This is a game I have played, past tense. I don't give a damn about spoilers. You have been warned.
There are many, many autopsies on this game and I can only add in a few bits and pieces from my own perspective. You can find many more thorough reviews just by using a search engine and finding people who will take this game apart from all possible aspects, so I can only give you the viewpoint of someone coming in new to the Mass Effect universe since, yes, I have not played the prior games. I have watched some good background material on those games, just to understand the context of the Andromeda entry, but that is all I've done with the prior games.
Coming into the game, the player is given an intro, some minor amount of background and then put into the game tutorial section. The first shortcoming of the game is that, for an action-shooter game with RPG elements, it sets the wrong tone right from the start. What it does in the intro is present a figure of how many survivors are on your ship and you don't know where the other ships or the entire Initiative is at. When a game gives you an on-screen number at the very start of the game, that number should be meaningful: your job is to get as many of those people through to the end of the game as you can. It is a horror or survival game element that can easily be inserted into any other major genre to demonstrate just what the actual actions you are doing represent. It is a number you can be judged on and your entire run's success will have that number as a first major piece in your game play. When a player is given a number like that it can and must be tracked so the tone set at the very introduction of the game is carried through. It isn't.
Why is that number important? First off it tells you that the game designer has a set number of people in this game and that number will be tracked. When getting to the Nexus which was sent out before most of the other ships to provide a major hub for the races coming to Andromeda from the Milky Way Galaxy. It is in a star cluster, the Heleus Cluster, which means that this is a formation of stars that are closely packed together and they tend to be of similar age, though the star types will be very different from system to system. A star cluster with few of the larger star types (O,B,A) means that the majority of systems won't have to worry about local supernova or hypernova events that go with those star classes. Of course you aren't told this, just that the cluster will tend to have many stars that tend to be ones with habitable zones that even have some target planets that might be worth looking at. Thus the number of people in transit, in full, should be available on the Nexus which should be tracking everyone who is in the Initiative. That number of people never, ever updates.
That is extremely important as the Initiative at the Nexus had a rebellion while your ship was in transit, and a large number of people left it to try and do their own thing in the Heleus Cluster. What that means is that every single, solitary individual that you kill that is from a Milky Way species was a member of the Initiative. That number can and should be tracked as it is FINITE in nature. In a universe of infinite size having to get a finite number of individuals through a game is vital and important. Every single decision you make, every encounter you have will effect that number and whenever you kill someone, that should be tracked by reducing the number of survivors left. Every time you, as a player, find a place where people from the Initiative have been killed, that number should go down. And if you make a large scale decision that drives anyone permanently out of the Initiative that should also be tracked with the amount docked from the overall total and then shown separately as those permanently lost but alive due to your actions. That is the expectation of having a real number thrown at the player at the very start of the game: it is a survival or survival/horror typical statistic.
For game play this also means that there will be no respawning Milky Way species encounter zones as that makes no sense at all. In fact a player might want to avoid truly hostile encounters ENTIRELY to find a way to keep those people alive through other means, typically through diplomacy, negotiation, trade or other inter-personal methods. That would require some serious RPG elements, major and minor stories set up around the Initiative rebels, where they landed, and offer a way through the game that isn't through arms and weapons. That body count of those lost is not a positive feature to you, unless you are playing as a psychopathic kill on sight type. All of that means that the game setting, from the introduction before the tutorial, sets the tone for the game as an action-shooter based survival/horror RPG. The base type is the same as the rest of the game as that is what the tutorial teaches the player and sets the genre. It should be in the survival/horror or RPG genre as THAT is what the tutorial is trying to push through, and every player decision should make a difference in the outcome of the final game.
This is where the game failed, for me, and it was right at the start.(YMMV)
Instead of a tightly written Survival-Action game with RPG elements it decided to drift into the Shooter-Action genre, with only a smattering of RPG elements. Now from the setting this could also encompass the Military or SF Military genre, so all isn't lost, right? Oh, wait, you as the one of two surviving fraternal twins, are basically told you are to be the Pathfinder instead of your departed dad who couldn't show a lick of sense when encountering his first real alien site died doing something with unknown consequence. He was SUPPOSED to be the experienced one and outright failed at his job. Yup, you got the job that your dad failed to do and you have absolutely, positively NO TRAINING IN DOING IT. In fact each colony vessel should have its own Pathfinder (just one? no, really, just one?), which is basically the head of the Red Shirt (yup a Star Trek thing) team with major scientific duties to be set down onto a planet to see if it is either habitable or can be made habitable through putting down equipment to protect from the environment. That means the player must have a character that has a good science background AND military or militia background to even begin to qualify for the position. Instead dear departed dad just said you are it, go and do your job now. You are now The Chosen One, sucker.
And as The Chosen One is an Archetype and it is normally associated with being the savior, redeemer or simply being anointed and predestined to do great things and shielded by the higher powers. Greatness is granted, not earned. It is an Archetype that can be done very well if the game is well thought out and the path obscured so actually finding it and moving along it is a challenge. Unfortunately this is rarely the case in gaming as witness how, in Fallout 2, being The Chosen One meant some of the toughest decisions a player can make versus Fallout 4 where there is only a single semi-interesting decision along the main story line. Both games are set in the same universe, yet different developers took wildly different approaches on how to implement this Archetype so that in one game actually fulfilling the title was difficult with many dead-ends along the way, and in the other there was just a bunch of Filler Quests shoved in to keep the player busy. So in MEA your first mission is to get the people under your care to the Initiative HQ at the Nexus.
