How Mass Effect's Relationships Will Evolve in Andromeda

Plus, meet two of your new squadmates.

By Terri Schwartz

Choices define the Mass Effect gameplay experience, and one of the biggest choices a player can make is who they decide to pursue romantically. Did you go for Ashley Williams, or was Liara more up your alley in the original trilogy? Did you prefer Kaidan or Garrus? With Mass Effect: Andromeda introducing a new swath of love interests for the two playable characters, the Ryder twins, Bioware creative director and Mass Effect franchise lead writer Mac Walters talked to IGN about how pursuing relationships has evolved in the latest game.

"As far as the relationships go, we try to make them less formulaic," he said. "In the original trilogy, they often were you do a couple conversations with them and then it's getting close to the end, it's time to romance. What I wanted to see in this was more of a, well, somebody might want to hop in the sack right away, [or] somebody might never want to hop in the sack because this is too important -- trying to find that more natural way into what a relationship would be like within the constraints of game development. We're trying to make it as open ended as possible."

With romance options no longer limited by gender, players will have even more freedom to pair off with whichever character appeals most to them. That is part of another evolution from the earlier games: the romantic options might not all be universally appealing to all players.

"One of the things I certainly learned as we saw Mass Effect evolve is not everyone's going to love every character, and you shouldn't try to do that. We actually want to build some characters who are going to appeal to certain people," said Walters. "A lot of that actually comes because we have large writing teams. Different writers can invest in their characters in different ways, so you get this nice differentiation between all the different characters, and that's something that we've stayed true to in this."

When asked to tease what relationship he's already leaning toward, Walters said, "One of my favorites from a relationship perspective isn't even a member of the crew, so I'll tell you that much. They're not even a member of your squad. They're someone you meet on one of the planets."

While there will be about the same amount of romantic options as previous Mass Effect games, Walters said "the actual experience is a bit different," especially since there will be casual romances and love interests who aren't a part of the crew or squadmates. Speaking of squadmates, Mass Effect: Andromeda confirmed two new ones during their Game Awards 2016 gameplay footage: the male krogan Drack, and the female turian Vetra.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is coming out in Q1, with speculation that its release date could be in March. For more from our interview with Walters, find out how Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 -- particularly its ending -- affected Andromeda, and how the multiplayer influences the campaign. And if you want to revisit Mass Effect 2 or 3, both games are now backwards compatible on Xbox One.

Terri Schwartz is Entertainment Editor at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz.

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