Early concept sketches show what Mass Effect: Andromeda could have become and which ideas did not make it into the game.
Mass Effect: Andromeda has been out for a while now and most of the initial bugs have been fixed through patches, resulting in a rounded gaming experience. But wouldn’t it be exciting to know what the developers and designers had in the earlier phases of development that didn’t make it (or made it differently) into the game? Many images from the planning of ME:A have now been released via Kotaku and Artstation.
Initial interface images from the colonies show that players should always have the choice of whether a colony has a military, research, or diplomatic purpose. In the final game, this can only be determined for Prodromos – the first colony.
It is also interesting that the representation of SAM was planned very differently. Instead of portraying him as a round, holographic AI (like EDI in ME3), SAM was supposed to be housed in a kind of two-colored water tank.
This tank would also have been invoked whenever contacting SAM through the Omni-Tool.
Generally, the Omni-Tool was supposed to have much stronger communicative and analytical functions. These have been almost completely offloaded to SAM in the final game, who is always there to lend advice and assistance.
Cora Harper – who is initially depicted as a model from the character editor in the first images – was originally even listed as an Asari. This might simply be because she underwent the training of an Asari huntress.
It’s hard to say now why many of these ideas were not or were implemented differently. It’s also questionable whether some of the original ideas would have really been “better”. All we can do now is speculate.
What do you think about the images? Any detail that stands out to you?
All images and artworks can be found in our sources.
