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So I was sat earlier today, day-dreaming about what I'd like to see in my favourite franchises and my mind wandered to Mass Effect. For those of you who played Mass Effect: Andromeda, the last entry in the franchise, you'll be aware that it left a lot of players with a bad taste in their mouth. I wasn't one of them, but at the same time, it wasn't half the game the original trilogy was - especially ME2 or (My personal favourite) ME3. I found it generally alright, with a few out-standing moments, and more than a few 'Meh' moments. So, seeing as there have been tiny little rumblings of development of the next entry starting up, I thought I'd see what my fellow Mass Effect fans would like to see in the next entry.

SPOILERS AHOY - you have been warned!

Here's my take on a potential plot, carrying on from where ME:A left off:



So, whaddya think? And more importantly - where would you take it?

Interesting, I really disliked the direction they took in ME2. It wasn't a bad game but it felt a lot more like an action shooter instead of a cool sci-fi RPG.

As to how to revive the series, a 'point and click' noir murder mystery set on the citidel would be cool!

Probably won't happen considering the studio closure. Would be interesting but its very dead in the water.

I don't see this happening, but I'd like to see a sequel (as it was far better than the OT, ME2 was the only thing that came even close, and that stumbled hard in places, especially the ending)

What I'd like to see is a return to the original premise, exploring a new region of space, with new things to see, not just rehashing the same old races and an absurd 'big bad,' and a monster race that are essentially just space orks made from other species. That was where Andromeda really screwed up.

Though I haven't read it, there is (or possibly soon will be) a novel that explains what happened with the Quarian ark.

If there is another ME game ever in the future, I doubt it'll be related to Andromeda. They screwed it up just too much on a variety of levels. My money would be on a Milky Way prequel set around the time of Anderson's adventures when he was a Spectre candidate or possibly even earlier just after the First Contact War. Personally, I skipped Andromeda despite being a huge fan of the series due to the supposedly "woke" studio's public support of a blatantly racist employee and, with the quality of the end product and reception that it got, wouldn't touch anything with the Andromeda name on it as a sequel even now that he (and the entire studio he worked for) are gone. Still, I don't have an issue with the OP theorizing his own continuation of the story.

Between the debacles with ME3 (the game which ensured I will never, ever pre-order a game ever again) and the relative failure of Andromeda, I think it will be some time before that IP returns, and they've really pooched their story options with these titles.

I suspect that if it does return, it's going to be very disconnected from previous storylines unless they decide to do some serious retconning and establish some sort of canon (which will generate it's own drama, but oh well), and with their current project Anthem, any ME related projects would be on hold, though anything is possible.

If it comes back, which I am sure it will, it will be with a different studio. EA owns all the rights now, correct? I could see them doing something like that.

 Kroem wrote:
Interesting, I really disliked the direction they took in ME2. It wasn't a bad game but it felt a lot more like an action shooter instead of a cool sci-fi RPG.

As to how to revive the series, a 'point and click' noir murder mystery set on the citidel would be cool!

Very strongly agreed. Everyone with too much time on their hands should go and read Shamus Young's epic 50-part retrospective of the series. ME2 had some excellent character stories, but the central plot was daft and a really shoddy follow up to the promise of the original game, and ME3 was...yeah. I enjoyed Andromeda far more than 2 & 3, and I'd have kept playing had they continued on with that story, but unlike the original game it hasn't stayed with me and I don't really have any desire to play it again.


EDIT: Or if you're not in the mood for a solid evening of reading, just these two sections of the above series do a solid job of laying out why I so enjoyed the first game, and why the sequels don't live up to it for me.

I think Andromeda primarily suffered from three things.
1) It wasn't a Shepard story. Following up a trilogy with a beloved MC and supporting cast with brand new characters isn't easy.
2) It suffered from some extremely aggravating bugs and animation issues at release.
3) It came out in the post outrage world where thousands of angsty fan boys decried things they disliked about the game as being pro-SJW elements.

I really enjoyed it up to about 30 hours when my save died to a lag issue on the Astari ship. The gameplay was great, the settings were beautiful, the story was fine so far, and I liked the RPG elements. Sure, I honestly can't name a single character companion, but I also can't name the full cast from KotOR off the top of my head and I played that through like 5 damn times.

Right now Bioware is focused on getting Anthem live and wrapping up Dragon Age 4. I don't think they have the manpower to work on another Mass Effect game, but I can't see that IP being left dead forever. Even KotOR was revived in the form of SWTOR. I would like to see the Andromeda story continued, but until then I don't have much desire to start a new game.

I dinno. Once upon a time, I would have been surprised by the lack of Ultimas, Wing Commanders or Dungeons and Dragons computer games (new ones at least). But here we are.


Though admittedly that was harder to imagine before Ultima 8 and 9. Sometimes it's best to let properties die with some dignity, even if the developers and/or fans would rather keep some horrifying semblance of it shambling along forever than do something good.

