Ok so yesterday we got some new Mass Effect Andromeda footage including a ton of new ships,
so let’s take a look.
First up we have our first look at the new player ship in Andromeda, the Tempest.
I really like this design, it’s clearly a System’s Alliance vessel and takes some
design cues from both previous Normandy’s, the ship has a very low profile, perhaps only
two or three decks high and although I can’t tell its exact size, its clearly closer to
the size of the SR1 than it is the SR2, perhaps even smaller.
Also interesting to note is that the ship does not bear a registry code or an SSV prefix,
its simply “The Tempest” perhaps implying that the force travelling to Andromeda is
not considering itself to be part of the Alliance Navy, or maybe that the crew of the Tempest
are freelance, much like the Alliance Corsairs mentioned in the original trilogy.
Now we see what is most likely the bridge or CIC of the Tempest, here we can see they
have kept the Turian inspired structure of having the commander stand at a podium in
the centre rather than sitting at a Captain’s chair, on the left we can see what is almost
certainly a Krogan and on the right a Salarian, unless these are both main characters then
it looks like the entire Tempest crew is multi-racial, which makes sense given the conclusion of
Mass Effect 3.
Once again I’m a big fan of this design, right up at the ship’s bow with a huge viewport,
really shows the kind of exploration theme they are going for with this instalment.
This next shot shows the Tempest in atmosphere, so if the fins and tail planes were not proof
enough then this confirms the ship can indeed fly in a planet’s atmosphere, so we’re
not going to be needing any shuttles on this ship, and she even looks like she’s small
enough to maybe pull off some fairly impressive manoeuvres in atmo if we get to see any dogfights
in the game.
Here we can see the Tempest not only landed but landed on a body that clearly lacks atmosphere,
this is pretty cool cos it means our ship is gonna be parked somewhere on the map when
we’re exploring uncharted planets rather than sitting in orbit, a little like Elite
Dangerous Horizons.
I can only assume the Tempest has various pressurized chambers and airlocks for deploying
personnel and cargo onto a planet like this.
I’m hoping we might get to see some really small planetoids or moons with low gravity
so the ship will have to use some kind of drills on its landing claws or something to
attach itself to the planet’s surface, then maybe we’d get some awesome zero-g spacesuit
gameplay.
Now we can see the return of the Mako, clearly a much newer model than the M35 and this time
being deployed from the landed tempest rather than space-dropped from orbit, this makes
a lot of sense, I mean the original SR1 Normandy was capable of flying in atmosphere so I’m
not sure why they ever went through the hassle of dropping the Mako from orbit and making
sure it was properly heat shielded and stuff when they could have just hovered down and
dropped it off, I mean they had to come down when they picked it up anyway so surely dropping
the vehicle is only worth doing tactically like when they drop onto Ilos.
Here we can see a vessel of some description, appears to be a completely new design but
let me know in the comments if you recognise it, its engines suggest its capable of FTL
but I can only as guess to the ship’s function, perhaps some kind of freighter or troop transport
based purely on its silhouette.
Ok now here is a shot of a clearly highly populated planet with several Alliance Kilimanjaro
Class Dreadnoughts orbiting it, if I had to guess I’d say this is earth purely because
if the fleet sent to Andromeda does succeed in colonizing a planet, then I doubt they
would put it in the trailer, so this is most likely near the beginning of the game before
the expedition leaves.
Now we can see a new version of the Kodiak Shuttlecraft, perhaps the UT-47B or UT-48,
they now have some larger engines mounted on the dorsal aft and a slightly tougher looking
hull.
I’m a big fan of this design, already it’s probably my favourite of the three Kodiak
variants.
The fact that the system’s alliance has a new type of shuttle that they did not use
at the battle of earth seems to shoot down the theories that the fleet leaves before
the reaper invasion, so we could at least briefly get to see earth as it is after the
Reaper War.
Ok so for this big final shot we get to see the massive Ark ships that we’re gonna be
going to Andromeda in, now these are really interesting, they are clearly massive and
don’t seem to match up to the design style of any Citadel race, it could be that they
are a collaborative design from all the races but it should be said that they do look a
lot like the Citadel and the Mass Relays, it’s possible that they were built with
cannibalised parts from the crucible or from destroyed relays.
It’s obvious these things can carry a lot of people and probably a lot of ships, whether
they are armed I’m not sure, but one thing we can assume is, if they are going to travel
to the Andromeda Galaxy they must have some pretty powerful engines, though based on the
final moments of this trailer, I’d say we’re probably going to be going to the Andromeda
galaxy with cryogenically frozen passengers, so it could be that many hundreds or even
thousands of years have elapsed by the time they arrive.
Another thing worth mentioning is that the N7 day trailer only showed one ark on its
journey to Andromeda, and there are two in this image, one moored at another Spacedock
in the background, perhaps this Ark won’t make it to Andromeda.
Ok so that’s my brief look at the new ships and tech we got to see in this trailer, let
me know if I missed anything below and you can be assured that Spacedock will be covering
a lot more Andromeda stuff in the coming months as it becomes available, thanks for watching.