As many of you may already know, some brand new gameplay footage for Mass Effect: Andromeda was showcased at the NVIDIA keynote at CES 2017. And the footage, while not very long, had some very interesting information to share with us, one of which is how the revamped class system works in the game.
It’s common knowledge now that unlike previous installments in the Mass Effect series, Mass Effect: Andromeda will not lock players into a specific class. Instead, players will have free rein to assign any skills that they want towards certain abilities, allowing them to create a specialty that is best suited to their style of gameplay.
According to this new gameplay, players will be given access to a number of Pathfinder Profiles, each with their own ranks and specific bonuses. And while these profiles bear the names of classes present in previous games such as Engineer and Vanguard, they merely seem to optimize Ryder’s abilities towards a particular playstyle, as opposed to locking in his or her skillset.
These profiles can be switched on the fly, and as they level up, so do the effects of the bonuses they provide, while still allowing players to build towards their own specialized profile with it’s own assigned loadout.
All of the Pathfinder Profiles shown so far are:
- Soldier
- Engineer
- Adept
- Sentinel
- Vanguard
- Infiltrator
- Explorer
So far all of this is based on our knowledge of previous Mass Effect games as well as what is evident from the new gameplay. Hopefully BioWare will provide a more in-depth look at these in the coming weeks.
Mass Effect: Andromeda is slated for release on 21st March, 2017, for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and the PC. You can learn more about the game here.