Hey, getting the ship someplace where the PC can hand over that job to someone more qualified, I'm willing to do that. You are the protagonist, after all. And that is an important job that, luckily, the Captain of the colony ship can do. Job, done! OK, you do a bit of poking around at the Nexus, but that doesn't make you a Pathfinder. A scavenger or some equivalent, maybe, sure. Or just a careful science officer candidate who has a bit of diplomatic skill so as to not PO everyone on meeting them. That is something the Player Character (PC) is actually able to do. Stick to the basics, then hand the job over to someone more qualified. I mean, really, there was supposed to be a corps of Pathfinders, right? Right?
Sadly you don't get to do that or even say that you are absolutely, positively not qualified for the job of Pathfinder. You can't refuse it, you can't look to get trained up on it and there is no way to let everyone know that you are NOT The Chosen One. No matter what dialogue you choose, as the player, there is no way to actually AGREE with the people who say 'this isn't the way its done'. I'm more than willing to serve in an exploration vessel under someone else who thinks they have the chops to do it, too. I think that would be fun and exciting game play which would still offer major decisions and a chance to learn some of the job of Pathfinder. Even if the ship's captain is JUST a ship's captain and not shooter-in-chief this would mean getting to learn that job as part of the training for exploration and maybe becoming a Pathfinder.
The game gives everyone a scanner and you can adapt to it better than anyone else as you have an implant linking you to an AI your dad made, called S.A.M. Having the job as an AI augmented science officer sounds like a heap of fun, at least at the start of things, and then should present a complex set of decisions to make on what you want to do for a full career. The first planet that is made habitable has a wide variety of slots open in it, and should serve as a major stop for the player to do other things and get other ranks within the Initiative that then will certify them for better jobs. Like there would be at least an understood protocol within the Initiative to start ranking and certifying people for jobs. Either a civil or military administration would have this as a feature, yet that is true of neither of them. There is a 'militia' system for multi-player work that is disconnected from the main game, but that is all it is: a separate part of MEA, not impacting the main story line or offering job advancement in a known system that would be laid out for the player.
Sadly, all of that isn't done. You get to be the damned, 'inexperienced hero' who starts to serve as the main way to move SAM around from mission to mission. All the real heavy lifting that needs to be done is done by SAM. And you don't even get to turn the comms for SAM off on your own. When the disconnect does happen, the PC is so crippled that they can't even walk properly any more. Huh? The link between the character and SAM is so deep that SAM gets to control and augment much of the motor skills of body of the PC to the point the character isn't really much of anything as a physical being. Instead of giving the player the chance to learn skills and beef up their body without SAM doing that, you are stuck with all the benefits of SAM and all the negatives of not actually being able to learn to do things on your own so that losing the SAM link DOESN'T CRIPPLE YOU. As this game has a leveling system form of game mechanics, it would and, indeed, should be possible to show what is possible without the AI assist and then what the top tier or two of skills are opened with an AI assist. That would let the player know that if they don't want the hand-holding and just being a way to move the AI around, they could go it alone and learn skills on their own, and only use the AI when it is absolutely necessary. Add in having to go back to the Nexus for that and the entire experience would put some elements of RPG into the game to have the player given a chance to think ahead about what it is they want to do next. Sadly, no, you can't do that and get to be a physical cripple when the link is off.
Spooky, huh? Wanting to do things without a hand-holding AI might show a spark of independence that requires player agency.
Perhaps even a bit of role-playing.
Can't have that!
Player Agency or Player as Agent
Even worse, as the plot revolves around SAM helping to train your brain to utilize alien technology via neural expression. When SAM is gone you, as the player, realize that you don't know how to do that because you never, ever got to practice doing it without SAM. There are plenty of small tasks to do with alien equipment that should allow the PC to turn off SAM's help and see if they can start doing things on their own. Which would be better: an augmented person who nearly falls flat on their face when their augment is disconnected or someone who bothers to train themselves and their mind over time to do that task with minimal to no augmentation at all? Sadly you do not get to make that choice. That is an unnecessary loss of player agency. Instead the PC is now an Agent of SAM, and only a few choices make any difference in the game and none in the actual outcome of the game.
Most critics will point at the dialogue tree and its severe lack of options as the point where player agency has been, effectively, removed. I'm going to point at the base character who can, should and must have options over how they want to run their own damned body. Are all the abilities that SAM helps to unlock fun? Yup! Yet you do have a smattering of Biotics training, training in the sciences, and know enough about weapons and armor to at least be able to protect yourself. While, for the minimal narrative, you do have SAM, the player should be able to find a way to turn that link off (or tone it down so that SAM doesn't have complete neuro-physical integration) and then learn to train their own skills, physique and mind up to the point where they are effective without SAM.
