‘Mass Effect: Andromeda’ Getting More Improvements Soon

After waiting for over five years to experience the next chapter in the Mass Effect universe, fans were incredibly excited for Electronic Arts and BioWare’s next-gen follow up to the series with the ambitious Mass Effect: Andromeda. However, ever since the game’s release on March 21, the reviews have been less than glowing.

Mass Effect 3 landed to incredible acclaim in 2012, with the title earning an average score of 93 on Metacritic. It was the highest ranked Xbox 360 game of the year on the site, and for most fans, it ended up as a satisfying ending to the initial trilogy (after the last piece of DLC dropped that is). Mass Effect 2 also received an amazing score, and earned an average score of 96 (Xbox 360 version) on Metacritic, while the original installment got the series off to a great start with a 91 (Xbox 360).

This made the tepid response and relatively lackluster 76 rating for Mass Effect: Andromeda all the more disappointing for fans, and for the developers who were so excited to release their latest chapter to the world.

It’s not often that the creators of a game are upfront when their work disappoints, but BioWare took to Twitter to own up to the situation and give hope that things will soon get better for their troubled release.

“We’ve received quite a bit of feedback, some of it positive and some of it critical. That feedback is an important part of our ongoing support of the game, and we can’t wait to share more of our immediate plans with you on Tuesday, April 4.”

Unfortunately, it’s not quite clear what the studio is setting out to fix on Mass Effect: Andromeda. They haven’t offered any specifics yet, but announced the April 4 date to expand upon their initial post. They also encouraged fans to keep on sending in feedback.

“Our team is listening, working around the clock to gather information and plan out solutions to improve and build on Mass Effect Andromeda.”

However, there’s been plenty of things that fans and critics haven’t been overly thrilled about in the latest game, which are likely at the top of BioWare’s list to fix.

For starters, the facial animations in Mass Effect: Andromeda have been met with near universal disdain (which later led to a another controversy in itself when a woman who used to work at the company was blamed for the fiasco, and BioWare had to step in to dispute it).

This, presumably, was because they planned to hit every line by hand. But a 5-year dev cycle shows they underestimated this task.

— Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) March 23, 2017

While being able to overhaul the entire animation system isn’t in the cards, there’s a few tweaks they could perform to make the character’s expressions look more realistic. There’s also been a lot of complaints about various bugs during conversation scenes, which are likely a priority to fix in the near future.

To everyone who has provided feedback…We are listening. Thanks for sticking with us. We are so lucky to have you.

— Michael Gamble (@GambleMike) March 23, 2017

Gamers have also been critical of the squad-based system in place for Mass Effect: Andromeda. There have been instances of squad mates teleporting directly onto the player, and for the AI not following orders in general, which makes playing through the campaign a bit of a hassle.

As the Inquisitr previously reported, there was already a day one patch for Mass Effect: Andromeda, which fixed some audio issues, as well as problems with the cinematics. As seems to be the case these days for big releases, there’s still quite a bit to fix up before the game runs as smoothly as it was envisioned.

While it’s encouraging to see the publisher taking action to try and fix some of the issues on Andromeda, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to overhaul the game to the point where is lives up to the lofty reputation of its predecessors. However, the franchise is far from over, so there’s plenty of room for improvements to be made in the inevitable sequels.

[Featured Image by BioWare]