Fortunately, the Single-Player Storyline Will Not Rely on Multiplayer
Players of Mass Effect 3 might remember the interconnectedness of multiplayer and single player. While the multiplayer strikes did affect the campaign, there wasn’t much of a story link. Furthermore, some may have felt a sense of dependence on multiplayer when attempting to obtain the best possible story outcome. However, BioWare recently revealed that Mass Effect: Andromeda will closely integrate both. At the same time, single player will still be fully realized without multiplayer participation.
We’ve learned about both game modes from BioWare producer Mike Gamble, who stated the key ways Andromeda will differ from Mass Effect 3: “There’s a system that we use called the Strike Team system, and fundamentally it allows you to go between singleplayer and multiplayer within the game,” he told Kotaku. You’ll access multiplayer through the main game. Essentially, as the story of Mass Effect: Andromeda unfolds, players will have options to partake in co-op maps. In that way, it is more integrated and completely relinquishes the ‘multiplayer’ option in the main menu.
Sounds very much like the Dark Souls(but only in that regard) since players can achieve seamless co-op during their campaigns. So, in what Gamble calls an elaborate “meta-story,” multiplayer objectives stem from single-player events. “It’s pretty seamless” said Gamble, in switching from questing to strikes. Of course, you’ll have to get over the loading screen in-between. But that probably beats stopping for a save and then quitting to the menu.
As for why BioWare and EA have been so hush hush with Mass Effect: Andromeda’s in-game facets, Gamble had this to say: “We could have started talking about the game and showed a lot more a lot earlier, but it was a choice not to, […] games like Fallout, we really respect that way of showing things where you stay relatively quiet and then you’re able to surprise and delight players with a whole bunch of information in a short time.”
In other words, expect more news about Mass Effect: Andromeda and gameplay. From here until March 21st, who knows what reveals we’ll get. So for more on that, remember to keep updated through COGconnected. Happy gaming.