Normally every year I go through this phase where I want to experience the Mass Effect universe again. I get this urge to whip open the trilogy, create a new Shepard, and torture myself by reliving a story that never fails to bring me to tears by the time I hit the third game.
That third game... I don't know why I even bother playing it. It's not fun! It just makes me cry every ten minutes. 🤣
Because the Legendary Edition was only released like, half a year ago, I don't quite have the urge to play that just yet. But it's been a while since I've played Andromeda! I tried when I finished the Legendary Edition, but didn't get very far before I shrugged and went onto something else.
Now, Andromeda is NOT a bad game. And it did not deserve the backlash it received. I am soooo disappointed that we'll never get the DLCs and expansions to Andromeda, or a possible sequel, because of the rage of a few vocal "fans." Yes, there is a new Mass Effect game coming, but after Andromeda's reception I have a feeling they're staying far, far away from it.
The things I personally didn't like about Andromeda were minimal: I hated that the Asari were all clones, I hated that the Asari were suddenly spokespersons for real world human issues that I felt were hamfisted into the game and didn't belong there, and that's about it. Damned Asari.
Oh, and the character creator is balls with no depth to customisation unless you have mods to make a unique person who looks nothing like the presets.
So this morning I grabbed a bunch of mods off the Nexus and chucked them into Frosty, disabling the ones that decided they'd conflict.
Mostly it's just cosmetics. I want a better looking player character, Kadara doors were god awfully slow and now they won't be, SAM talked too much but now he'll be silent. MORE INVENTORY. And yes, slightly more skill points because why the hell not? 😜
Oh, and a non-Frosty mod -- Toggle HUD! So I can take nice screenshots. 😁
With my character customised with the help of mods, and my twin slightly customised to resemble my character, it was time to begin anew in Andromeda.
...and the very second I was able to control my person and move around, I remembered that I didn't even need a Toggle HUD mod because I have an nvidia graphics card, and Andromeda works with Nvidia Ansel for photo mode. 😅
Oh well, the HUD mod is still there if I need it for some inexplicable reason.
(If new games won't implement photo mode, the least they could do is be compatible with Ansel!)
And now that I remember Ansel exists and works with Andromeda... this might get a little bit screenshot heavy. 😅
I've had to adjust the graphics settings a few times. Mostly fiddling around with the anti-aliasing and depth of field. New complaint: the anti-aliasing in this is garbage and things still look jagged. And with depth of field activated, people's faces in cutscenes are also garbage.
Guess I'll just stick to creating depth of field in my numerous screenshots.
Despite what people say about this game, about how it's unplayable and boring and something not worthy of being titled 'Mass Effect,' I personally like the game and I think it's beautiful.
I could explore the open world all day, taking pretty screenshots. I'll happily do fetch quests for the colonists, though I do admit that personality is severely lacking in the NPCs. At least the Tempest crew and your companions have personality and they're the ones that matter.
(Though I do smirk at supposedly upset people sniffling and catching their breath while looking at you with their monotonous stare. The ordinary NPCs really should matter too, but I can deal with them being robotic husks.)
Today, when I wasn't spending my time taking pretty photos in Ansel, I managed to do all the initial missions on the Nexus then found my way onto Eos, the first proper planet in the game that we work to make into a viable habitat for our people to colonise. Then quickly activated the technology there and went back to the Nexus.
Eos is a lot like The Hinterlands in Dragon Age: Inquision. It's the first real place that you go to explore, and you really should leave the place as soon as you get the technology on the planet up and running again because you're just going to keep going back to it. So there's plenty of time, later on in the game, to work on "finishing" it if you so happen to be a completionist.
I'm planning on being a completionist.
The last time I finished this game was a couple of years ago and I desperately need something to keep my attention until the 9th of February (the 8th for the rest of the world), when the acclaimed Lost Ark is finally released for the western world.
I'm part of a Mass Effect group on Facebook, and a lot of people are coming around to the idea of giving Andromeda another chance after all these years. And all their talking about the game made me want to play it again too. 😅
From previous playthroughs, about a good 80 or so hours is required to finish this game properly... and if you factor in the constant pausing to take scenic screenshots... I should definitely be right for having enough to do until the 9th.
Unlike previous playthroughs where my character stuck with one personality the entire game -- all logic, all emotion, or all casual jokiness -- this time I'm choosing dialogue that I'd personally choose in a given situation just to switch it up a bit. In previous playthroughs I've romanced Jaal the Angaran, Vetra the Turian, and Reyes the Charlatan. This time I'm going to see how Liam's plays out.
I think I managed to get a good chunk done today, despite a lot of distractions! 😊 When I open this up again tomorrow, I'll have a whollleeee lot of stuff to do on the Nexus and I think after that is when I meet the Angaran race for the first time? I don't remember. So it'll be a surprise! Haha.
Definitely doing a screenshot showcase tomorrow. 📷😁
All screenshots in this post are courtesy of me, 
