Mass Effect Andromeda: Atmosphere.

Right off the bat Mass Effect Andromeda hits the player with that sci-fi feel. Bioware has learnt over the course of the Mass Effect series how to perfect the implementation of sci-fi atmosphere through their use of differing visual elements such as lighting, atmospheric fog, hyper-realism and model design.

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One of the first planets the player makes their way to has a very mars-like quality to it. The planet is barren, dusty and seemingly uninhabited. Bioware achieves this quality through the use of juxtaposition in their scene composition. The color palette is very brown which contrasts greatly with the sleek, clinical white of the buildings placed by the Andromeda Initiative (the players faction) and the bright blue of the sky above. This all helps draw attention to the environment surrounding the player and builds a feeling of otherness in the player: the environment looks uninhabitable and primitive, there is no sign of civilisation in the environment and the modular buildings placed within seem out of place, yet this all helps to build that sci-fi theme. Other models that help build upon this is vegetation that looks familiar to things we know in reality such as trees. Other fauna are strange but are distinctively recognisable as vegetation.

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Now let’s start analysing those more nitty gritty effects within the atmosphere like lighting and atmospheric fog. Bioware has utilise Atmospheric fog in this new world to really help provide a clean and crisp feel to an otherwise dirty environment, things like fog depth and density have been so finely tweaked that the fog is visible, yet the player can see right through it giving a hazy like appearance to this alien world. The fog causes the light to bounce off of metallic surfaces and provides a glare that would be experienced in reality, adding to that feeling of hyper-realism. The lighting has been used in conjunction with the sky sphere to create a crystal blue sky and to generate some god ray’s to compound the effect created by the atmospheric fog.

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Post processing has been used in such a way as to create some bloom effects when looking toward the sun and add some red shading to the water.  It also looks as though tone mapping and color temperature have been adjusted to give recesses a darker look while allowing the ground to remain a brighter reddish-brown.

The model design for architecture in Mass Effect Andromeda is clearly sci-fi in origin. This is both for alien design and in the buildings of the Andromeda Initiative. As stated earlier, the Andromeda Initiative’s buildings are clean, crisp and clinically white, curvaceous and somewhat at odds in the planet’s environment. The other end of the spectrum is in the alien architecture on this planet and is a stark contrast to the Andromeda Initiative: the architecture is chunky, straight edged and darkly colored, lending an aspect of suspicion, mystery and darkness to the alien architecture, however the design is still clearly sci-fi  in the building’s layout and props.

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Short and only barely brushes the surface of the scene composition in Andromeda, I know, but hopefully this helps you glean some insight into the effort that Bioware has put into the creation of this game. It's beautiful and it's sci-fi.

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