Details, Biology, and their Importance in Storytelling: Mass Effect Andromeda vs. The Expanse

There will be spoilers for The Expanse book series (through Cibola Burn) and the Mass Effect video game series in this post.

A Tale of Two Worlds

It begins…

When I bought my first Xbox, the Xbox 360, for my 30th birthday, Mass Effect was one of the first games I played. My friend Chuck had recommended it, and generally speaking, when he recommends something, I listen.

Mass Effect was a series that when it launched showed so much promise. The first game had so much wonderful world building in it; from the environments, to the character and NPC interactions, to the background conversations overheard, to the “encyclopædia” that was unlocked as you progressed, this was very clearly a completely realized world.

I envisioned there being so many spin-off games set in the Mass Effect world: the flight simulators fighting space pirates a la the TIE Fighter and Wing Commander series, the RTS strategy game of pioneers settling a planet and warring with the Geth, the point-and-click adventure set on The Citadel solving a mystery…the world had all of the potential to inhabit many genres.

Then Andromeda happened…

A new contender…

Fast forward to 2020. I started watching The Expanse on Amazon Prime, and the first episode had so much going on that I knew I needed to read the books first. When the crew strapped into their crash couches, inserted bite guards, and received automated injections of something before initiating a high-g burn, I knew that there was a lot of thought put into this world the characters inhabited.

What struck me was that the series didn’t talk down to the audience like so many shows do. They didn’t take the time to explain exactly what was happening with the crew and why they needed this physical support; the writers figured that the audience would suss out that this was just a necessity of maneuvering in space at high speeds/velocities and fill in the blanks themselves.

I paused the series and started devouring the books, and am almost through Cibola Burn.

Analysis

For the purposes of the remainder of this comparison, I’ll be referring to The Expanse book series.

Comparisons

Now, here are two series, albeit different media genres, that spent a lot of time and creative effort to build some very detailed worlds.

• Both are sci-fi.

• Both attempted to couch the technology in reality; The Expanse doesn’t have anything traveling at light speed and artificial gravity, and while Mass Effect does, it does so via a technology that changes mass (a major constraint in Einstein’s equations regarding faster-than-light travel).

• Both are based around the concept of finding alien technology that drastically changes humans’ view of the universe and their ability to explore and interact with it.

• Both recognize the challenges of colonizing new worlds and how that would be difficult for humans.

One of the smaller details shared by both series that I love is the use of pre-fab buildings. In Mass Effect, especially the first game where there is more action on “frontier” worlds, all of the buildings look like they are modular, customized to suit specific purposes, but ultimately (relatively) cheap to build and easy to transport.

This may have simply been a choice by the artists to simplify game objects as opposed to having to design hundred of customized buildings, but think about that: if we had to transport all of the building materials to, say, Mars, wouldn’t it be logistically smart to pack away a bunch of prefab buildings that could be purposed and repurposed as needed by the boots on the ground? So maybe this was an artistic decision, or maybe it was based on engineering, but either way, it worked.

The Expanse does the same thing in that the series recognizes the scarcity of resources and shows how everything must be done on the cheap and as efficiently as possible. Sure, the longer something is there, like on Ceres station for example, it will be more “lived in” and customized, but at its core, everything was made according to a template, a template that has been proven to work. After all, custom-built stuff is more susceptible to mistakes or design flaws that could endanger the lives of a lot of people in a zero-g/zero-atmosphere environment; best to stick with what everyone knows will work.

But then Andromeda happened…

Contrasts

Up until Mass Effect: Andromeda, we were playing in a world that, while still new and exciting (humans have only been using their nascent element zero tech for 35 years), is pretty well established. We know how the technology works, we’re (mostly) aware of the players on the board, and we know our place in it. We’ve colonized worlds and have worked most of the kinks out of the process.

Narrative missteps aside (Mass Effect 3, I’m looking at you) the trilogy was a solid show of storytelling. Hell, if you stop playing the game right before going up to the final space station, it’s almost as close to flawless as you can get.

Andromeda promised more of the same but in a brand new milieu: a brand spanking new planet in a far away galaxy.

I was genuinely hoping for a game that showcased the true emptiness of space, the difficulties of colonizing a planet where we have absolutely zero knowledge about the environment there. Even if gravity and atmosphere are right where we need them to survive, how will we react to the local flora and fauna? What will our bodies’ reactions be to touching any plant there? How will our immune systems interact with the bacteria and viruses present there? How will we deal with the need for natural resources?

This, to me, would have been an amazing narrative to explore within the confines of the Mass Effect world. But nope, we get Mass Effect But Over There, where the challenges of extra-galactic colonization are fixed with the, quite literal, flip of a switch.

Storytelling failures aside (the story in Andromeda wasn’t great; not terrible, but definitely lackluster), this made settling on a new planet that has its own life, its own biosphere, nothing more than a run to the store. Where there should have been struggle and strife and tension simply from the act of a scarcity of resources, all of the drama came from a thin corporate conspiracy and the plot from Halo.

And this is what really got me: where are the diseases? Hell, humans got sick and died just from travelling to a new continent on our own freaking planet where our immune systems already have a pretty good idea of how to fight off infections. How is this not a bigger issue on a new freaking planet in a galaxy 2.5 million light years away?

This is where The Expanse nails it.

For the entirety of the series thus far (again, I’m just about through Cibola Burn), there is a huge uncertainty around how the protomolecule interacts with human biology. Cibola Burn very specifically tackles this issue.

For instance, the original plan was for there to be a much more controlled colonization process, with hermetically-sealed domes and the only excursions into the natural environment on Ilus/New Terra would be in bio suits so as to not disturb the biosphere. Who knows how our presence would affect the world, or it us?

We see early on that there are an analog of mosquitoes on this planet that, when they bite a human, they die. No big deal, right? The mosquitoes that learn not to bite humans live, their genetic information gets passed on, and now we can enjoy a barbecue without constantly swatting those annoying bastards away. My wife would be able to let the dogs out without coming in with a half dozen new mosquito bites.

Wrong. Mosquitoes are food for something. Then that thing that eats them, that’s food for something else. You know, food chain and circle of life stuff.

If an entire species is eliminated or its numbers dramatically reduced, and it is done so in a rapid manner (as opposed to going extinct over decades or centuries), it will have a huge impact on the environment. The predators will need to find an alternative food source, which will put them in competition with other predators for prey and territory. This will lead to reduced predator populations on either or both sides, which will affect the animals that prey on them, and so on.

The tl;dr version: we can decimate a planet just by being there. That was one of the main concerns of the character Dr. Elvi Okoye in Cibola Burn.

Her other concern, as noted above, is our interaction with local microorganisms. We see this about halfway or two-thirds of the way through the book when the colonists all get a local algae-like organism in their eyes that causes them to slowly lose their vision. Something figured out “how to use us,” to paraphrase Dr. Okoye.

Conclusion

It’s this attention to detail, and the adherence to the internal logic of the world, that has made The Expanse a superior sci-fi series to me. Mass Effect started there, and if they had ended after ME3, would likely still be in that pantheon of the top five; Andromeda just left such a bad taste in my mouth, especially for the reasons given above, that it tarnished the good work of the rest of the series.

Also, I really wanted a Mass Effect space combat game.