Why Mass Effect Andromeda’s Banter Is The Best In The Series

One of the more notable features of the Mass Effect series – and most other BioWare RPGs, really – is the banter that can sometimes be heard between companions. Crewmates will engage in conversations with each other at various points during missions, and may even converse on the ship, forming complex relationships independent of the player character. Mass Effect: Andromeda, however, took banter to the next level.

In Mass Effect 1, banter primarily triggers during the notoriously lengthy elevator rides in the Citadel. During conversations with other NPCs around the world, Shepard’s crew would also frequently talk to each other, providing input on the player’s choices or the current mission objectives. While on the Normandy, however, companions didn’t speak to each other and in fact rarely seemed to acknowledge one another’s presence, which in some cases diminished the immersion of ME1.

Mass Effect 3 in particular helped to fix this, allowing companions to move about the ship and talk to each other. James and Kaidan play poker following one mission, Tali gets drunk in the lounge after another, and Garrus can sometimes be found in the helm or the kitchen bantering with other crewmates. Later, the release of the Citadel DLC added even more companion conversations. Both the main mission and the party near the end of the DLC featured heavy interaction between Shepard’s squad, something that may have helped influence the design of Mass Effect: Andromeda.

How Mass Effect: Andromeda’s Banter Feels More Natural

One of the main gameplay elements in Andromeda involves the Nomad – effectively Andromeda’s equivalent of Mass Effect 1‘s highly-divisive Mako vehicle – as players explore new planets, marking resources and clearing out enemies to help form settlements. In ME1, Shepard’s crew was almost entirely silent during drives in the Mako, only speaking up during combat situations and even then very rarely. This may have contributed in part to making planet exploration in the original game feel like a chore among many players. In Andromeda, however, companions speak to each other almost the entire time Ryder is driving the Nomad, helping drives feel both more immersive and more rewarding.

Andromeda also seemingly took a page out of ME3‘s book when deciding how companions would behave while on the ship. Rather than staying in one place – though each one does have a preferred area, where they seem to hang out more often than not – they walk around the ship, oftentimes engaging in conversations with the rest of the crew either face-to-face or through the communications system. Players can encounter cutscenes on the ship in which companions are spending time together, and the game even includes a side mission that involves collaborating with the crew to set up a movie night. This may be why many players got attached to the game’s companions despite Andromeda‘s relatively poor critical reception upon launch. Mass Effect: Andromeda‘s approach to banter helps to make its characters feel real and its relationships rewarding.

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Ky Shinkle
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Ky Shinkle is a Senior Gaming Features Writer for Screen Rant as well as an overall avid gamer and writer. Her prior experience is primarily that of a narrative designer for video games, although her writing has covered all formats from screenplays and novels to stage scripts. A graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design, when she isn’t writing she works on digital media projects and other types of fiction writing. Ky currently works out of Ohio and enjoys spending her free time either playing RPGs or running with her dog.

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