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BioWare has announced a major patch for Mass Effect: Andromeda, addressing some of the elements that people were vocally unhappy with and/or mercilessly made gifs of. The patch will be coming this Thursday, April 6.
Aaryn Flynn, GM at BioWare, addressed some aspects of the patch in a post on the Mass Effect website. Flynn mentions that the patch makes some ‘technical fixes (crashes, improved performance)’ as well as specific issues that players have brought up:
- Allowing you to skip ahead when travelling between planets in the galaxy map
- Increasing the inventory limits
- Improving the appearance of eyes for humans and asari characters
- Decreasing the cost of Remnant decryption keys and making them more accessible at merchants
- Improving localized voice over lip sync
- Fixing Ryder’s movements when running in a zig zag pattern
- Improving matchmaking and latency in multiplayer
The lip sync in particular was criticised once players were able to capture and share footage of Andromeda from the early access on Xbox One. Improving the eyes on humans and asari characters sounds weird, but currently their eyes can ping all over the place in cut scenes (it’s especially noticeable if you give your Ryder light coloured eyes).Â
In our review we found it wasn’t the animation and lip sync that distracted as much as the technical bugs, so hopefully those fixes will be as robust as the ones that garnered more bad PR.
Flynn also mentions that Mass Effect: Andromeda will receive further patches over the next few months to improve on other areas. There will be ‘improvements to male romance options for Scott Ryder’, which presumably means adding at least third one for him. Currently there are only two, which gates a gay Scott away from one of the game’s achievements unless he also hooks up with a woman.Â
Changes are apparently also being made to the dialogue with Hainly Abrams, a trans character who received criticism for her unrealistic and clumsy dialogue with regards to her own gender.
In the fullness of time there will also be ‘more options and variety in the character creator’. This was mentioned as one aspect the team was looking at by lead designer Ian Frazier back in March. Responding directly to a request for stubble, Frazier said ‘I’ve got it on the list of things we’re looking at potentially fixing/adding.’ It looks, however, like prettying up your Ryder’s face is still a secondary concern to getting said face working.
The full notes for patch 1.05 can be found here.