Turning the augmentation back on would then radically boost all that you have done on your own, of course, but then any experience gained in that state will NOT help to further those skills save for top rank, AI required ones. In fact the SAM based augmentation could be kept separate and added in only when needed and removed when it isn't so game play balance is still retained along with player agency. To go with that would be hard caps on skills without SAM, so you would know when you have achieved the maximum capability in that area and show what SAM can help you achieve if turned on and activated. And in certain skills, like in the sciences or biotics, there should be no cap based on AI assistance, which would require an actual science and biotics set of skill trees to demonstrate just what normal humans are able to do, not just the combat oriented biotics one. In theory the Profile switching via SAM does a bit of this, but it is all done by SAM, which means that you need that assistance to change up skills and powers. Of course that makes no damned sense as these are the skills of the PC and should have them all available, all the time. By putting a steeper XP curve on the skills the player can choose between becoming very effective at a few skills or somewhat effective across the board in a Jack of all Trades role. Yes that is role-playing and could have been accomplished via reducing or toning down a 'feature' of the game instead of using it as a crutch.
The worst part of that concept of Profile swapping is that once the player has a good play style that meets their requirements, they will almost never have to swap a profile throughout the entire game. In theory a player can choose alternate play styles on the fly, but as a player I did that so rarely, that I even forgot that I had that capacity for the character. Really, if that system was gone then I would have been fine with honing some skills and abilities with...ahhhh... skill trees. The lack of variety of skill trees to have a character build means that you are always going to be a generalist at high level, though the player is likely to finish the game long before that point. Allowing for diversity in skills then gives the ability for game developers to put in multiple, alternate solutions to problems that then allow for some role playing on the part of the player. It is true that branching paths to do things requires a lot of forethought on the part of the developer. Doing so gives the game replayability and longevity, if the basic narrative is at least OK and semi-interesting at least. It can be made much more interesting by giving the player options and choices based on how they want to approach the game.
From all of that lack of diversity and lack of player choice that is meaningful, the story becomes linear and the player is an agent in the story. Stuck with one way through side quests are not considered a major part of the story which is why they are side quests and while it is possible to choose which combat forms you want to use to deal with foes, you will deal with them without choice. There are things that are impossible to accomplish in MEA: a no-kill run, a kill everything run, a no armor run. You will fight, you will kill and if you don't then your companions will do it for you. That isn't bad in a Military Shooter and if this game had actually adhered to that genre there would be no problems, yet that was never implemented as a top to bottom theme for the game.
Commitment Problems
Player agency and diversity of skill trees are both removed at the start of the game to streamline the Shooter and Action game mechanics. At the end by not committing fully to these genres and trying to keep RPG elements, the game actually suffers. If the game started with the PC tossed into the pot with not much in the way of preamble save to say its all gone south, here's your pistol and space armor, it would have been much, much better off. Don't use the magic scanner to repair the helmet, have the equipment actually function properly, and just leave out the 'get to know you' bits until after the firefight and returning to the Hyperion for down time. Remove the RPG elements, add in cut scenes and there you go. And there are more than enough cut-scenes in the game so this would not over-burden it and by removing the majority of RPG elements and would make for a faster paced, more streamlined shooter with the few skills you do have making a lot more sense.
To an extent this is done, but then come the 'choices' and the limited dialogue tree that tries to honor some RPG aspects of the game, but never, ever delivers on them. If they are so unimportant, get rid of those parts of the story and concentrate on the major aspects of the game. The few 'missions' that are RPG in style are essentially meaningless with very few consequences involved, so why bother with more than just the one or two that matter? If the answer is 'flavor' then why not commit to that with a branching story line which heavily branches and has long-term consequences for the player beyond the 'who shows up for the final mission?' one. Most of the side-quests and miscellaneous quests are Filler Quests, meant to pad the game with some items of interest, but then not following up on them. Lack of commitment to a fully fleshed out shooter or RPG means that MEA does neither of them well nor in a satisfying manner. The short development time left after staff turmoil, restarts, false starts, and generally having to get an office prepared for a full game after only doing DLC previously can allow for the understanding of what came out as a game. And a $60 price tag also meant it had to be 'a full AAA title', just when what THAT meant was in serious flux at the major holder for Bioware, which is EA. None of this excuses the game that arrived, but demonstrates how it arrived as a fundamentally broken game that could not commit to any genre.
The story isn't deep enough or complex enough to justify even RPG elements, but those are still thrown in without any mechanics to back them up. Make that choice in 20 seconds because it might be meaningful! Or not. Thus the dialogue tree is neutered, and the story path is on the hardest of rails available with all options leading the same way with the choices becoming meaningless. This is a Choose Your Own Adventure without the Choose part included.
Background to the story indicates that there is a society behind the Initiative that planned out how the new system in the new galaxy would work, but there is no commitment to any part of that society by those who started it. The council or group running the Nexus are dysfunctional, untrustworthy and generally uninteresting, yet these are the people you have to support. A training structure for anything is absent for the PC because of being The Chosen One, thus there is a Golden Path you will follow that has pre-ordained success. Proper mechanics to even implement an SF/Military Shooter are spare, though generally reasonable.
All abilities are tactical in nature and limited to use just in combat: no using those skills and abilities elsewhere as they might give the nameless NPCs the vapors, you see. What little depth there is in the abilities is not backed up by actual game mechanics to properly ensure that these abilities are properly earned and recognized via some designated group. Thus there are no ranks to earn which would serve as a way of gating content so that the PC would have some minimum capacity to handle the game in sections based on rank or missions completed. Further there is no logistical group that can provide minimum necessary equipment in the way of space armor, clothing, weapons or a standard (if minimal) kit for the next mission or mission area. This would entail some sort of exchange quartermaster with access to the ability to modify the kit to meet certain standards.
