Mass Effect 4

[Gaidin]

Will any good come out of this? Considering that their best people are now gone?

Having different teams work on the same world isn't a strange thing in any kind of writing. It comes down to the type of game and the type of story more than anything. You can put pretty much any kind of game and any kind of story in the ME world, and if you have the right people(from writers to programmers) for that kind of game and story it'll probably come together very well. That's what ME is. It's the world more than the game.

People have voiced some crazy wariness, and probably rightly so, about using any characters from the game, but this is only a thought exercise. Picture Garrus, but not in a grand epic space opera game. Picture Garrus in a Max Payne style story where he's trolling the criminal underworld. Picture Garrus uncovering the mafia or the smugglers or the god knows what else who were involved in a murder case he could never quite solve when he was C-Sec. Now you either have his journey to becoming Archangel between ME1 and ME2, or you have his return to being Archangel after ME3. And not in a grand epic way. Just a personal story about Garrus where he goes gunning for the bad guy.

[Habelo]

Anything with Garrus would be really boring IMO. Give me something with exploration and diplomacy.

[The Dude]

The hell it is. Whatever you think you have to say about EA and the last five minutes of ME3, the world is frakking awesome. Grand epic space opera is hardly necessary to get fun out of the world. Shephard is hardly necessary to get fun out of the world. Remember, not every story in Warhammer 40k is about Space Marines. In fact, the best ones aren't. The Shephard trilogy would be the easiest damn thing to blow out of the water even with the ending everyone wants.


(In case you missed it, that was an analogy)

No, the world isn't frakking awesome anymore. Here's why:

1) The largest threat that the setting could ever have been presented with has been resolved through the convenient appearance of a Reaper killing device. In other words, the setting of Mass Effect is one devoid of tension because even the greatest threat was no threat at all. Shepard lives in a galaxy where everyone can behave like the grandest most irresponsible idiot ever and still save the day because solutions to their problems conveniently present themselves when they are needed, without any prior foreshadowing.

2) Kai Leng lives in this universe.

3) The Leviathans live in this universe.

4) This universe was once inhabited by the Catalyst.

5) This universe is written by two individuals who together believe that the best way to write it is to plan ahead in no way, shape or form.

6) The philosophical premise of the ME universe is one that dictates that organic life is inherently better than synthetic life and that the best way to avoid tension between the two is to either kill synthetics on a cycle or to give them some sort of a magical living essence that makes them the same as organics. EDI seems to believe after the process of synthesis she is alive. I required no convincing, I thought she was pretty alive before that. I thought Legion was pretty alive aswell. But apparently the devs are stuck in some absurd religously-dictated train of thought where things need souls to count as living beings. Archaic mentality.

The true worth of a sci-fi setting for me is in the complexity of its symbolism and metaphorical situations. I want to be able to indulge myself in it and feel like the author really challenged me to think about our future and what certain developments could mean. Mass Effect seemed to be going that direction in ME2 where conversations with Thane and Legion, even Samara and Miranda, had a certain level of philosophical depth. It appears that it's been Mac Walters's holy duty to take a massive dump all over that and give us chewed-out spacebabe sci-fi with anime characters. ME3 was such a massive break in style, in every possible way, that we could dismiss the entire installment as non-canon and it would do the preceding installments no harm at all. In fact it'd be a massive improvement. With the events of ME3 acting as the premise for ME4, there is no possible way that this game could be any good from a story POV.

To put it differently, ME2 forever.

[Habelo]

But if you ignore ME2 and ME3 then the mass effect universe is great.

[Stavroforos]

ME2 was the least enjoyable Mass Effect for me.

[Habelo]

Yea m2 but they strode away from their sci-fi way of making the game which made the universe less intresting.

[Sir Adrian]

same here.

[Stavroforos]

Yea m2 but they strode away from their sci-fi way of making the game which made the universe less intresting.

Aye, that was my biggest problem with it.

[The Dude]

Yea m2 but they strode away from their sci-fi way of making the game which made the universe less intresting.

Stylistically I agree that ME1 was the best game of the series but I've always had problems with some of the plot's specifics. I felt it was sloppily written and poorly thought through. Not bad enough to be called out on like with ME3 but more like... just annoying. Some things in it just made no sense and they kept haunting the game. ME2's plot was ridiculously simplistic in comparison but at least that way they could add some extra depth to the setting. Omega, Illium, Tuchanka, a more alive Citadel and some awesome DLC packs made ME2 stand out. Not to mention the awesome squadmates and Legion who, despite being your teammate for only a short part of the game, really helped bring it to another level. Legion's probably my favourite teammate in all of ME.

[Stavroforos]

Legion was an awesome teammate, and I was disappointed that they didn't take the Geth story any further in ME3, because it was basically a shite conclusion to the whole thing that had been building up over the past two games. I mean, all you hear from Tali and Quarians for 2 games is how much they want their homeland back, how much they hate the Geth, and in ME3 they've already started the mission to regain their homeland and it's basically just a sidequest.

[Gaidin]

No, the world isn't frakking awesome anymore. Here's why:

1) The largest threat that the setting could ever have been presented with has been resolved through the convenient appearance of a Reaper killing device. In other words, the setting of Mass Effect is one devoid of tension because even the greatest threat was no threat at all. Shepard lives in a galaxy where everyone can behave like the grandest most irresponsible idiot ever and still save the day because solutions to their problems conveniently present themselves when they are needed, without any prior foreshadowing.

