'Mass Effect: Andromeda' Will Let You Craft Firearms, Melee Weapons

At The Game Awards last month, we were treated to some gameplay footage from the highly-anticipated Mass Effect: Andromeda, which briefly showed that you can craft items throughout your campaign. Yesterday, the game’s lead designer, Ian Frazier, revealed a bit more about the new mechanic coming to the Mass Effect series.

On Twitter, Frazier wrote that you’ll be able to craft melee weapons. One such example was a warhammer created in the style of the Krogan alien race. In addition, you can even give it a custom name. In this case, Frazier named it “Grabthar’s Hammer” (that’s a Galaxy Quest reference, in case you didn’t know). Justin Perez, another developer at Bioware, followed suit and told Frazier that he crafted an assault and sniper rifle called “Fast” and “Furious,” respectively.

Firearms and melee weapons aren’t new to the series, but the inclusion of more variations on melee weapons in the single-player campaign is something that players didn’t see during Commander Shepard’s adventures. In Mass Effect 3’s single-player story, you had access only to the omni-blade as your sole melee weapon. In fact, you could wield different melee weapons only in the multiplayer portion of Mass Effect 3. With Andromeda, however, Frazier said that there will be a dedicated melee slot in your arsenal so that you can get up close and personal with the enemy with a weapon of your own design.

The entire crafting feature is also new to Mass Effect. However, other Bioware-based games featured the mechanic prominently, most recently Dragon Age: Inquisition. Even though it seems that the crafting in Mass Effect: Andromeda is based on Dragon Age: Inquisition, Frazier noted that it will have some differences, but that more information on the subject would come at a later time.

With the game set to release in about two months, you can expect more information and videos to appear in the coming weeks. Until then, you should probably play through the last three games as a refresher before Mass Effect: Andromeda arrives on store shelves.