A standardized kit would mean the PC would be very identifiable as a member of that organization and that would be true for all team members, as well. Instead of trying to put any lore in place and allow such mechanics, the player is given free reign to do as they wish. It must be noted that the Pathfinders do fit squarely into a civilian controlled military organization that is, presumably, supported by the Initiative. Yet if the player wishes to don armor identifiable to a different species/organization they are free to do so without gaining any negative attention. At this point the Military and SF shooter genres fall to the wayside, and the game only falls into the far broader Shooter realm by default. Without a clear idea of what sort of game this is supposed to be, the developer pushed something out the door with trappings from a few genres coated with a thin film of lore and then hoped it would sell. And it did sell, but instead of garnering community support for more content the developer found themselves unable to even fix some broad issues in the game in the way of bugs and content problems. EA, the publisher that controls Bioware had the Montreal group shut down and its personnel absorbed into another EA organization nearby. Apparently content mattered. Or perhaps there just wasn't enough 'recurrent monetization' in the game to satisfy the publisher who gave the project and its publication the green light for development and publication.
The game needed a severe dose of 'back to basics' in gaming
Do you want to be a science based character? Forget it.
Engineer? Nope.
You get lots of choices on the weapons and suit end of things, yes, but basic skills to help play in different areas? No, that must be another genre you're thinking about. This is an Action-Shooter game at heart with some other skills thrown (like Biotics but only on the combat side), but if you want to repair equipment in the environment then you can only hope that the story allows for that. Even then it will happen only in that instance through the magic of your scanner and SAM. If you want to actually start figuring out the alien science and engineering that you do encounter? Hey, its all magic, right? You don't need any actual skill at that sort of stuff. You see, you are the Pathfinder! Chief cook and bottle washer! Person with no experience accepted! Greatness has been granted unto you, not earned like all the other schleps around you.
And if you happen to have an actual ship's captain, like on the Hyperion, the ship you arrived in, they don't have a second in command that can be the captain of the Tempest, right? Because that would point to an actual chain of command on the naval side of things, which is pointed out is DIFFERENT from the civilian part of the Initiative, though follows its orders as part of the...chain of command. Oh, wait, they do.
There you go: Navy gets to run ships, Civilians get to do the researching and colonizing bit plus run the Colonial Militia/Army. Then the equivalent of Marines would be with the ships headed by the Pathfinders under supervision of the Navy.
Got it?
Good.
Because the game designers couldn't be bothered to figure that out. Without a good concept of the way things should be run, they made it up as they went along and failed at creating a coherent environment. By not having a good understanding of a framework to work with, the game production team lacked a coherent vision of how their narrative could and should be presented. Just a bit of formalizing the military and social structure would mean that ships get properly categorized and assigned duties. And even with the Tempest being the Pathfinder vessel, it should properly fall under the Naval side of things. The Navy runs ships that are armed or even exploration vessels that aren't, though that can be varied based on the universe and setting.
Pathfinders are delegated the latter duty, but it is a duty that is primarily naval that answers to the civilians directly via the chain of command, with the Navy providing the platform for performing such missions. Thus Pathfinders are Marines and Marines can be the Captain of a ship, but they do fall under Navy control (even though they can be delegated ships, men and supplies directly by the Executive). Marines can and do operate their own vessels, yes, and it falls under their bailiwick for particular missions, as well. And when out on operations they have a supply line and that is provided by the Navy or other military assets that have been tasked with that duty. Marines are allowed to vary their kit, weapons, equipment and so on as their mission variety varies greatly from that of the standard Army or Militia. The Pathfinder group is a Marine style group that does exploration, research, counter-intrusion, and espionage duty. When there is no valid Pathfinder for a ship, the Navy which is the operational organization that does have ship captains, has the duty and responsibility to ensure such Marine vessels operate for their missions until a valid operator can be found. This can cause friction, yes, and that should be an element of game play.
I would have loved to recruit a squad of Marines from the Militia! That would have been a viable game design as a Military-Action Shooter as it would discriminate between purely local Militia and the larger organization of the Pathfinders to the Initiative. Sadly that would require commitment to a coherent design of the Initiative, and the game designers couldn't be bothered with that. Turn the game into a 3D Action Shooter based on squads and the entire thing starts to make sense as a game and would fit the setting. This allows for some interesting down-time recruitment as well as recruiting those who may have left the Initiative but want to get back in it after seeing just how ramshackle things are on the outside.
Personally I would have loved to have the Captain of the Hyperion run the Tempest! I mean when the Hyperion is docked and everything, there isn't all that much to do save keep up with logistics, and that is what a second in command is good for. You know, the part of paper-pushing in the digital age that still needs to be done but really doesn't need the Captain to do it. Now THAT would have been interesting! A proper Captain would run the ship, and the PC would have a couple of teammates to do the exploration bit as Marines attached to the Tempest until everyone is satisfied that there is a Pathfinder that is certifiable for that job. There had to be requirements and certifications as there were other Pathfinders before you arrived on the scene and there did have to be standards for becoming one. I mean, we hope there were standards, but after seeing how dad was running things, you begin to suspect those were never nailed down. Say do we ever find out what those standards actually were? I mean the entire Pathfinder group had to have accountability and be a part of a larger bureaucracy before it headed out with the Initiative, way back there in the bureaucratic Milky Way. You know founding and conceptual documents that would then be backed up by concrete and measurable requirements for staff including training and such.
