Jetpacks! The trailer (and leak?) suggests we'll have them.
This is great because jetpacks are awesome. Not only do they allow thrilling daredevil low-level aerobatics and intelligent, high-brow tactical movement, but films have repeatedly shown us they're fraught with exciting risks - such as crashing into the side of a sail barge, stressing your relationship with Jennifer Connelly, setting fire to Timothy Dalton, or being misused by Nazis in their eternal quest to destroy America / Freedom.
What might jetpacks look like in Andromeda? Several games have explored the ludological applications of this exciting technology already and developed different styles:
Clumsy Rocket (Star Wars: Battlefront, MechWarrior)
In some games, jetpacks majestically catapult or heroes (and/or giant robots) through the air on a fairly rigid trajectory. Player skill is a factor in plotting the correct jump ahead of time and fine tuning where you land on the way down. In such systems jetpacking is a dramatic less common event.
Thruster Assisted Parkour (Titanfall)
Another recent popular shooter used jetpacks to augment the free running gameplay being experimented with in modern action games. In this system jetpack use is regular, fast paced and elegant.
Free Flight (Dark Void)
Why limit a jetpack? In the less recent and not popular shooter Dark Void developers allowed us to have relatively unrestricted flight with a jetpack, allowing the game to transition from cover shooter to flight action game.
But what a jetpack can do brings up another question, how are they constrained? Should there be a mechanic stopping us from jetpacking?
Cooldowns
Few things say RPG like your character not being able to do something. With a cooldown you simply can't jet again until a timer counts down.
Recharge / Overheat
Whether the number is going up or down the effect is mostly the same. You spend a resource to use your jetpack for a while and you recover that resource over time. Allows for more flexibility than cooldowns.
Fuel
Realism, sometimes it can inspire games. Your jetpack uses fuel, and if you use it too much you run out and can't use it. Maybe you can find more?
Jump limited
Jetpacking is pretty similar to jumping so a simple solution is make it available again when the player lands. A bit nonsensical as a lore explanation but there's something to be said for not making a mechanic more complex than it needs to be.
So what do you want from your jetpack in ME:A? I love rocketing around in Battlefront but I think agile Titanfall like quick jumps might suit ME's sleek and hi-tech future better. I think cooldowns are horrible so I'd prefer recharging / overheat or just refreshing when we touch ground. I could see fuel working if the jetpack was super useful and they were really keen on making logistics a thing, but I suspect that isn't their angle.
------
Rejected thread names:
What can BioWare learn from Bobba Fett?
Romance using jetpacks in Andromeda, thoughts?
What can Bobba Fett learn from BioWare?





Retour en haut