Though I enjoyed andromeda, I don't think picking up the pieces of the universe is worthwhile. The story was done before it came along

Voss wrote:
I dinno. Once upon a time, I would have been surprised by the lack of Ultimas, Wing Commanders or Dungeons and Dragons computer games (new ones at least). But here we are.


Though admittedly that was harder to imagine before Ultima 8 and 9. Sometimes it's best to let properties die with some dignity, even if the developers and/or fans would rather keep some horrifying semblance of it shambling along forever than do something good.

Though I enjoyed andromeda, I don't think picking up the pieces of the universe is worthwhile. The story was done before it came along

It was an attempt to create a new universe (or galaxy, if you will), using some well-liked elements. Some of those elements led to questionable choices on the part of the writers (for instance, Krogan should *not* have been included in a "peaceful" colonization mission to another galaxy...). But that was no doubt a decision led by dollars, and not common sense on the part of the writers.

On the other hand, unlike with the original Mass Effect, there's no particular reason why a sequel needs to pick up immediately after the first game. With the original Mass Effect, we had a sense of urgency about the impending Reaper threat. With Andromeda, there are various possible future plot lines (the Kett being the obvious one, though not the only one) if EA wanted to create a sequel. But none of them were demanding an immediate resolution, unlike at the end of the original game. A sequel could be released set a few decades later, with the Ryders as supporting characters.

Of course, EA would first need to take a long hard look at what went wrong with Andromeda. They might revive the franchise several years from now. But if they screwed it up again, then it'd be dead with no hope of resuscitation.

Given your comment above, it's perhaps ironic that Bioware was responsible for (briefly) reviving the D&D computer game genre. EA may have had a hand in killing another of those franchises (Ultima). Wing Commander, on the other hand, likely died because space combat sims just weren't as popular anymore.

The original trilogy didn't have a sense of urgency around the Reapers. The Reapers operated on a different, longer time scale.

ME2 didn't need to deal with the Reapers at all, in fact (and the stupid bits largely revolved around them).

ME3 was the only one that had a sense of reaper urgency. But it felt like the usual weird combination of a horrible rush/lackadaisical stroll that happens with 'world ending threat' games. Everything is dying now, but put that on pause frequently to stop to pick the crafting flowers.

---
Not sure what you mean by 'responsible for reviving D&D computer games.' They were a mid point. Gold Box games--baldurs gate--- bg2/icewind dale--- temple of elemental evil, pools of radiance 'sequel' and other failures--- then nothing (except the bad MMOs which technically still run). Then that brief attempt at a really bad Forgotten realms game by a non-entity studio when the 'enhanced editions' started spawning.

I'm just surprised that they didn't bother to really milk the license for 4e or 5e.

I personally think Andromeda was great. The writing/pacing could have been better at some points, but it was about as good as I could hope for since they were basically starting up from scratch.



Now they have options aplenty for a continuation. Humanity now has a foothold and new allies in a new galaxy. The next game is either gonna be a time skip of a decade or 2, or its gonna be about Ryder exploring the edges of the Helios cluster.


They also now have a chance to make an actual MMO out of it if they wanted to.

I got the feeling that EA really wanted to get rid of the Mass Effect series. The ending had "tainted" the series in the eyes of the fanbase (at least the noisy part of the fanbase), so the effort to revive the series from that was really lackluster. It was pushed into a B-team Project, really.

I guess EA wanted to make room for the Anthem, a Destiny-look-alike multi-player style game.

P.S. I actually was in the minority and didn't hate the choose-your-color-ending of ME3. I think, especially after the fix-dlc, that it was a fine enough ending for the series. I had no strong opinions of it.

I think a time jump might be a decent setup for a sequel. I really liked both Ryders as protagonists, it was nice to start out as someone who wasn't already a super-badass professional with a Tragic Backstory like Shep was, and to get to see that progression from somewhat idealistic, goofy explorer to someone coming to understand the dual responsibilities of being a diplomat and a soldier was great. But I think that part of their story is done, as is the story of that initial mission to Helios.

Throwing it forward a decade or three gives both the setting and the characters chance to change so the experience is fresh again. Those colony outposts you set up are now fully fledged cities, relations with the Angarans are stabilised so there's trade and diplomacy and maybe even formal alliances going on, the Citadel Races have a proper government (maybe modelled on the council, maybe something different). Hell, given certain revelations about Remnant tech you could have entirely new branches of of technology alongside the traditional ME brances. The ett go scouring the galaxy for new races to weaponise and show up again in force with all manner of new beasties.

