However, I actually gave this comic a chance.
When I was reading it, I haven't met Nyreen Kandros (the Turian in the Omega DLC), so I was confused who this Tiran Kandros guy was. But yeah, he was the main character of the Andromeda comics, and he actually goes to Earth to join the Andromeda Initiative where he meets Jien Garson.
As I read these comics, I was able to get a background on the Andromeda Initiative and its motivations for going to a new galaxy, and it was actually pretty interesting.
I thought, I might actually give this game a chance.
Alright, so after drawing and messing around, I decided to actually play Mass Effect Andromeda. I had actually brought Andromeda back when it was on sale for 7.50$ on Steam in 2021.
Let's temporarily go back to 2022, when I was playing Mass Effect Legendary Edition on the Steam Deck during that week-long vacation. There was a time that I actually launched Andromeda on that same Steam Deck, created a character, and progressed enough to get to the first mission on Habitat 7. Then I never picked up the game again until 2026.
Admittedly, in during my Legendary Edition playthrough, sometimes I would just launch the game and try to get through Habitat 7. It was a drag. The gameplay was totally different, it's more open world, and initially, I really didn't like it.
However, eventually, I finished made it off Habitat 7 and ended up on the Nexus.
I thought the two human companions, Cora and Liam, were so annoying, I almost just wanted to put down this game from their dialogue alone.
But for some reason, I kept giving it a chance.
And I realized, maybe my Steam Deck's the problem.
What if I installed this on my main desktop that's connected to an ultrawide?
Maybe I'll like it then.
And damn.
This game looks magnificent on an ultrawide.
The small screen of the Steam Deck and the lower graphics quality don't do it justice.
For some reason, the game just clicked with me as I was running around on the Nexus and doing side quests for people on there.
A farewell to the Milky Way
The tone and the vibe of Andromeda is totally different from the doom and gloom of the trilogy, but I like the youth and lightheartedness of it.
Before I proceed, what is Mass Effect Andromeda even about ? It is basically about the Andromeda Initiative leaving the Milky Way before the Reaper threat starts, to find habitable planets in the Andromeda Galaxy. You play as either Sara or Scott Ryder and try to make planets habitable through the Heleus Cluster of the Andromeda galaxy.
I found the protagonist, Sara, relatable since she was a soldier and scientist, which I guess is what I'm trying to be somewhat.
And of course, let's not forget the time she explained how an eyeball worked to Jaal and made me question if I should really head to med school, because I really am not able to explain how an eyeball works from cold recall.
It's kind of sad.
The combat definitely clicked with me later on and when I finally understood the crafting system, it was game over.
You could make some very OP weapons and have them behave differently depending on the augments you use, but most importantly, this game actually felt like it was returning to its RPG roots.
There was an inventory and bartering system again ! Crates now had loot again !
The bartering system isn't the best since you could sell weapons to a vendor who only sells Nomad paints, but I tried taking it into prospective: Morrowind has a strict and realistic bartering system where a weapons vendor won't accept magic potions. However, a lot of modern RPGs like Cyberpunk 2077, will allow you to sell pizza to a gun vendor. I'll let the bartering in this game slide. I don't expect anyone to adopt Morrowind's system anytime soon. Oblivion didn't, Skyrim didn't, The Elder Scrolls VI probably won't.
I also know an inventory system is not the deciding factor of an RPG, but I did miss it. I just feel.. incomplete without an inventory in an RPG.
There's also the journal system. I have no complaints about the journal in Mass Effect 1 and 2; however, Mass Effect 3 had the worst journal ever. It barely updated and you don't know your progress in the quests.
But hey, at least the journal in Andromeda actually tracked your quest progress, and it was organised well enough.
Open World Bloat
Alright, now let's talk about the elephant in the room: the open world of Andromeda.
I will say I actually enjoy driving the Nomad, and it made it fun to explore the open worlds. However, I'm also someone who just enjoys driving in video games.
I like the Mako in Mass Effect 1, played a lot of Forza Horizon 5's weekly events, did my fair share of Euro Truck Simulator and American Truck Simulatorr, and have done enough drive-bys in Grand Theft Auto 3/4/5/Vice City/San Andreas/Liberty City Stories, so I didn't mind the Nomad. The only complaint is it doesn't have a gun, but then the Andromeda Initiative is a civilian organisation, not a military organisation like the Alliance, so I don't expect it to have a gun.
To me, my issue with open worlds is that there's a lot of senseless fetch quests, and yeah, Andromeda is unfortunately a victim to such an issue. Sometimes, I felt like this was a Bethesda game where Ryder is the Andromeda Galaxy's favorite errand girl and every single NPC needs your help with something, except this time your completion of missions never earn you money. Rarely it ever does. Of course, you could refuse these side quests, like you could in any RPG game, but.. why would you ?
