New gameplay video from Mass Effect: Andromeda premiered at Wednesday’s PlayStation Meeting 2016 event. And while there’s still every reason to be excited for a new saga in the Mass Effect universe, one element of the new video provides a perfect snapshot of the exact moment a battle-tested gameplay mechanic goes from ubiquitous, even essential, to dumb and deserving of death.
To explain we must journey both backward and forward in time, beginning with a time-travel jump back to 2002, the year that saw the release of Metroid Prime on Nintendo GameCube.
Responding to a distress signal from the space pirate frigate Orpheon , Samus Aran found a ghost ship, void of all life except the genetically engineered parasites that killed the crew. But thanks to some exceptional HUD software the bounty hunter was able to scan and analyze elements in the environment, conducting a full forensic investigation with some high-tech wizardry and a keen eye for observation. Not only did her helmet’s scanner offer up background information, but it even proved indispensable in combat, providing a quick read-out on the strengths and weaknesses of enemies like cybernetic Meta Ridley.
What a great mechanic.
At least it was, until 2016 (a full 14 years after the release of Metroid Prime ), when No Man’s Sky smashed the scanning mechanic into dust through the blunt trauma of rote repetition. Within hours of playing No Man’s Sky , I had stopped naming newly discovered species of flora and fauna. Soon after I gave up scanning entirely. The brief seconds it took to analyze a new species began to feel interminable. The data gained felt more and more abstract and useless, as if written in Gek instead of a legible alphabet.
It wasn’t just scanning that No Man’s Sky killed. The game may have its merits (read our review), but the limited set of gameplay mechanics — scanning, crafting, gathering resources — meant that putting in any substantial amount of time with the game wore down gameplay elements, like a word repeated over and over until it loses all meaning.
So when new gameplay video from Mass Effect: Andromeda opened with Ryder (our new Shep) scanning plants (that, in an unfortunate coincidence, look a lot like No Man Sky’s titanium and thamium flowers), an involuntary shiver of horror ran up my spine. Scanning more digital plants in more games, adding them to more pause-screen databases and menued lexicons, suddenly felt nothing like fun gameplay and everything like a sci-fi themed hell, with endless scanning filling in for Sisyphus’ boulder.
It’s not Mass Effect: Andromeda’s fault that they’ve suddenly found themselves on the other side of the line between fresh and stale. It’s almost impossible to see the moment of a gameplay mechanics obsolescence roaring toward you. Remember quick time events, which prompt you to press a button during critical story moments or cutscenes? That’s another gameplay mechanic that went from intriguing to horrible in an instant, peaking around Resident Evil 4 and producing loud groans of universal disgust by the second or third deployment in a Call of Duty game. QTEs, at first innovative, became poisonous in an instant.
Few can see the death of a duplicable gameplay mechanic coming, but everyone knows when it’s arrived. We can smell it. The 2017 Mass Effect: Andromeda release date can’t come soon enough, but I’ll still have a bucket ready for when that rotting, tumorous scanning mechanic sets off my gag reflex once more.
