Heartwarming / Mass Effect: Andromeda

• It's made clear from Alec's first scene that his relationship with his children is distant at best. Despite that, Alec doesn't hesitate for a second to give his life to save his child.
  • Similarly, the player can have Ryder be genuinely upset over his death, regardless of how rocky their relationship was.
  • Ryder can tell their father to be careful before interfacing with a potentially dangerous alien technology. Alec's reaction is cute.
  Alec: Worried about your old man, eh? Don't worry, I won't tell anyone!
• The very end of the Alec Ryder logs, which reveals an important truth: Ellen Ryder, the character's mother, is alive. Scott and Sara are completely overjoyed.
• A minor sidequest "Doesn't Add Up" has you tracking down missing colonists from the first attempted settlement on Eos. It seems like a dead end at first, but then you find the shuttle, drifting in space after a last-ditch maneuver that destroyed their kett pursuers - and there's survivors onboard.
  Ryder: Priority to the Nexus, we have a shuttle for retrieval - with Site 2 survivors! Resilience, you are coming home.
• During a sidequest, the first human baby in Andromeda will have been born. The mother chooses to name him David Edward, after a dear old friend of hers. Fans of the original trilogy would know that this is Admiral Anderson's name.
  • After the baby's mother reveals that he has been born safely, one of your squadmates expresses relief. Jaal in particular gives a triumphant, mirthful laugh.
• While exploring the turian arc, you can come across an absolutely adorable message from the turian Pathfinder, Macen, to his lover Avitus stating that he got permission for Avitus to oversee the activation of his stasis pod because he wanted the last thing he saw in the Milky Way to be his face.
• If you raise the viability of all settlements to 100%, Ryder will be told to go back to Habitat 7. Once there the Tempest will receive a communication from every settlement cheering. Ryder is then informed that they are terraforming the planet the hard way without Remnant tech, and have renamed the planet Ryder-1 as a thank you for all they have done for them.
• Kallo and Gil spend the first part of the game bickering back and forth about Gil's modifications to the Tempest, which upset Kallo because he worked on the original project and sees it as ruining what he and his team put so much effort into. If you tell him to allow Gil to make his modifications (so that the ship can deal with the Scourge and other dangers Kallo's team couldn't have anticipated), after some thought Kallo will turn over the original ship specs (which he knew from memory) over to Gil. Upon seeing them, Gil is struck by the beauty of the design, and he and Kallo finally start to bond over their love of the ship.
  • On the flip side, if you side with Kallo he'll eventually confess that Gil's modifications may have been for the best in light of the Scourge and the other dangers the crew have been through. He asks Ryder (and SAM) to help him research new systems to which Ryder will suggest that Gil would be of greater help to him. Wondering how odd it was that he, despite being a salarian, does not embrace innovation like Gil has had, in the end, Kallo swallows his pride and offers Gil an olive branch.
• When Ryder walks into the bridge after rescuing the Moshae, they come across Kallo and Suvi having a discussion. Ryder asks if they're fighting over something.
  Kallo: Why would I fight with my best friend?
  Suvi: Best friend? Aww, Kallo!
• After completing the main story and his loyalty missions, Drack will tell Ryder to meet him for a surprise on the Nexus. When Ryder arrives he reveals that he is going to be a great grandfather, as Kesh has given birth to a clutch of children. They name Ryder as one of the godparents.
  • What's better is ALL of the children survived childbirth despite the genophage, even after the gene modification done during the trip to Andromeda, which results in a 96% infant mortality rate.
  • If you speak with Vorn after learning this, he'll start worrying about whether he'll be a good father, or whether he's just going to screw it up somehow. If Drack is present, he'll actually give Vorn advice.
• If you follow through with Suvi's romance arc, Suvi will invite you to a tech lab on the Nexus so she can show you a model she has been working on. As Suvi talks about what the model represents and how it was what she had been searching for all her life, Ryder simply stares at Suvi with pure love in her eyes and tells her, "It's beautiful." She's not talking about the model.
• If a male Ryder romances Cora, the romance culminates in the two planning a simple life together adventuring after their Pathfinder mission is over.
  • Before the first mission on Habitat 7, if Ryder speaks to Cora they will talk about feeling like old time explorers who used maps that read "here be dragons" in the unknown, and Ryder jokes about something so outstanding in Andromeda. Later during the romance scene, if the player chooses to forgo the sex, Ryder and Cora spend the night star-gazing. When Cora points out a constellation that looks like a dragon, Ryder instead says that the constellation reminds him of her.
