Sitting in my Smoke Filled Room

Today it's hard to want to do anything.  The state where I live is dealing with catastrophic fires--luckily, I don't live close to any of them, but we're currently dealing with hazardous levels of smoke (the air quality index for the town where I live is so high that it's completely off the scale....by a lot).  I'm grateful to be safe and it's heartbreaking to see what has been happening throughout the West.  We're going to be contending with hazardous smoke levels all weekend and I'm currently feeling the effects--I've had an ongoing headache and my throat has started to feel very scratchy.  Even with all the windows closed and trying to barricade myself inside the smokey smell has made its way indoors.  So, I'm going to try my best to drum up something for this week even though it's hard to think.

Is the era of Andromeda hate over?

As a teacher, the first few weeks of school are generally a bit chaotic.  This year is no exception since I'm starting the year teaching fully online.  Much of my time has been spent trying to redesign everything for an online format.  I haven't had a ton of time to dedicate to gaming.  What time I have had, I've spent starting up a brand new Ryder in Mass Effect:  Andromeda.  What drew me back to this weirdly controversial title?  I guess it was a combination of seeing the "mostly positive" reviews on Steam and seeing a number of posts about Andromeda in a ME group I follow on social media.

I am fairly certain that the Ryder I designed is almost identical to one that I created in one of my previous playthroughs--I'm getting weird deja vu vibes that makes me think that I'm not very creative and will pick exactly the same features every time.  This time around I decided to play a class that I've always struggled with, vanguard.  Look, using the biotic charge ability is lots of fun, but my personal play style leans more toward shooting than punching.  I don't know if I just need more practice with using the abilities, but it seems difficult to charge into a group of enemies, then scramble back into cover before getting swiss-cheesed with bullet holes.  I also opted for some extra challenge and am playing on insanity mode (I don't know if I have finished it on insanity before) so it's a rootin'-tootin', my Ryder dying a lot, good times!

Andromeda got a ton of flak when it was released in 2017 and it's interesting that the reviews on Steam have angled toward the positive side.  I do think some of the scorn was unwarranted--the combat is fun, challenging, and much more mobile than in the original trilogy.  There are still things that bug me--the facial animation remains awkwardly wonky at certain moments--cringeworthily so, but I think there are plenty of things to enjoy.  The more open-world nature of the game is a change from the ME trilogy and lends itself to better exploration.

Part of me hopes that BioWare doesn't give up on ME and that in the future there is some resolution to the lingering questions that were left when they decided to scrap the DLC for Andromeda.  I'm keeping a wary eye on the development of the upcoming Dragon Age game as an indicator for the possibility of the continuation of the ME series.  Any way you look at it, a new ME game is probably way off in the future.

Stay safe commanders!