Mass Effect 3

[Reverend]

^You can pretty much tell that just from the game mechanics; it being the "hardest" pathway to unlock. Regardless, I don't see how the magical rainbows and unicorns world we saw with than ending could be a viable setting for another game. Dramatic stories require conflict, and it's really hard to have conflict in some post-singularity utopia. Even if they set the new game tens of thousands of years later, the consequences of those endings should still be apparent. That leaves three basic options: 1) Pick "destroy" instead 2) Dramatically retcon what synthesis entails and 3) Do a prequel.

While a prequel would probably present the least amount of problems (especially if they're steering clear of the space marine angle) I'd rather see some consequences of the previous games.

[LeadHead]

I think that they'll be most likely to choose from whatever is done the most, with destroy being done the most often, it's a likely front runner. I still hold out some hope that the last piece of dlc that they release for Mass Effect 3 will be another ending that will be much more directly linked to the world of mass effect 4.

[ATimson]

DeadHead wrote:

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I think that they'll be most likely to choose from whatever is done the most, with destroy being done the most often, it's a likely front runner.

I dunno. Ignoring people who killed Leliana in the first Dragon Age is one thing - you're locking out a very small number of playthroughs. Locking out up to two-thirds of them? I'll believe it when I see it.

[Crazy Eddie]

^ Which is one of the reasons a prequel is the most likely choice. If you think about it, the real untold story of Mass Effect is the one they tried to tell in the novelizations: the adventures of John Grissom and David Anderson, the discovery of the Charon Relay, the First Contact War and the occupation of Shanxi, etc. We sometimes forget that those events totally reshaped the way humanity viewed itself and the universe around them... and they happened less than a generation before Mass Effect 1.

You could spend AT LEAST one game exploring those first steps into space, depending on where you started. I could see Bioware letting you start the game as a Privateer, a Merchant, a Mercenary or an Explorer; your opening missions, the kind of ship you're flying and the kind of equipment you can take with you depend entirely on your choice, even if the game ultimately ends with the Council stepping in and telling the Turians to calm the fuck down. I'd also be looking forward to seeing the Batarians actually show up as a primary adversary instead of a bunch of four-eyed canonfodders who don't know any better.

I just realized this, too: in all of Mass Effect, we never did get to see what a Batarian warship looked like, did we?

[Angel4576]

Well apparently Casey favours a prequal, and if nothing else it would give BW more time to think themselves out of the hole that the ME3 endings have put them in.

Only problem here though, if you take BSN as representative of the fanbase, people don't want a prequal.

Destroy is the most obvious, most popular ending, and easiest to work into a future game, but like I said, apparently it's synthesis.

[Reverend]

newtype_alpha wrote:

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^ Which is one of the reasons a prequel is the most likely choice. If you think about it, the real untold story of Mass Effect is the one they tried to tell in the novelizations: the adventures of John Grissom and David Anderson, the discovery of the Charon Relay, the First Contact War and the occupation of Shanxi, etc. We sometimes forget that those events totally reshaped the way humanity viewed itself and the universe around them... and they happened less than a generation before Mass Effect 1.

You could spend AT LEAST one game exploring those first steps into space, depending on where you started. I could see Bioware letting you start the game as a Privateer, a Merchant, a Mercenary or an Explorer; your opening missions, the kind of ship you're flying and the kind of equipment you can take with you depend entirely on your choice, even if the game ultimately ends with the Council stepping in and telling the Turians to calm the fuck down. I'd also be looking forward to seeing the Batarians actually show up as a primary adversary instead of a bunch of four-eyed canonfodders who don't know any better.

I just realized this, too: in all of Mass Effect, we never did get to see what a Batarian warship looked like, did we?

While I agree a prequel is probably the most likely approach (*if* they're even worried about post-ending complications) I don't agree that centring it in the First Contact War is a suitable setting. For one thing the outcome is already known, so that immediately limits the scope of any story they choose to tell.

On the other hand I *could* see it taking place in the immediate aftermath, just as humanity begin to take their first steps into the galactic community. Maybe the game opens as you playing an ex-military type (because we all know it'll be combat based gameplay) turned colonist. The colony is hit by Batarian slavers and moves on from there.

The prequel idea does have some drawbacks though. For one they're going to have to either go back to weapons that cool down, or find some way around having a reload mechanic without thermal clips. That may seem minor from a story POV, but it's really at the core of the gameplay mechanics and that's not something that can be changed lightly.
Also, while it'll be tempting to have familiar faces show up (young Anderson, Saren, TIM etc.) their involvement and interactions will have to be very limited.

ATimson wrote:

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I dunno. Ignoring people who killed Leliana in the first Dragon Age is one thing - you're locking out a very small number of playthroughs. Locking out up to two-thirds of them? I'll believe it when I see it.

Did they ever release the official numbers on that? All I can recall was that independent survey on some German fan site a few months back. Either way, I doubt the proportion of users who pick anything other than 'destroy' is as high as two thirds. *Maybe* a little over half?

Also, the thing about Dragon Age was that it gave the player a little too much freedom for the whole "import your old save" thing to be 100% practical. In Mass Effect things a much more restricted, which was actually one of the major complaints even back when ME2 was released.

I think given the marginal variance in endings, it might even be possible to accommodate both Control & Destroy. Say for example if after a few centuries, when things had fully stabilised, Shepard's reapers went back into hybernation in dark space to allow organic life to progress on their own. The only practical difference could be a single in-game line that mentions if the reapers are gone for good, or gone for now.

Synthesis just isn't practical.

[Camren]

I'm not too keen on a human-based prequel, simply because I don't think there'd be a great deal of material to base a good game on. If it's a game based on an alien then that would be great but I doubt Bioware would create a ME game where the protagonist isn't human.