• After you've completed Liam's loyalty mission and saved Prodromos from a Roekaar invasion, Liam organizes a surprise for Ryder on Eos: a soccer game, played amongst the settlers. Liam wanted to show Ryder what kind of impact they and their team had on the settlers, that despite all the difficulties and hardships they have finally built a lasting home on Eos, and can finally get to do something so simple and pointless as playing a game of soccer.
  • Particularly heartwarming is the fact that among the players are some angara.
  • An additional moment of heartwarming for Liam - this is the first time something he planned and executed actually succeeded with no blowback. Up until this point, Liam has had meltdown after meltdown, with upto three instances of something he tried failing spectacularly. In his own words he was “just drifting from crisis to crisis” and felt like a “goddamn outsider”. He had tried his hand at diplomacy and it failed. He’d attempted to organize a hostage rescue but it went literally sideways, requiring Ryder and Bradley to save the day. The soccer get together allows him to finally find something he is good at - community organizing.
• If the player doesn't romance Gil, he still ends up fathering a child with Jill, deciding to form a family with her. Ryder gets to be godfather / "Auntie Ryder."
• Sid's reaction to Vetra and Ryder being in a relationship is pretty adorable, including her making the pun that "Pathfinder Ryder found the path to Vetra's heart" (to get the pun out of way the early).
  • Vetra's romance is pretty heartwarming itself. Vetra spends so much time looking after her sister, and everyone else as well; she needs to be needed. But a Ryder that romances her can give her someone to count on to support her, something she's never had before in her life. She notes that that alone was worth crossing galaxies to find.
  • After Vetra's loyalty mission, Ryder can have this Thermal Nuclear Heartwarming dialog:
    • (In response to Vetra's frustration over Sid trying to break out of the nest.)
  Vetra: But what if she gets herself in another mess, what if she gets hurt?
  Ryder: Whatever happens, I'm here for the both of you. I care about Sid, because I care about you.
  • Pretty much the entirety of Vetra's second romance scene, especially the option to hug her when she starts worrying that she screwed everything up.
• A side quest reveals that one of Kallo's colleagues who built the Tempest, and was injured during a work accident, having to continue her work with a special construction rig, merged said construction rig to the Tempest's super structure as a memento, embedding a message to the four original pathfinders. Besides choosing how to honor this memento, Ryder and the crew will note how many of the original Pathfinders died (up to possibly having none of the originals left).
• After his loyalty mission, Jaal will introduce Ryder to his family, showing the Pathfinder his birth home and some of the things from his childhood.
  • When meeting Jaal's mother, Ryder has the opportunity to hug her, having noticed that angara love hugging. This is sweet on its own, but gains an extra layer of heartwarming coming from Ryder, who lost their own mother years ago. Yet another layer of heartwarming gets added if Ryder is romancing Jaal.
  • A number of angara throughout the game express sympathy for Ryder, as they tend to have large and very close family units and Ryder's small and fractured family seems very sad to them. Once Jaal trusts Ryder, he tries to make it better by inviting Ryder into his family, even noting that he thinks of Ryder as part of his family now.
• If you complete Peebee's loyalty mission, she will conduct a meeting to the entire squad and express her apology for being distant towards the rest of the team and promises to be more involved in general. This shows that despite her free-spirited nature, she does care about the rest of the squad like a family.
  • It then devolves into a hilarious moment when Peebee asks for help cleaning up her room, with everyone immediately bailing out with amusingly flimsy excuses (a lit stove (Drack), ice-making (Liam), reports (Cora), an angaran holiday (Jaal), helping Liam make ice (Vetra).).
  • If you tried romancing Peebee, it gets sweeter, since it allows Peeb and Ryder to begin a full relationship. Starting with Peeb tackling Ryder to the ground, again. Near the climax of the game, Peebee decides to meld with Ryder despite the fact that she is clearly nervous about doing her very first melding with someone, showing how special Ryder is to her.
  Peebee/Ryder: (while melding) I love you.
  • If Peebee is romanced, the codex explains her relationship with Ryder, noting there's "rarely a day" where Ryder doesn't wake up with Peebee next to them.
  • After they meld for the first time, Peebee sends Ryder an email. The email itself is an amusing request for more sex, but the address line reads "To: You, From: Yours."