2) Kai Leng lives in this universe.

3) The Leviathans live in this universe.

4) This universe was once inhabited by the Catalyst.

5) This universe is written by two individuals who together believe that the best way to write it is to plan ahead in no way, shape or form.

6) The philosophical premise of the ME universe is one that dictates that organic life is inherently better than synthetic life and that the best way to avoid tension between the two is to either kill synthetics on a cycle or to give them some sort of a magical living essence that makes them the same as organics. EDI seems to believe after the process of synthesis she is alive. I required no convincing, I thought she was pretty alive before that. I thought Legion was pretty alive aswell. But apparently the devs are stuck in some absurd religously-dictated train of thought where things need souls to count as living beings. Archaic mentality.

The true worth of a sci-fi setting for me is in the complexity of its symbolism and metaphorical situations. I want to be able to indulge myself in it and feel like the author really challenged me to think about our future and what certain developments could mean. Mass Effect seemed to be going that direction in ME2 where conversations with Thane and Legion, even Samara and Miranda, had a certain level of philosophical depth. It appears that it's been Mac Walters's holy duty to take a massive dump all over that and give us chewed-out spacebabe sci-fi with anime characters. ME3 was such a massive break in style, in every possible way, that we could dismiss the entire installment as non-canon and it would do the preceding installments no harm at all. In fact it'd be a massive improvement. With the events of ME3 acting as the premise for ME4, there is no possible way that this game could be any good from a story POV.

To put it differently, ME2 forever.

Are you seriously saying you need a world ending threat to make a universe fun? That's damned shallow. Get off your Lord of the Rings good versus evil save existence as we know it high horse. The best universes out there are just universes that let the characters do the talking. Without the Reapers, that's exactly what ME does.

[Musthavename]

I sincerely hope that Mass Effect 4 does not do to the franchise what Dragon Age 2 did for its.

This. So much this.

Sadly with the state Bioware is currently in, along with general EA policies mean I wouldn't even consider purchasing a new Mass Effect game, despite it being one of (if not, the) best sci-fi universe out there.

[Shneckie]

Legion was an awesome teammate, and I was disappointed that they didn't take the Geth story any further in ME3, because it was basically a shite conclusion to the whole thing that had been building up over the past two games. I mean, all you hear from Tali and Quarians for 2 games is how much they want their homeland back, how much they hate the Geth, and in ME3 they've already started the mission to regain their homeland and it's basically just a sidequest.

Really? I found the conclusion to the Geth-Quarian conflict one of the strongest parts of the game. I swear I played at least 5 hours on Rannoch doing several missions for the Quarians plus the mission where you hack into the Geth database and see all the various files on Geth history.

[Tankfriend]

Same here, I think the Geth-Quarian conflict was handled excellently. It's also not just a "sidequest", either, because you spend rather a lot of time on this arch of the storyline and it has a meaningful influence on the overall background story.

[Stavroforos]

I would have preferred it to be handled on a DLC-level scope, though obviously not through a DLC since it's too central to the storyline.

I just always like the Quarian stoyrline a lot and wanted it to have more oomph, though I never liked Quarians...

[The Dude]

Are you seriously saying you need a world ending threat to make a universe fun?

Lol how did you get that from it? No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that you need a threat at all to make the universe fun. Any threat. Whatsoever. That's the point of a plot. There are no threats in the ME universe because in the ME universe solutions to problems are magically conjured up out of nowhere without any form of foreshadowing or basis in the plot. There is no tension because there cannot be a meaningful threat in such a universe.

And do you know why that is? Because by their own admission the writers of Mass Effect do not plan ahead. They only have "very rough stakes in the ground" because "that's the only way you can really do a story like this." All they knew of ME3 after finishing ME2 was that "Shepard was going to fight the Reapers, somehow."

[Gaidin]

Lol how did you get that from it?

Here I'll highlight it for you.

No, the world isn't frakking awesome anymore. Here's why:

1) The largest threat that the setting could ever have been presented with has been resolved through the convenient appearance of a Reaper killing device. In other words, the setting of Mass Effect is one devoid of tension because even the greatest threat was no threat at all. Shepard lives in a galaxy where everyone can behave like the grandest most irresponsible idiot ever and still save the day because solutions to their problems conveniently present themselves when they are needed, without any prior foreshadowing.

Guess what, galaxy spanning solutions typically don't have relevance in low level stories. They also don't have relevance once the problem they solve is no longer a problem. It's kinda not weird that way. You know, how...the police don't need the army to do their jobs. Shocking I know. Stop focusing on the Reapers and characters that have died. You're missing the forest for the trees. Willfully. Annoyingly so.

[Ataegina]

EA managed to destroy every franchise made by Bioware...... BRAVO !!! BRAVO !!!! so they'll make a sequel using ME dead corpse, so sherpard sacrificed himself so he would be free of EA indocrination!!! R.I.P you're my hero

[Stavroforos]

We can rebuild him. Project Lazarus II.

[Slaytaninc]

We can rebuild him. Project Lazarus II.

We scanned Shepard's brain before he died. We can rebuild his consciousness AND his body.

Yeah, they would totally go with that one. The bastards.