Here's what's coming with Mass Effect: Andromeda's 1.05 Patch

Bioware posted on their official blog today the contents of the upcoming Mass Effect: Andromeda 1.05 Patch. The update is slated to roll out by this thursday, April 6th. The full notes can be found below, the most interesting of which involve improvements to lip-sync and facial animations during cutscenes, as well as the option to skip autopilot sequences. There will also be improvements to continuity with respect to forming relationships and story arc progression. We have a guide hub for anyone needing assistance with the triggers for these or other facets of the game's mechanics.

• Improved tutorial placement
• Single player balance changes: Ammo crates, armor, weapons, nomad, profiles, attacks, and progression
• Multiplayer balance changes: Weapons, cover, and enemies (check back for detailed notes on balance changes)
• Added option to skip autopilot sequences in the galaxy map
• Improved logic, timing, and continuity for relationships and story arcs
• Improved lip-sync and facial acting during conversations, including localized VO
• Fixed various collision issues
• Fixed bugs where music or VO wouldn’t play or wasn’t correct
• Fixed issue where global squad mate banter sometimes wasn’t firing on UNCs
• Fixed issue where player was unable to access the Remnant Console Interface after failing decryption multiple times
• Fixed issue where fast travel is sometimes disabled after recruiting Drack until the player reloads a save
• Fixed issue where Ryder can become stuck in the start of Biotic Charge Pose
• Fixes issues related to some saves
• Fixed issue where objective sometimes becomes un-interactable for players in multiplayer
• Streaming and stability improvements

Aaryn Flynn, also posted some extended thoughts via a newsletter on the official Mass Effect website, where he outlines what can be expected in upcoming updates. The main focus of upcoming patches will be to continue to improve animations and general appearance for characters and cinematics. We called the faicial animations in Andromeda quite an unsightly elephant in the room in our review, so efforts to make improvements here definitely seem like an appropriate focus. There is also a mention of incoming cosmetic items coming to the game for free:

Over the next two months we’ll be rolling out additional patches which will go even deeper and look to improve several areas of the game:

• More options and variety in the character creator
• Improvements to hair and general appearance for characters
• Ongoing improvements to cinematic scenes and animations
• Improvements to male romance options for Scott Ryder
• Adjustments to conversations with Hainly Abrams

These upcoming patches will also address performance and stability issues. And we’re looking at adding more cosmetic items to single player for free.