[The Mirrorball Man]

Reverend wrote:

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That leaves three basic options: 1) Pick "destroy" instead 2) Dramatically retcon what synthesis entails and 3) Do a prequel.

4) Tell a different story with a different kind of conflict.

How hard can it be, really? The next Mass Effect game doesn't need to be about synthetic life vs. organic life.

[Reverend]

Camren wrote:

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I'm not too keen on a human-based prequel, simply because I don't think there'd be a great deal of material to base a good game on. If it's a game based on an alien then that would be great but I doubt Bioware would create a ME game where the protagonist isn't human.

While I think it'd be great to see an all alien Mass Effect game, I just don't see it happening.

To be fair, I think there's just enough room for another story set somewhere between Shanxi and Eden Prime. That is if the story stays away from the halls of power and keeps to frontier planets and the galaxy's underworld.

But again, a prequel wouldn't be my first choice.

The Mirrorball Man wrote:

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4) Tell a different story with a different kind of conflict.

How hard can it be, really? The next Mass Effect game doesn't need to be about synthetic life vs. organic life.

Those options I put forth had to do with the setting, the "when and where", not the direction of the plot. I do agree though. Whatever they choose to do, it probably shouldn't be about organic vs. synthetic. However, *IF* the game is set post-ME3, then the world that story takes place in must show the consequences of the reaper war, so at least in that regard, how organics and synthetic interact will be very relevant.

[RyuRoots]

The Mirrorball Man wrote:

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4) Tell a different story with a different kind of conflict.

How hard can it be, really? The next Mass Effect game doesn't need to be about synthetic life vs. organic life.

Well, obviously, since the first three never were either.

[-Brett-]

Being a sci-fi series, Bioware could reconcile the endings by making some reference to multiverse theory. All of them are canon in one parallel universe or another, but ME4 happens to take place in one of the universes where ending X happened in ME3.

Granted, the series hasn't touched on the concept before, but when you think about it, the structure of the games seems to make the series ideally suited for it.

I know some theoretical physicist will say "that's not how multiverse theory works", to which I say, eh. It was good enough for Star Trek, it's good enough for Mass Effect.

[Crazy Eddie]

Reverend wrote:

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While I agree a prequel is probably the most likely approach (*if* they're even worried about post-ending complications) I don't agree that centring it in the First Contact War is a suitable setting. For one thing the outcome is already known, so that immediately limits the scope of any story they choose to tell.

How does knowing the outcome limit the scope? We don't know the outcome for the CHARACTERS involved, or how and to what extent they were involved in the war's conclusion. We don't even know if they'll survive to see the end of it, nor do we know what they did in the aftermath.

Seems to me the scope is no more "limited" than it was in Mass Effect 3 when your fundamental imperative is to run around building allies to help build the crucible; the First Contact War is likely to be far LESS limited, especially if the main character isn't a member of the military. Considering the way the Leviathan DLC turned out, I could see Bioware producing a game where a merchant captain winds up on the wrong side of a mass relay and has to cruise around the galaxy, making contact with aliens he's never heard of, searching for clues and resources and information that will let him convince the right people to introduce him to the right organizations that will help him rescue his wife and kid from Shanxi. You might add a bit to the adventure of the story if said Captain doesn't have any real information about the relay network and an important part of the game involves searching for the locations of the mass relays and/or threatening/charming/bribing local officials in order to get the access codes to use them (you could, I think, expand the usual character evolution"Paragon - Renegade - Entrepreneur").

The prequel idea does have some drawbacks though. For one they're going to have to either go back to weapons that cool down, or find some way around having a reload mechanic without thermal clips.

Or they could just retcon the cooldown system entirely and pretend it always worked that way. People would notice, but it's not like anyone would care.

That may seem minor from a story POV, but it's really at the core of the gameplay mechanics and that's not something that can be changed lightly.

Then why'd they change it in the first place?

Also, while it'll be tempting to have familiar faces show up (young Anderson, Saren, TIM etc.) their involvement and interactions will have to be very limited.

Why? Again, the events of their respective pasts are sufficiently vague that they could have been involved in a massive set of galaxy-threatening adventures and we'd be none the wiser. It's not like the Codex contains a detailed biography on them.

[Angel4576]

ME games going for a song on Origin;

Origin

[Jeyl]

Reverend wrote:

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While I think it'd be great to see an all alien Mass Effect game, I just don't see it happening.

Yeah. It's not like they're full fledged characters or anything. Tali, Garrus, Wrex, Liara, they're just mere uninteresting peons next to the perfection that is James Vega. I can totally understand why out of all the characters that could have gotten their own dedicated story, Vega was the obvious choice.

My opinion? He's just another over-muscled male space marine that I've seen many times already.

[Reverend]

Jeyl wrote:

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Yeah. It's not like they're full fledged characters or anything. Tali, Garrus, Wrex, Liara, they're just mere uninteresting peons next to the perfection that is James Vega. I can totally understand why out of all the characters that could have gotten their own dedicated story, Vega was the obvious choice.

My opinion? He's just another over-muscled male space marine that I've seen many times already.

^You did read the part where I said it'd be great, yes? The reason I can't see it happening is because I think think there's any way to convince EA's marketing people that people will be able to relate to the story without at least one human in the mix. I just don't credit them with very much imagination.

As for Vega, honestly, I was *very* sceptical about him prior to release, but he's really grown on me. There's certainly way more personality there than Jacob or even Kaiden (as he was in ME1)...but then the same could be said about the fish in your cabin.

Still, while he more than exceeded my expectations, I think Vega could still have used a little more development considering he was a new character. Even then though, he couldn't hold a candle to Liara, Tali, Garrus, Joker, EDI etc.