While the Mass Effect franchise is spectacular, nearly every player agrees that the vehicle driving portions of it are the worst parts. From the floaty Mako in Mass Effect 1, to the fragile Hammerhead in Mass Effect 2, to even Andromeda's Nomad, vehicle handling has left plenty to be desired. The games are ultimately focused on role-playing and shooter combat elements, so it makes sense vehicle mechanics would fall by the wayside, but they definitely need more attention before the next game in the series.

Mass Effect 5 is coming at some point in the near future and will likely see a revised version of these vehicle's mechanics. It remains to be seen how exactly Bioware changes this up for the next part of the series, but hopefully, it will learn from the past games. The ways in which the Mako, Hammerhead, and Nomad failed provide excellent guidelines for how a new vehicle could succeed.

The Mako's Handling Made It A Nightmare To Drive

A Janky Way To Explore The Galaxy

While the remastered version of the original trilogy improved the experience of using the Mako, the vehicle still has many issues. Its handling is the main problem. Simply put, the Mako feels lighter than it should, seemingly unaffected by the gravity of the planet it's on. It floats through the air when going over small hills, and has no power behind it when it comes to going over tall ridges.

That brings up the next issue with the Mako: the environments players need to use it in. It works best as a part of the Virmire and Ilos missions, where the terrain feels like it fits the controls and provides track-like paths for the player to follow. On other planets that Shepard can explore, however, the terrain is essentially just wide-ranging mountains and valleys, which feel bad and almost tedious to move through. Scattering interactive locations and objects around a mostly empty map is not a recipe for fun, especially when the vehicle being used is already so janky.

The Hammerhead in ME2 was a different story. The controls still felt floaty, but it made more sense for the hovercraft design of this smaller vehicle. And the platforming that the vehicle was used for felt fine, if a little stale. But the Hammerhead's lack of durability posed a major problem in combat, as it was near unusable unless the player repeatedly backed off and went back in. The Mako was a bit tougher, but faced similar problems when engaging with groups of enemies on higher difficulties. It made vehicle combat feel punishing beyond what it should have felt like.

The Nomad Provides Some Fixes, But Still Falls Short

Better Handling, But At The Cost Of Defensive Capabilities

There's no denying that, for all of Andromeda's faults, the Nomad was a marked improvement on the Mako. After ME3 did away with vehicle mechanics entirely, it was good to see the franchise take another shot at it. The Nomad's speed and weightiness felt appropriate, and the environments were a much better fit for vehicle travel. It was also nice that companions would speak to one another while inside the Nomad, making traveling across long distances more dynamic.

The companion interactions within the Nomad are reminiscent of how squates in ME1 speak to one another in the Citadel elevators, providing some extra characterization for the fourth game's side characters.

However, the Nomad still failed in several key areas. The first is that it completely did away with the combat mechanics the Mako and Hammerhead implemented. It was defenseless against enemies and required characters to hop out to engage in combat. It made some sense given Andromeda's tendency to have important enemies in areas around the open world, where using vehicles could allow players to cheese bosses with little trouble. But it certainly seemed like a missed opportunity, especially in light of the larger bosses in the game that traverse larger portions of the map.

Besides that, the Nomad could still face issues with going up hills and navigating other parts of the environment. It was less obtrusive in Andromeda than in the earlier games, but it was still an issue. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is undeniably more that a series like Mass Effect could do to make navigating a planet's map feel dynamic. Incorporating gravitational differences between planets, adding hazardous areas that require different kinds of vehicles, and even including overworld monsters like ME1's Thresher Maws could go a long way.

How Mass Effect 5 Should Build On Its Predecessors

Improving Both The Vehicles And Their Environments

If Mass Effect 5 wants to incorporate vehicle exploration and combat in the same ways ME1 and Andromeda did, it can't treat the vehicle mechanics as something to be disregarded. Every iteration of Mass Effect vehicles has had strengths as well as weaknesses. The Mako felt essential to navigating the first game's maps, the Hammerhead had environments that felt tailored to its controls, and the Nomad's handling actually made it feel good to drive. All of that needs to be present for the vehicle portion of the next game to actually be an improvement.

Aside from improving the controls and feel of the vehicle, potentially by incorporating some kind of hover system similar to the Hammerhead, the environments need to feel intentional, with ways for players to make use of them while still being challenged by them. As a sci-fi franchise that explores multiple planets, the chances to get creative with environmental hazards and opportunities are infinite. Hopefully, Bioware will not miss the opportunity to improve this core part of the Mass Effect series in its next outing.