Still, it just felt like some of the side quests were trying to pad for content at points, which I think did hurt the game. I cannot tell you how many times I'd go back to the quest giver and ask myself "what did I just do for you again ?" Maybe it's just a me problem because whether it's Fallout or Cyberpunk, I tend to talk to a bunch of NPCs and stack up my side quests and try to do all the side quests in one go. Even in Grand Theft Auto, I'll do all side quests before proceeding with the main quest.
Also, I think another thing which really hurt this game is the lack of cinematics when you go talk to NPCs. Maybe these fetch quests would be a little more meaningful if you actually did get cinematics, but unfortunately, a lot of the time, the camera's just over the shoulder.
Still, I think every explorable planet kind of had its own look and were memorable enough: Elaaden's very hot, Voeld is very icy, Kadara's full of outlaws and ruled by a knockoff Aria T'Loak.
If you were to ask me my favorite open world, it would probably be Bully because it was a smaller map than Grand Theft Auto titles, but each area in Bully had its own unique feel. There were a lot of NPCs in the game itself, but each NPC had their own thing that made them memorable, like Algernon having that giant bladder with his underwear exposed, or Sheldon always threatening to kick you in the kneecaps.
I think that a lot of Andromeda's side characters are lacking that, and to be honest, a lot of characters besides your squadmates and some key figures were forgetful. At least Cora talks about being an Asari huntress enough that it's become a meme.
If you don't pay attention in the original trilogy, you might forget some side characters as well, or like even in Bethesda games, a lot of side characters could be forgetful, so I don't know.
It's not a bad game
I was actually invested in the story of Andromeda, and I think the Kett is an interesting antagonist, since compared to the Reapers living in Dark Space, the Kett have a home world and I would definitely love to visit it.
The game definitely left on a cliffhanger, and overall I actually really enjoyed my time with this game.
Maybe the Kett homeworld, Ellen Ryder's fate, and the Andromeda Benefactor are aspects that the new Mass Effect game will explore, since the teasers for the new Mass Effect game keeps hinting at Andromeda. So maybe it's not completely abandoned.
Yeah, the facial animations were still weak, and it made some dialogue awkward, but I guess you can't really fix it now, since I don't think there's going to be any more patches for this game.
Thinking about it more, I think a takeaway of Mass Effect Andromeda is that while it's a new galaxy, you still bring baggage from the Milky Way with you. If you don't resolve your issues before going, it's not going to get better in a new galaxy or 600 years later.
All the Krogans hated my Ryder when I chose to save the salarian Pathfinder instead of the Krogan scouts, and when I chose that said pathfinder to be interim councillor of the Andromeda Initiative at the end of the game. Come on - Shepard, uh I mean Blasto, cured the genophage back in the Milky Way 600 years ago, why are we still having a salarian vs krogans debate in a new galaxy ?
In conclusion, I love Mass Effect, I love exploring the universe and immersing myself in it, and I think Andromeda was overhated. Sorry I hated you at first.
Something I see often on online forums is the question, is Mass Effect: Andromeda a Mass Effect game?
To me, yes. I also just kind of find it pathetic that people were saying, "oh it would be a good game if it didn't have the Mass Effect name." I don't know why people want to preserve their idea of Mass Effect so much.
Andromeda is an adventure in the Mass Effect universe, and I was happy to spend time in a universe I loved so much.
Mass Effect Will Continue
I recently started a new playthrough for Andromeda, and upon listening to Liara T'soni's audiotapes in Ryder Sr.'s office again, I just had a feeling that Bioware will not abandon this game, especially if they included Liara in it. She'll probably end up having some sort of major role in the new game. We've seen her, supposedly, in the teasers.
I think that's my only expectations for the new game. Once again, I'll be happy to explore the ME universe again. I know there's a TV show coming out, but I hope there will be books and comics to supplement this world.
That's all I want, just more like what Bioware did with the original trilogy and Andromeda.
Just give me some books and comics.
That's all I want. I just hope they don't leave it at the TV show and that's it.
Bonus points if the books are narrated by the voice actor for the protagonist in the new game, because for Nexus Uprising and Initiation, I just love how Sara Ryder is basically reading me a book. The same goes for the Cyberpunk 2077 book, where female V is basically reading a book to you.
Lastly, I guess my only concern is the release date for this new Mass Effect game.
To be honest, it goes way over my head why new games take forever to release. I'm sure I could watch a video essay on YouTube about it, but I don't expect the new game to release anytime soon.
However, if it releases during medical school, I probably will not have time to play it, because medical school, you learn something new every single day and there is so much material to cover, yet not enough time in the day to do so. I'll probably be lost in my studies unless it's a break.
So, I might not have time to play it during medical school, but if it releases when I'm in residency, I might just start a family then. And the question goes, will I ever have time to play this new game?
Maybe I'm just looking ahead a little too far ahead and I'll probably find a way to play it.
The title of the blogpost comes from the song "Scott Pilgrim v My GPA" by Mom Jeans. I thought it was suitable given my concerns.
That's all for my relationship to Mass Effect. I'll keep filling my sketchbook with characters from this amazing universe.
Hope you enjoyed reading this.