No? Uh-huh, the answer is: NO.
Use The Setting To Create The Game
By the time the Hyperion docks with the Nexus and gets it powered up, the player should have figured out just what the actual command structure of the entire affair is, even with rebels leaving the place bereft of key skills that should still be possible. It should be possible even before that, but cramming that at a player right after an exciting action-downtime loop would have been a bit much. I would have expected that the Hyperion would be getting people out of cryo-sleep to address those shortages in a jiffy. Getting people ready to settle would take a few months since the Nexus has seen a skeleton crew on Operations and Maintenance and must have a huge backlog of things to do that are second tier, not absolutely critical but needs to be addressed to get the place functioning type of deal. This would have offered viable career paths for the player in Engineering, the Sciences (with a variety of those), etc.
With a couple of ranks for a few valuable skills necessary for Exploration the player can then join up with a group that will be using the Tempest for a look at a failed try for a colony without a proper Pathfinder or even proper exploration team. At heart exploration of a failed colony is a clean-up job that would come AFTER the Nexus has all of the primary and secondary maintenance done to it. That is the scut work of being a low-level character, and would set aside the fun and excitement for a couple of hours but allow the player to learn the systems and methodologies in their areas of interest. Taking time after work to train in combat or a secondary job role would also be available, and as we do find out, there are some areas where vermin have gotten into things, so shooting ET rats and stuff would have offered a good diversion and chance to level up in small arms. Exploring on potentially hostile and known hostile planets requires knowing the basics of combat. Put a certification test at the end to signal the end of the full introduction to the game.
This would have fit in with an overall game design in which you, as the PC, were pressed into emergency duty for an exploration mission right at the start, and then have to sort out your life once the Hyperion got to the Nexus. Socially and politically the Nexus can still be a mess. Getting things to where people can safely live on it should be the priority which will be held by all factions on-board: if you don't live then your politics don't matter all that much. Treat space as a real danger to be dealt with and respected, not something that just passing those jobs to be done by 'other people' as you are the chosen one. Earn the right to be good and highly regarded by those around you, so that the PC is respected, not denigrated.
Trust is earned, not granted, and being anointed as a Pathfinder with no skills will leave a very bad taste in everyone's mouth that will be hard to remove without demonstration that basic skills are learned and used responsibly. Yes it would have required an intense re-think of the entire game by its designers, but seeing as this doesn't take more than a hour of thought time to put down a coherent overall schema for what the narrative must adhere to it is not difficult. It would have allowed for proper shifts in duties for level designers, script writers, and overall story editors to fit this chunk into the game, proper and then make sure the rest of the game adhered to it. Missions would have to be diversified due to multiple skills available, but that is what game narrative development is all about.
Redesign of things for the Nexus would be relatively simple as a lot of corridors and rooms would be cookie-cutter and meant for personalization by later inhabitants, so the level design for the Nexus could be simple and varied only for a few sections. Remember that the primary task of keeping structural integrity has been done by the skeleton crew, so no running out of oxygen unless you shoot a window out or part of the hull busts out when you shoot something that shouldn't be shot. Being on Cats and Dogs type of jobs may not be fun nor glamorous, but it can be made interesting and exciting, plus offer a few bits and pieces of the stories of those who left to be rebels and why they left.
Start from the beginning, build from the ground up
Environmental storytelling could go a long way with this, and you don't even need logs or recordings for it: just what people took, what they left and the state they left things in. It might even offer an opportunity for the player to find those people, later, and see if there are other ways to interact with them based on having checked out their quarters on the Nexus. And players with a bit of intuition might start to piece together the events without having them pointed out by quest markers but through simple observation that would give later dialogue choices in the game. Do the work well and more options are opened up later. That would require a player to be attentive, get the immediate job done and then realize that there were clues that could be pieced together.
The few times that this does happen when they are main mission story critical the player does not get to investigate on their own, but must have SAM there to interpret everything. SAM needs a break and has to learn how to shut up, really. And SAM isn't needed for C&D jobs unless you want it there for doing them, giving the player choice and a choice that can matter later in game play. Thus the player would get agency, options, choices and have a game structure that would still push to the same missions but the player's role would differ based on their skills. That would be 'role playing' within an Action-Shooter genre by having enough elements of an RPG and the developers deciding to put in enough time to fully flesh out a story to allow for multiple paths through it.
If that path were taken a lot of the 'see what the Evil Alien Overlord thinks of this' scenes would be removed (until they could be found via missions) and the entire game would concentrate on: the Nexus, fixing up said facility, going to the failed colony, finding out why it failed and letting paths of science, engineering or combat play different roles with different results. On a combat path the player would have to heavily rely on SAM for doing the alien deciphering and heavy lifting, but could leave SAM out of the rest of the neuro-physical work so the player could get their own skills without help. That would mean the character has a lack of secondary skills on their own which would close out some ways of doing things. On a science path there would be having to figure out the codes and ciphers on your own, using the scanner to understand them and then try to fit in what happened with dear deceased dad when he did it, but without knowing what he was doing. On an engineering path would be figuring out the power structures of the alien devices, how they fit together and then open the possibility of bypassing the entire coding system to gain entry via altering the input device or augmenting it. That is basic game structure design work adhering to an Action-Shooter genre with RPG elements and it takes a lot of work.
