MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA – OPEN WORLD
Owing to the ever-increasing popularity and success of open world game design, many franchises have made the jump to open worlds. Some have been less successful than others- like Mass Effect, for instance. Before its launch, Mass Effect fans would enthusiastically tell you that open world design is a natural progression for the series, that getting to explore vast, beautiful, and varied alien planets with complete freedom would make the series infinitely better. And to be fair, that’s still true. The problem wasn’t in the idea- the problem was in the execution. BioWare did end up making Andromeda an open world game, but they didn’t do it nearly as well as they should have. Maps were vast, but uninteresting, bland, and not fun to explore, and what should have been a perfect marriage between Mass Effect and open world game design instead ended up being a deflating match.
