New Mass Effect: Andromeda Video Starts A Deep Dive On The Combat

Electronic Arts and BioWare are about to put the promotional efforts for Mass Effect: Andromeda into overdrive. The game recently received a new trailer focused entirely on the combat, so that gamers can understand what's cool, what's improved and what's new.

The video made its way over to the official Mass Effect YouTube channel. The trailer is five and a half minutes long, featuring a deep dive into Mass Effect: Andromeda's combat.

The video explains that the combat in the game is centered around fast, fluid third-person combat. This is no lie, and you can see that things do look rather fluid from a frame-rate point of view. This will definitely help with giving the game the sort of smooth input response timing necessary to pull out headshots, dodge incoming fire, and quickly react and avoid flanking attempts.

Another new feature is being able to take cover behind anything. They demonstrate this in the video by having the Pathfinder move from a build to the rover and then peek out to snipe some enemies. It looks seamless and appears to blend nicely in the firefights that they showcased for Mass Effect: Andromeda. In the previous Mass Effect games you kind of ducked down behind things to create cover points but you didn't get to wall-hug against any object anywhere on the map. I do wonder if this means you could slowly kill a few enemies, hop into the rover and drive up a bit and then get out and use it for cover to take out a few more enemies? A sort of slow, creeping cover tactic.

This instant-cover feature also ties into being able to get around the environment fairly quick with the new jump jets that also allow you to hover.

The trailer also covers the five different types of weapons, including pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles and melee weapons, most of which are the standard weapon loadout categories that were featured in previous Mass Effect games. Of course, the new melee category features a variety of different swords and biotic weapons that players can use during combat.

New to Mass Effect: Andromeda is allowing all players to have access to all ranges of weapons. There is no longer a class restricted weapon set like the previous games.

They also explain that there are several different weapon category types, including the Milky Way weapons that rely on classic projectile-based fire. Milky Way weapons use standard ammo and are great for taking down non-shielded opponents. Remnant weapons are the second type of weapon class in the game, focused on beam, pulse and phased weapon fire. Remnant weapons don't use ammo but they will overheat, similar to the Covenant weapons in the Halo games. Last, but not least, are the Helius weapons, which rely on plasma and charged projectile fire.

They also explain that you can alter skillsets in the game based around biotics, weapon efficiency and tech.

I wasn't originally all that convinced about the quality of Mass Effect: Andromeda's combat mechanics, but, after seeing the trailer above, I'm definitely a lot more excited about it. You can look to get your hands on the game starting March 21st.