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Oh Joy! Mass Effect: Andromeda Will Have Meaningful Side Quests

Published Mon, 13 Feb 2017 14:45:05 -0600

Just what we all wanted, side quests that don't just boil down to "go fetch my laundry because I'm too lazy and this is an RPG."

In an interview with PC Gamer, Mass Effect: Andromeda producer Fabrice Condominas talked a bit about how BioWare would be approaching side quests, and how they're taking inspiration from CD Projekt Red's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Condominas explained that the BioWare team listened to criticisms levelled at the tedious side quests for Dragon Age: Inquisition and dubbed the issue as the "Hinterlands problem" which is a pretty accurate description. No other game stage in Inquisition was plagued by as many useless side quests that you, nevertheless, had to complete than the Hinterlands. So BioWare is pushing for more "meaningful" side content.

"We are approaching the completionist aspect very differently, because we've done and learned a lot from Inquisition, but we've also observed what other games have been doing, like The Witcher." Which is great. CD Projekt Red did a fantastic job with The Witcher. The one week I marathoned that game in 2015 was the best week of my year. I'm mostly kidding there. But it was a fantastic game with very fun DLC packs. However, the side content in The Witcher was only so meaningful because it couldn't not be.

Geralt of Rivia is a guy mostly motivated by self-interest and the desire to hunt monsters. Anyone who's played the game for more than 20 minutes could tell you that much. Sure, you have options to make Geralt slightly less salty, but only by so much. The man avoids the ridiculous political landscape around him with a kind of sociopathic detachment until his friends essentially blackmail him into participating.

The protagonists of BioWare's games have always had much more lateral choice. Your Shepard could be a self-interested wastrel or the pinnacle of moral superiority or anything in between, and the same goes for your Inquisitor. It's hard to make content that will be meaningful to each and every variation we'll be able to have with the Ryder twins. Unless BioWare is cutting down on some of that freedom.

Granted, I think that making this change is definitely a good thing, and using the Witcher as a template isn't the worst BioWare could do. Inquisition is merely one of BioWare's titles and modeling Andromeda based off the criticisms of a Dragon Age game seems a bit silly. The Mass Effect trilogy had problems unique to that world and I think BioWare would be better suited to listening to the complaints players had about ME3 rather than Inquisition. And there is something to be said for harnessing the frustration gamers feel about endless fetch quests and using it to your advantage. Inquisition could have done that well, and I think its something BioWare would have no trouble with. But I'll never say no to getting rid of pointless side quests.

You can check out the full interview here, or some other Andromeda news here, and the latest trailer here.

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