Mass Effect: Andromeda is now out in the wild, finally hitting consoles and PC after a long five-year development.
Unfortunately, while the game sits in the respectable high-70s range on Metacritic, its launch has not been without its fair share of problems.
In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find coverage about the game that isn’t related to bugs and graphical imperfections.
That’s a shame, because the game is quite good: we gave it an 8/10, and our community poll (which you can vote in at the bottom of this article) seems to point to a positive general consensus among the community.
Regardless of what you think of the game, there’s no denying that it could do with a little tinkering. The good news is that developer, Bioware, is working hard to improve the experience.
It’s already released a launch update that fixed a number of small mission and design bugs, but the studio is still working hard to address some of the game’s more pressing issues.
Lead designer on Mass Effect: Andromeda, Ian S. Frazier, has been responding to fan queries on Twitter, with a number of heavily publicised issues well on the way to being fixed.
“We’re looking at patching lots of issues and want to strongly support the game moving forward,” he said when asked about the state of facial animations.
Facial animations have been at the forefront of a fairly active online campaign against the game, with wonky visuals and animations dominating message boards and social networks.
The character creation suite has also received some criticism, and Frazier says the team is looking at it, and may add subtle customisation effects in the future.
“I’ve got it on the list of things we’re looking at potentially fixing/adding for character creation,” he said when asked if beard stubble would be added to male Ryder’s creation options.
As for the romance options — which we’ve covered here — Frazier addressed concerns regarding the distinctive lack of male/male gay romance options for Scott Ryder.
“This is definitely not going in the trash,” he said when asked if Bioware was looking to add more gay romance options for Scott. “We take the concerns very, very seriously.”
Finally, and perhaps a change that could have the largest ramifications on the general nature of progression and difficulty in the game, is the ability to save during priority missions.
As it stands, all missions in the game block saving between objective checkpoints. This makes especially long checkpoints that little bit more stressful, as dying towards the end of a long battle could see you thrusted back to the start of a mission.
“[We’re] still checking out the ramifications of such a change,” Frazier said.
What are some improvements/changes/additions you’d like to see come to Mass Effect: Andromeda? Sound off in the comments below!
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