Mass Effect: Andromeda Day One Patch in the Works
By Fergus O'Sullivan 26 February 2017
BioWare has announced that its development team is hard at work on getting a day-one patch ready for the upcoming Mass Effect: Andromeda. The patch should be ready around five days before the official launch on March 21, making it accessible for players that are getting early access thanks to a special promotion by publisher Electronic Arts. Mass Effect: Andromeda should also come pre-loaded with the patch, avoiding the update-upon-update problems that can have gamers tearing out their hair as they wait for their game to get ready.
The announcement was made on Twitter, where designer Ian Frazier also lifted the veil on a few other things, including the expected file size of Mass Effect: Andromeda — a hefty 45 to 60GB — as well as a number of options for the PC version of the game that BioWare has implemented. These include the option for PC gamers to tweak the graphics options to their heart’s content as well as the ability to quickbind the four favorites Ryder can load to hotkeys, which should allay some worries with the mouse-and-keyboard crowd.
More general gameplay features Frazier teased include a “new game plus” option for people that have finished the game, though he didn’t give any details, as well as the discontinuation of the “Warp” power. BioWare got rid of this staple of the biotic’s arsenal in Mass Effect: Andromeda as the studio felt there was too much overlap with other powers and therefore stood in the way of their goal to make each skill or power feel completely unique.
One other interesting improvement Frazier mentioned is the new AI for companions in Mass Effect: Andromeda: the skills that players assign to their squad mates will determine for a large part their behavior. The player will still give general orders — defend, attack, move — but then the soldier in question will decide how to handle the order’s execution on the basis of the skills they have loaded. How exactly this will work, especially in combination with the new prime-and-detonate mechanic, remains to be seen, but it seems like it will be pretty cool.
Taken altogether, it seems that BioWare is gearing up to deliver a great game for fans of the Mass Effect franchise; all that remains is to hope the day-one patch is ready for use from launch.
Mass Effect: Andromeda is set to launch on March 21, 2017 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
