Mass Effect Survey Asks Players What They Want Out Of The Next Game

[Setnom]

Isn't Divinity: Original Sin a kind of Baldur's Gate?

[compl3x]

But it's the name/IP they care about, 

 

Pretty much. They are leveraging it's brand recognition.

[spacer]

There is still lots they can cover.. How about first contact with other species ? The war against the Turians, and the other war that followed that that earth won.. forget who the race was..

 

Prequel is probably the best idea.

The whole problem is that any MASS EFFECT game that they make has to relate to the Shepard trilogy in some meaningful way. Otherwise, it just feels like filler/cash-grab stuff, and could easily be named something else.

 

And the problem with relating it to Shepard is that if they make a new game that takes place:

 

Before ME1 - The outcome of this game has no impact on the War with the Reapers, and any new character introduced is inconsequential, because they're never mentioned in the originals. So who cares?

 

During ME1-3 - Same as above.

 

After ME3 - Any new game would need to take into account all three endings to ME3 to fulfill the series' mission statement (player choice, branching stories) which is unfeasible and therefore not likely to happen. Most likely, Bioware would need to pick one ending and go with that, which instantly makes the ending of ME3 meaningless unless you picked the "correct" ending. It alienates every player who didn't pick that ending, and it completely breaks the series most compelling feature of choice and consequence.

 

None of those options sounds appealing. I LOVE Mass Effect. In fact, ME1 has been my GOTG ever since I beat it the first time so many years ago; followed closely by Dark Souls. But I have literally no interest in playing a game that takes place during the Prothean Extinction, the First Contact War, the Rachni War, the Krogan rebellions, the Geth War, or any other conflict mentioned in the lore from the original games. We already know the outcome of all of those events, so what's the point? It's like people going to see the new Planet of the Apes movie. Who the hell cares? You know the humans are going to lose, so what's the point.

 

The only thing that might work is if the new game does follow Shepard again, but it uses the infamous Indoctrination Theory as a jumping off point. They could completely "undo" the ending of ME3 (hurray!) but by the end of ME3 the Reapers were making their final push against the council races. So I don't know how you could stretch that into an entire game. Maybe it's a prologue and the rest of the game focuses on the aftermath, introducing a new villain? That could work, but I doubt this is going to happen.

[Ryoken]

The whole problem is that any MASS EFFECT game that they make has to relate to the Shepard trilogy in some meaningful way. Otherwise, it just feels like filler/cash-grab stuff, and could easily be named something else.

 

And the problem with relating it to Shepard is that if they make a new game that takes place:

 

Before ME1 - The outcome of this game has no impact on the War with the Reapers, and any new character introduced is inconsequential, because they're never mentioned in the originals. So who cares?

I don't agree.

 

They can do a Prequel without that worry so long as it takes place well in the past, and not a few days before ME1 starts. The discovery of the gates and the Turian war are perfect for this. Meeting all the new races for the first time, getting allies, and finally getting the citadel to intervene to end the war and welcome you as part of the community. The fact that the war is mentioned is all the tie-in you require.

 

That said you could have some character tie-in's.. Asari live long enough to have been alive then, not to mention some ancestors of the people in the ME Trilogy. Doesn't need to be big, just some passing interaction.

 

Trying to weave in too much is where some games get lost.. end of the day, make a good game, tie it in to the universe, and it should be able to stand on it's own, without Shepard and the ME1-3 series.

[MindTrickz]

My answer would be "don't make another one". There is literally nothing they can do to, in any time-frame, that can relate to Shepard's trilogy in a meaningful way. Even if they DID keep Shepard as the main character, there is still no way to make another game that would fit with the previous ones after the ending of 3.

 

I could not disagree more. Bioware said that Sheppard's story is finished, but that doesn't mean that they should throw out the the rich universe of human and alien races, locations, history, lore. The new story does not have to be about Sheppard or relate to him. It could be set 50.000 years AFTER Sheppard's story.

[.Ruby]

 I don't think I can buy another game from BioWare, they changed so much over the ME trilogy it's not even funny. I wanted a game set in the future from Shepard's story but now we're getting a prequel to that which is the first contact war. It's a cop out because they don't have to actually put much effort into the story or character development.