’Mass Effect: Andromeda,’ a Thoughtful Epic Wrapped in Explosions and Lasers
Mass Effect: Andromeda, like its three predecessors in the sci-fi roleplaying game franchise, loves two things: space opera, and errands. The first good-sized chunk of the game tasks you with gathering supplies for your galaxy-crossing space crew, a mix of smugglers, scientists, and warriors looking for a new start. Once you're stocked up, though, you do something that not a lot of space opera bothers to depict—you hang out with your crew, on a dusty old couch you brought along from the Milky Way, and watch a movie. These are your compatriots, after all: your friends, your defenders, your lovers. Even in big, shooty space epics, Turians and Krogans need their downtime.
On its face, Mass Effect: Andromeda (out this week for PC, PS4 and Xbox One), isn't far removed from blockbusters like Battlefront and Halo: You'll shoot some dudes, blow stuff up, and romp around in a rover that never quite feels right. That action-packed AAA veneer, though, belies the game's more profound underpinnings. The Mass Effect saga has always worshipped at the shrine of character growth, and Andromeda is no different. It is, however, even more ambitious. Throughout its 100-hour-runtime, the game weaves its firefights and many, many personal stories through a meditation on interstellar colonialism. Andromeda draws on a legacy of 1970s sci-fi, repackaging Alien's feminism and Star Wars' optimism alongside more values like the importance of emotional labor.
It's the middle of the 23rd century, and the various species of the Milky Way have banded together to launch more than 100,000 colonists to the Andromeda galaxy on a journey of exploration and discovery. At least, that's the idea; most of the cryogenically suspended colonists are MIA, your home base hasn't finished its auto-construct sequence, and hostile aliens attack you and your allies at every junction. So it falls to you and your intrepid team to find the missing colonists and give your fledgling colony the jumpstart it needs to find a new foothold among the stars.