Redesigning the rest of the game: Form follows Function
All of that with the PC proving to be a reliable part of a small exploration vessel crew, working very hard to make any advances and exploring in hazardous areas would then be the first 1/3 of the game. Once the alien systems are made to work, the greater exploration of the planet opens up, and the other places that have alien technology would also become available. Again the three paths through would be available, with the science and engineering ones concentrating on how to get around the mandatory platforming sections via analysis of the systems involved. No civilization would ever require platforming to get through any necessary facility.
Security checks, yes; platforming, no.
And these are functioning operations: those large open spaces with platforms and such are INTENDED as part of the actual design of the facility. Imagine making that required to go through by design, and then having to debug or otherwise fix something that has gone critically wrong AS THE DESIGNER of the original facilities. Works great for non-corporeal beings, I guess, but all indications are that this is a physical species that made this stuff. So would any sane design require this if failure to navigate it in time meant the loss of the equipment, the facility, the lives of those in and around it and, possibly, ruining of a biosphere of the planet? If the answer is 'yes' then that species places no value on life, itself. Yet the entire design of these facilities demonstrates that they are made to preserve life by their function. These two things do not mix. If they had suits that could just fly...then they wouldn't make such wide-open platforming areas and put in more mundane checkpoints, corridors and such as that would be a more efficient manner to allow access to the control area. Plus a way for critical staff to get through the entire thing without having to check in at every point during an emergency or even to iron out bugs in the equipment: flash a pass and proceed to the problem.
This would require a redesign the areas of interest of these alien facilities with a functional design methodology in mind, thinking it through as a place that once did function with design intent, and then allow players to use means and methods to discover the short-cuts, and maybe discover that the whole platforming area is just a testing area that is only peripheral to the design of the entire base. The combat people end up going through those areas, while the science and engineering types either find a way to falsify credentials or work on the systems to disable them or by-pass them. Give the player who is role playing to some degree the opportunity to work as their roles intend them to work and the entire game could make loads of sense by designing in a 'back to the basics' manner. The rewards at these secondary objectives are ones that should be of high-value in game design as they are only garnered by the patient player not trying to push forward but trying to learn what the game is presenting.
From doing functional design to suit the aliens who made those planet changing facilities, the obstacles to be overcome would be separate based on role playing elements. There would still be security measures and robots of some sort that would get involved at failed checks, and that would require finding a way around the enhanced security measures. This is not, of necessity, cascading failure but a chance for a player to do a basic re-assessment of their skills and the situation, and perhaps seek a different way forward utilizing other skills or back-tracking to see if they missed anything. Failure at one check is an opportunity to challenge a player, not to put a permanent road block in front of them, and even in an Action-Shooter there is room for that sort of minimal role-playing. The design team for the game obviously understood this, yet they decided that there was only one way through a dungeon: it was made linear by design. And that design makes no sense.
The idea of an emergency exit or alternate path didn't cross their minds as they focused on the 'lets make the interiors big and awe-inspiring' with large platforming sections that make no sense for the situation. Drawing inspiration from the movie Forbidden Planet, the game designers forgot that there were walkways around the massive equipment which had unknown function made by the long-gone Krell but was obviously still doing something. In fact the various observation areas and windows along walls points to safety to keep people away from the big, nasty equipment so as to control it from a distance in a control room. Keeping the Krell in mind, their entire base wasn't even secured with checkpoints, mostly due to what the actual function of the base was which empowered individuals to the point where things went lethal to the species but left everything else running. It was easy to check on the running parts and accessing the controls actually took a Krell mind attuned to the equipment. The equipment left behind still functions, repairs itself and awaits the day when it will receive input to do as bidden. A few of the most basic forms of thought patterns proved to be coincident with humans, and that led to problems for the humans. The Krell found they couldn't control their own instincts and died because of it.
MEA developers could have learned a thing or three by actually taking the design lessons of written stories and movies to heart as they are aimed at getting the protagonist to a place via adventures and then wondering 'what the hell happened here to leave things like this?' Really, isn't that the entire central story in MEA? The Evil Alien Overlord is also a new-comer to the cluster and doesn't understand the equipment or what it was meant to do, and his species has had a lot of time to be poking and prodding there, but can't make headway. If the major antagonist organization is perplexed by this, then finding out just what all of these facilities do in the cluster becomes a key concern, as it does in the game that shipped, so this would be in keeping with the actual spirit of the overall design. By designing to the setting, making the aliens who created these masterpieces of bases actually be rational and in keeping with some minimal time pressure need, the actual game could have been crafted along these lines in a coherent manner both for narrative and game play options.
From Function Comes Story
In not using a functional design concept, player agency is restricted to linear game design in dungeons and throughout the entire story. What choices the player does have are restricted by the lack of skills that can be developed and by the design that required this to be the case: rushed design decisions limited play and play styles. By not having the time to think the game through the designers took a brute force approach to make things interesting even when they were not in keeping with good sense or any sense at all. If aliens had the ability to easily move over these platform areas, then why have them at all? The argument that they are in ruins ignores the sites where they were designed this way with a purpose in mind: those sites without the magically appearing bridges or sections raising from the depths make no sense for emergency use as they hinder progress to stop a disaster or even diagnose a malfunction.
