[Disclosure: The following article contains a paid promotional link.]
The day one patch for Mass Effect: Andromeda will address some launch bugs and glitches that the team missed during development as the game went gold, but lead designer Ian Soon Frazier on Mass Effect: Andromeda confirmed that the game’s launch day patch won’t fix the game’s animations.
@JohnCharling At day 1? No, that ship has sailed. We’ll have more patches later on, but exactly what goes into them is still in discussion.
— Ian Soon Frazier (@tibermoon) March 16, 2017
Some people have taken Frazier’s comments about what goes into the patch as being confirmation that they will “fix” the animations for Mass Effect: Andromeda, which are numerous and abundant, as evident in the 10-hour trial that’s been made available for those with EA Access. However, fixing the amount of animation issues in a game this scale could take anywhere between several months to several years.
Frazier also confirmed that they might make it possible for gamers to create white people and fair skinned characters in Mass Effect: Andromeda after someone with an Asian avatar asked Frazier why there weren’t pale skin tones in the game to allow people to make pale-skinned characters.
@Sapphire_lily There are some limits to the tone range based on the texture of the actual scanned head. We’re looking into fixing via patch.
— Ian Soon Frazier (@tibermoon) March 16, 2017
However, Frazier also confirms in the tweet thread that adding the ability to make white people in Mass Effect: Andromeda won’t be available in the day-one patch that comes out with the game on March 21st.
So if you plan on making a character with fair skin, you’ll either have to wait until they release the patch or stick with Scott or Sara Ryder.
@gaiden0090 @Sapphire_lily Definitely not day 1, that’s already out. Potentially down the road. We’re in early investigations now.
— Ian Soon Frazier (@tibermoon) March 16, 2017
This was something that was brought out in another Mass Effect: Andromeda article, revealing that there was only one head type available for male and females that was fair skinned, but it didn’t have tonal range, so your customization options were limited. Every other skin color was either light brown or olive, medium brown, or dark brown, limiting the range of characters that could be made with the character creator.
There is one default male head who has somewhat light skin that can be modified and changed across the scale, but it’s quite obvious he has Hispanic pigmentation and features, further limiting the kind of character players can create.
Additionally, the sliders for the game’s character creator doesn’t allow for drastically altering the faces. You can only make minor alterations to the face mesh.
YouTuber GamePlayUK actually demonstrated how to make a decent looking character who actually looked normal, but even then it still turns out as Sapphire_Lily explained in the tweet: it’s not possible to make the template fair skinned or pale. GamePlayUK makes her as light as possible in the video, but she’s still fairly olive toned, similar to that of a Syrian. So if you want your character to look a certain way they’ll be locked into a specific skin tone range.
One of the designers on Mass Effect: Andromeda, Manveer Heir, had made it known that he disliked white people and openly mocked and made racist comments about whites. Unsurprisingly enough, this blatant racism ended up playing a role in what options players were greeted with in Mass Effect: Andromeda’s character creator.
Some gamers were a bit disgruntled knowing that in order to make a white character they would have to start a new game to create a new character with the new skin tone, once the patch does arrive. However, according to Frazier, there is no definite time frame on when the patch with fair skin for custom characters will be made available, so you could be waiting a while.