• After Ryder and the other Pathfinders disobey direct orders and investigate Meridian, Ryder comms Director Tann, who chides them for disobeying his order... and then admits that it was the wrong order, that Ryder did the correct thing, that Ryder has been an excellent Pathfinder, and that the Nexus will stand behind them in the future. It's a surprisingly decent moment for someone who's been very prickly and judgmental towards Ryder up to this point.
• After the credits, it turns out the quarian ark was built, and has reached Andromeda. So regardless of which way things went in Mass Effect 3, there's still some of them out there. Although the heartwarming is sort of spoiled by what the message actually says.
  • Not just the quarians, but also the volus, elcor, hanar and drell. That means that most of the sentient organic species from the Milky Way have a chance of survival.
• After the mission to hunt down the Archon, Lexi voices concerns about SAM's capabilities, particularly the ability to stop Ryder's heart (done in order to defeat the kett restraining field). You can choose to state that you trust SAM and know that he would never deliberately hurt you.
  SAM: Thank you Scott/Sara.
• Peebee and Jaal's conversation in the Nomad can result in a sweet moment where they start getting along, after Peebee stresses the asari are not like the kett. Peebee will even state she likes Jaal, which becomes more heartwarming since, if she's in the Nomad with Liam, she admits she finds the angara as a whole uninteresting.
• Drack's semi-parental relationship with Vetra is extremely heartwarming, even though it's mostly told through background conversations. For example:
  Vetra: Sometimes I wonder what Sid and I'd be like if we'd had a better home life. Maybe we wouldn't have grown up to be so... difficult.
  Drack: Difficult's good, Vetra. You took what you had and made it yours. That's all any of us can hope for.
  Vetra: *sighs* If only you'd raised us, old man.
  Drack: *chuckles* You woulda turned out so much worse... maybe a better shot, though.
  • While in the Nomad, one piece of dialogue between them has Vetra having some doubts about the Initiative.
    Drack: It'll be okay, kid.
    Vetra: You always say that.
    Drack: Doesn't make it less true.
• Drack and Peebee bond as well, with both of them realizing they have a lot in common. During one of their Nomad conversations, Peebee drops all kidding and makes a heartfelt plea to Drack not to die any time soon. Drack, just as serious, just says "You got it, kid."
• The conclusion of the "Movie Night" side quest. It's well worth all the hoops you have to jump through to see the entire crew of the Tempest bonding and relaxing together.
• Speak with Liam enough and he'll reveal that, after being accepted into the Andromeda Initiative, his family in the Milky Way pooled their money to purchase their dream sports car. They then had it loaded into a container and shot towards the Andromeda Galaxy at slower-than-light speeds. It will take millions of years to reach Heleus, but the car is on its way, and Liam notes that they were all sure that someone will be there to receive it.
  • Actually not a sports car at all — an old twentieth century gas powered car that his family has spend years putting back together as a family project. Even more heartwarming that they decided to send it on with Liam as a reminder of how much love they had for each other.
• The first time Ryder meets Drack, he's understandably not too keen on seeing someone from the Initiative. If Vetra's there, she'll stand up for Ryder, at which point Drack relents, because if Ryder's with Vetra, "they're okay." It's one of the first signs that despite his grouchy outer exterior, Drack's anything but your typical krogan.
• If you bring Jaal and Drack along in the Nomad, they quickly hit it off and get on like a house on fire, bonding over shared experiences of war and loss.
• If you romance Liam, after the final battle he asks Ryder how she is feeling. If you choose the emotional response she answers with a question of her own, which he then responds with the idea of marriage. Ryder can only get a Flat "What" of surprise out before Liam gives her a Big Damn Kiss.
• If a romanced Ryder says that he doesn't want kids, Gil is 100% behind them, saying it doesn't matter why; if it's not right for Ryder, it's not right for them. Despite seeming on board with having kids not a minute ago, if the man he loves isn't on board, neither is he.
• Lexi's history is a combination of heartwarming and sad; she grew up on Omega, with her mother being an asari dancer and her father being a turian bouncer. She discovered she had a knack for medicine at a young age by patching up her dad after rough nights; once they realized this, her parents spent every spare credit they earned to put her through medical school. They both died in a turf war; they never got to see the heights their daughter would achieve.
• Take Jaal along to Meridian's core, and he'll have a B.S.O.D. upon learning about the angara's origin. The heartwarming part is that Ryder and their other teammate will declare their support for Jaal, even as he's struggling to comprehend it all. For example, with Drack:
  Drack: I got your back, buddy.
  • And Cora:
  Cora: Jaal, if you ever want to talk about this... I'm here for you.