What they are good for is putting in sections to show off game play dynamics and the physics engine of the game. This is done for making 'exciting' encounters, which could still be had without the platforming. Even if enemies actively used such space, the overall concept of having these areas as the critical path for preventing problems is not rational. As there are control panels to be used, the physical presence of a being is required and anything preventing that in an emergency is an obstacle. If the argument is that these aliens had some sort of pass or control device, then where are they or why can't they be backwards designed from functional understanding of the control systems? Having quests to understand, truly understand, these systems would have made for a far more interesting piece of game design rather than requiring brute force platforming or 'do this to raise this bridge' game mechanics. Let an astute player who thinks ahead and uses reason get a reward of learning how to by-pass these systems and even advance a different story line and outcome because of it.
Without an alternate set of paths through MEA there is no opportunity for creative thought on the part of the player. Combat skills are all well and good of course. Creating a game where the player is put in a brand new setting with clear, functioning equipment and even entire planet altering systems that they can use and NOT offering the opportunity to understand them goes against the very concept of space opera in its widest sense: space exploration while encountering the unknown requires something more than gross levels of interaction but actually attempting to comprehend the design principles behind the technology itself. Going from point to point to operate pieces of a system with poorly understood intent of the system or what it actually does and requiring an AI to tell the player what to do is restricting the player to just being the means to move the AI around. That is pure removal of player agency and the reward is that everything at the end of the game is just as much a mystery as it was at the very start.
Arriving at some sort of artificial construct that isn't a Dyson Sphere, but a spherical world with some sort of power source on the inside creating an artificial environment with sunlight equivalent at the end of the game isn't an epiphany of understanding but a 'Gee Whiz' moment in which even the technical people barely understand how it functions. I'm sure that there is a real control center for the place...just expect there to be heavy platforming to get there, because you wouldn't want to spend any extra time doing anything else in an emergency, right? Wouldn't want it to fall apart because a circuit breaker needed to be reset at a critical location and have the sphere thing come apart dooming millions if not billions of people. Because when the lives of millions of people is at stake, the most important thing is getting through a platforming section!
By deciding to not make a story that revolves around understanding and comprehending this alien technology, the player is rushed through these awe inspiring edifices and left clueless about what they can actually do. Of course you have SAM there to hold your hand. Maybe there should have been less hand-holding and more thought on making a comprehensible environment with player involvement. Learn the story from the functioning equipment and realize that the forms that are the actual buildings then tell you about what they can do. By the end the player should be able to immediately recognize the different forms of building and understand their purpose, and then quickly work to get them back on-line. That doesn't require hand-holding, but does require serious thought into what the actual alien civilization made so that the setting that is at the end makes sense just by looking at it from the outside.
Aliens are what were made of them
We get to see quite a few non-sentient critters in MEA. Lots of them. Sentient aliens come in only a couple of categories outside of the Milky Way sorts that we encounter in the game. First we have the nasty aliens and their Overlord working behind the scenes. Then we have the friendly types that will help along the journey. And then there are those that are genetically altered nice aliens to become servant bad aliens via genetic manipulation. That's it! You gots your good guys, your bad guys, and the good guys genetically enslaved to become bad guys. That was easy!
Oh, and then there were those of the predecessor species that created all the neat technology to alter planets. They skedaddled. Left behind a huge construct world in a 'ready to be used' state that we stumble across at the end of the game via the AI figuring it all out. We do see the predecessor robots, but those don't tell us anything about their creators. Finding a floor sweeping robot from our civilization doesn't tell you much about humans, although we can learn something about floors, I guess. Otherwise the robots meant to defend areas are just weapons with legs, floating weapons, or weapons with legs and shields, and they all hop around or hover. They aren't AI in any sense of the concept, just point defense robots with a geometrical design aesthetic. The predecessors liked geometry, since it is seen all over their works, but that doesn't say much about them: tile patterns in flooring or used to create pleasing patterns in human cultures doesn't say much about that culture if you have no further background on it. A mosque, the mansion of a wealthy man or someone who just likes to lay mosaic flooring all have pleasing geometry as part of their style, but that doesn't give insight into culture without a further basis for understanding the designers.
What is relatively clear is that the good-guy aliens are some sort of genetic design of the the predecessor aliens, though why this was done is problematic. Where these an attempt to create a new sentient life form? Or where these an attempt to improve their own genetic design? Was this to be a slave race? Or was it done just for the heck of it? Who knows, right? I mean we don't get a clear idea from what little information the game developers put in, so maybe they didn't know, either. Of course the bad guy aliens already know how to cook the genes of just about any being to become just like them, so that's some advanced science right there. Not used all that intelligently, true, but trial and error can get you there, don't mind the corpses along the way.
If you want species diversity, various neutral species either hiding out from the Evil Alien Overlord group, not liking the friendly aliens, and not too impressed with the Newcomers From Another Galaxy, then you are out of luck. After looking at the diversity of the Milky Way groups, the paucity of similar diversity in the Heleus Cluster is a real negative point. Even just finding out there ARE other species and organizations would be something positive, yet they are absent from the game. Perhaps they were on some 'roadmap', too bad the road, itself, didn't go anywhere interesting. The actual 'Empire' that the Evil Alien Overlord and ensuing minion come from aren't all that interesting, and serve as the required villain and antagonist. They could have been substituted with any other generic Evil Alien Overlord group from SF, Fantasy or even just pulp classics and the game would have been better of for it by getting some depth to them. At least they adhere to some sort of command structure, got to give them that. What is lacking are those species members that have fled from the Evil Alien Overlord and don't want to be found by the locals in the Cluster or these outsiders from another galaxy. Because there would be people like that as the Evil Alien Overlord is seeking to mold every species into drones of his or its species: no matter what you start out as, you end up being the same in the end. Even worse is that there isn't even a cute side-kick sort of species that couldn't be adapted into drones but did agree to serve under the Evil Aliens, thus there is no comic relief and that was something that could have really changed the mood for the better.
