Since its release last month, Mass Effect: Andromeda has received no small amount of criticism from fans and critics alike. Fortunately, BioWare has been listening (it would have been hard not to) and the developer has said it intends to release patches over the next two months that will improve some of the game’s biggest flaws.
In a recent post on the official Mass Effect blog, BioWare’s General Manager Aaryn Flynn gave a list of things the patches will address and said that the first patch will drop on Thursday April 6.
Patch 1.05 will address a number of the game’s annoying technical issues such as bugs and crashes which can be found in the full notes, but it will also make some bigger changes.
Patch it up
The most notable of these will include allowing players to skip the lengthy cutscenes that take place when travelling between planets; increasing inventory limits; improving the dead-behind-the eyes look of human and Asari characters; and improving lip-syncing among other things.
All of these changes are a good start – the long unskippable cutscenes were something we bemoaned in our own review and for a game that places such an emphasis on item collection for the purpose of crafting a more manageable inventory is essential.
Over the next two months, Flynn said that the BioWare team will go even deeper into the game and improve several more areas.
What can we expect to see change? Well, aside from performance and stability issue improvements there will be improvements to the overall appearance of characters and cinematic cutscenes and animation.
There will also be important changes made to the dialogue options for the widely criticised trans character Hainly Abrams and improvements made to male romance options for Scott Ryder. Male Ryder currently only has two options when romancing male characters which essentially forces players to romance the opposite sex if they wish to unlock the achievement for romancing three characters.
More options and variety will also be added to the game’s character creator, although this will be of limited use to players who have already created a character and invested tens to hundreds of hours in their story already.
Flynn goes on to say that more cosmetic items will be added to the single player version of the game for free and that the multiplayer mode they’re “going to continue to build on the APEX missions that have been running since launch” as well as “adding new maps, characters, and weapons.”
All of this is, apparently, “just a taste of what’s in store” for the future of Mass Effect: Andromeda and Flynn invites fans to feed back more of what they’d like to see improved and changed in the future.
Though the game’s flaws would have been disappointing for fans of the series who picked the game up on release day, it’s to BioWare’s credit that it’s listening to feedback and looking to improve the game for future play.