  Jaal: Thank you. It helps to know that one has friends to talk to.
  Cora: You'd do the same for us.
  • Peebee:
  Peebee: Jaal... if you ever want to talk about this... I'm here for you, okay?
  Jaal: So, you are only interested in me now that I'm a Remnant curiosity?
  Peebee: What? No. No! That's not what I meant.
  Jaal: The look on your face.
  Peebee: Jaal!
• Drack's reaction to the reveal about the angara? Nothing. To him, "the angara are the angara." The reveal doesn't change anything.
• Drack might have spent almost a millenium and a half making a business of shooting and killing things, but he never fails to show his softer, grandfatherly side when he's around Kesh. He loves his ru'shann.
  • Eventually you'll get a message from Kesh asking to check and make sure that Drack went to get a checkup from Lexi like he promised. When you walk in on his exam, you learn that his body is riddled with prosthetic implants after he was nearly killed. He had a difficult recovery and was ready to give up until a Shaman handed him something: A sickly female infant that likely wouldn't make it. Taking care of Kesh is the reason Drack still has the will to live.
• If Ryder romances Jaal, his true mother Sahuna goes out of her way to make them feel welcome to the family, including trying to learn to bake pie (which the angara apparently have never heard of before) so she can give Ryder a taste of home when they come to visit. Especially sweet given that human-angara relations are tense for most of the game - Sahuna mentions in an email that some people will object to their relationship with Jaal for this reason, but that Ryder should pay those people no mind.
  • Jaal's romance is full of sweet moments. When first professing his love to Ryder, he states that they "make his heart sing", and is overjoyed when Ryder reciprocates. In the sex scene, he asks that wherever they go, they take him with them. Jaal eventually refers to Ryder as "darling one", showing just how much they mean to him.
• As you progress in Alec Ryder's memories, you find out that he was friends with Garrus' father from their time on the Citadel. That's pretty cool, but it could also mean that the Ryder twins knew and were friends with Garrus himself, giving them a connection to Commander Shepard and potential scenes of Ryder/Garrus friendship moments. From Scott’s (or Bro!Ryder’s) perspective, it gets even better as he mentions playing laser tag as a kid with turian and salarian kids, raising the possibility of him and Garrus being childhood playmates.
  • Also, Castis Vakarian mentions how his son Garrus talked to him about Shepard. The memories also shows how he heard from Garrus about Shepard's warnings about the Reapers, telling Alec that, if Shepard is right about them, then the Iniciative better hurry up and get going soon. No wonder Garrus was able to convince his father so easily about the Reapers.
• If Suvi is romanced, Kallo can be heard telling Suvi he approves.
  Kallo: You're happy. She seems happy.
• After several conversations between Peebee and Vetra, about how the latter had no time to actually be young thanks to her dad's absence, Peebee suggests they have a wild night out on Kadara next time they're there. Vetra's initially reluctant since she knows folk there, but Peebee suggests they give her some different face paint and use a different name. It's especially sweet since Vetra actually gets really excited about the idea after that, even coming up with her own fake name.
• A sidequest from New Tuchanka has a krogan asking Ryder to look into an angara associate of his. After some investigating on Kadara, she's found in the hospital on Aya. Turns out she was attacked by scavengers and left for dead, which has left her pretty angry towards all aliens. If Ryder perseveres and gives the gift the krogan gave them to her, a means of surviving in the Elaaden desert, she softens.
• During the game's epilogue, you meet some of the Initiative's Second Wave leaders, including Darla vas Hyperion, the daughter of a pair of Alliance diplomats who lived among the Quarian Flotilla (hence the Quarian-style name). One of her associates asks when she's going to change her name to vas Meridian, she replies that she's going to keep it in honor of the ship which kept her safe for the six hundred year voyage.
• In a possible Nomad conversation between Jaal and Cora, Jaal teaches Cora the words for "elder sibling" and "younger sibling." Cora asks about someone who has no family, and Jaal says the word for it is "adopted sibling." Cora repeats the word with a smile in her voice.
• After stealing some one of a kind hooch from Sloane during her party, Ryder and Reyes drink it together whilst sitting atop a rooftop overlooking Kadara Port during sunset. Ryder asks Reyes why he came to Andromeda, and Reyes tells him/her "to be somebody." Whether you romance him or not, Ryder can respond this way.
  Ryder: You're somebody to me.
• After completing the main story, Ryder's email is literally overflowing with thank you messages from grateful colonists coming out of cryo.

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