A strange sort of SF game that can't figure out how to do aliens right. Or even give a good split between a villain and a simple antagonist. Actually that is hard to do, so no blame on the folks who made this game for not having time to add some finesse to it: that takes real story skill, crafting a believable antagonist who is not the villain but someone you can be sympathetic to while you go through the story. It wouldn't have to be great, but a simple Darth Vader and Emperor deal would have done the job, no need to go to Gordon R. Dickson depths on it. What is even worse is that the Evil Alien species doesn't have vices, they are not known for their pleasure in drugs, sex, or simple torture. Robots could have done a better job in the role and be more sympathetic as they are only doing what their programming requires them to do, even if their base AI has problems with it. Instead the flesh automatons of the Evil Alien group have no vices nor virtues, and adhere to only power, command and control, and execute anyone who tries to think for themselves. How did this species get so advanced with that sort of mindset? For all their ability this species isn't presented as all that smart or very intelligent, neither of which makes for any depth in character or civilization. Millions of years of trial and error, I guess. As a monolithic species with imprinted genetics upon all others in their way, the Evil Aliens are evil and uninteresting.
If you can't get the Evil Aliens to be interesting and only interested in power over others, then they become dull and you always know that they will take the most direct, most blunt route to any objective. Where are the landmines when you need them? This monobloc form of thinking would have driven anyone who disagreed with them before them, and since it takes time to incorporate a new species into the imprinted genetics, those fleeing would have had plenty of time to escape and warn others. Ruthless Efficiency takes time, lots of time, because it is ruthless and single-minded, and anyone wanting to cut corners gets executed for lack of obedience. There is no carrot, only stick, and those not wanting to get stuck leave ASAP. Yet these people are absent from the game and only the Nice Aliens are putting up a fight against the Evil Aliens. That's it. Help the nice guys defeat the evil guys, get into a fast fight on a sprawling landscape you aren't given time to explore nor will you EVER be allowed out into it, and that will wind up the game.
For Functional game systems the Evil Aliens can and should have been toned down, made more distant and the antagonist fleshed out. Better to have a feeling of dread rather than a smirking of 'look at what that idiot is trying to do' sense for the player. In a complete redraft of the game the Evil Alien bases can serve as the main way of learning about them, their culture and even finding out how to locate and break into them. Make their presence something that has a methodology to it, and make the big strike to take them down locally and impair their reach a Big Deal. When the top-down structure loses some bricks in the middle, the entire thing becomes less stable. Then the Big Evil Alien Boss must take a hand in affairs as he answers to someone else further up.
That should have been the end of the game intro which would end Act I of securing and exploring the local region. Thus MEA would be a long first act that gives a taste of what is to come. Acts II and II would follow up with the reprisals and yet winning out against long odds, say against an invasion force of theoretically overwhelming strength, and then Act II is taking the fight home to the Evil Alien systems. A pretty well known structure that MEA screwed up. And that is the problem with MEA not knowing just what it wants to be: without a framework to work with, by not following that framework and not taking time to think out just what needs to happen inside the game to meet that framework, the game is left without direction. As a simplistic Action-Shooter that has antagonists you can't relate to, its not bad but it isn't all that good, either.
It can be modded, it can't be fixed
What is MEA good for at this point? A lazily made but somewhat fun space shooter to kill some time with, but not take seriously. It can be modded to some degree but without a good character interaction system and a way to generate at least generic or via template NPCs to fill in the game, it will never be all that interesting for replay value. The decisions you make as a player don't do much if anything to the way the game ends, there is no major problem with screwing over everyone, because the few opportunities to do that is set in a situation where no one will ever want to join the Bad Guys, and in a larger context it is either giving up your personal identity or helping the people who PO'd your people. This can be fixed only with a substantial redraft of the entire game, top to bottom, and the modding community would take years to do that with a complete game overhaul. Without a fan base, without any endearing characters, and with a totally forgettable story that will not happen. Even in a beloved franchise a game can deviate too far from the way the prior games went and actually drive fans away. Without those fans a remake of the game, an overhaul, a complete conversion to something, anything else is not going to happen.
That was my major only real thought when I uninstalled the game.
The potential for a good and interesting setting, characters and game universe were not delivered, and the generic feeling of the game as a shooter means it doesn't have the game mechanics to encourage replay. There is a lot of tactical fun to be had, yes, but that is in service to a story that was poorly conceived from the start. A good shooter needs a reason to replay it, be it for the characters, memorable scenes, a great protagonist, a story that changes based on what you do or don't do, or such a wide variety of game play that it can be approached from nearly any perspective. And in those areas MEA is lacking on all counts. As a $10 game you might play through once or twice it isn't bad and if you are willing to put up with its publisher it might even be worth it if you have nothing better to do.
Your mileage may vary, of course.