And the protagonist likewise becomes something different. Either you get an older, more experienced Ryder or you simply have them as a mentor (maybe squad member, even) to a new hero, freshly recruited into an expanded Pathfinder program headed by Ryder. I think this'd also be a good chance to give people something they've wanted for a while, a choice of species for their PC. Krogan might be hard to do, but a choice between Human, Asari, Turian, Salarian and Quarian would probably be workable, Your squadmates are then a mix of fresh recruits and older characters from the first part. I'd like to see Peebee a little more mature, or Jaal as a more worldly explorer.

That way, you get the best of both worlds. A clean start for the people who didn't enjoy Andromeda's party, but still with room to introduce some of those characters. Drack as a voice of reason in the Krogan society, Cora as a high-ranking member of the human leadership, or maybe even working full-time with the Asari. That way, they're still part of the narrative, but not necessarily intrusive for the people who don't enjoy those characters.

In terms of the game setup, I like the multiple open worlds structure (those environments are stunning for the most part), I think they just need to cut back on the amount of 'quests' that began and ended with a text popup and had you collect 5 items in the mean time. Fill the map with locations to explore or loot to find, but not with endless busywork. Something more like the newer Assassin's Creeds or The Witcher 3. There's a lot of fun to be had exploring a map discovering what's behind those question marks, less so in collecting 5 rock samples or analysing alien droppings or all the other things Andromeda was filled with... Basically, a good rule of thumb is that if your question doesn't result in an actual story, with some fun choice or interestng dialogue, it can stay on the cutting room floor...

Most of all, though, any sequel needs a proper amount of time and effort. I don't think Andromeda would have caught nearly as much flack if it had been released 6 months later, after the patches had fixed the dodgy animations and added various quality of life stuff and bugfixes.

I still think Andromeda is a worthy entry into the franchise, maybe my second favourite after ME2, and I especially liked the tone and feel of the whole thing. At least for the first half of the game, there's less of a 'save the world' clock and you can explore those beautiful environments without feeling like you're being totally irresponsible. Andromeda was at its best when it was doing the Star Trek thing of boldly going where no one had gone before. So more of that, please.

 Col Hammer wrote:
I got the feeling that EA really wanted to get rid of the Mass Effect series. The ending had "tainted" the series in the eyes of the fanbase (at least the noisy part of the fanbase), so the effort to revive the series from that was really lackluster. It was pushed into a B-team Project, really.

I guess EA wanted to make room for the Anthem, a Destiny-look-alike multi-player style game.

I think EA also had their eyes set on Star Wars being their big sci-fi meal ticket, too.

P.S. I actually was in the minority and didn't hate the choose-your-color-ending of ME3. I think, especially after the fix-dlc, that it was a fine enough ending for the series. I had no strong opinions of it.

The ending didn't really bother me, either. Sure, I wanted my Shep to live happily ever after with Tali in that house on the Quarian homeworld, but I realize not every epic game story has to have a happy ending. Besides, I kind of feel like the Shore Leave DLC is the real ending to the series.

Anyway, I think EA's biggest misstep with Andromeda is that the follow-up to the Mass Effect trilogy was...another game in the exact same genre. I feel like the better option would have been to give us a different genre game in the same setting. Something like a Mass Effect version of Sins of a Solar Empire or Master of Orion would have been awesome. But, to a company like EA, games like that only make some of the money and not all of the money, so it wouldn't have happened.

 Paradigm wrote:

Most of all, though, any sequel needs a proper amount of time and effort. I don't think Andromeda would have caught nearly as much flack if it had been released 6 months later, after the patches had fixed the dodgy animations and added various quality of life stuff and bugfixes.

I still think Andromeda is a worthy entry into the franchise, maybe my second favourite after ME2, and I especially liked the tone and feel of the whole thing. At least for the first half of the game, there's less of a 'save the world' clock and you can explore those beautiful environments without feeling like you're being totally irresponsible. Andromeda was at its best when it was doing the Star Trek thing of boldly going where no one had gone before. So more of that, please.

Agreed. It was flawed, but it wasn't Ride to Hell or Raven's Cry levels of dire. There was something really ugly about the hate-snowballs that were going on with pundits all scrambling to hate the game more than the last one, and get those sweet clicks and ad dollars. I think there was still a lot of bad blood after ME3, too.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Col Hammer wrote:
I got the feeling that EA really wanted to get rid of the Mass Effect series. The ending had "tainted" the series in the eyes of the fanbase (at least the noisy part of the fanbase), so the effort to revive the series from that was really lackluster. It was pushed into a B-team Project, really.

I guess EA wanted to make room for the Anthem, a Destiny-look-alike multi-player style game.

I think EA also had their eyes set on Star Wars being their big sci-fi meal ticket, too.

P.S. I actually was in the minority and didn't hate the choose-your-color-ending of ME3. I think, especially after the fix-dlc, that it was a fine enough ending for the series. I had no strong opinions of it.

The ending didn't really bother me, either. Sure, I wanted my Shep to live happily ever after with Tali in that house on the Quarian homeworld, but I realize not every epic game story has to have a happy ending. Besides, I kind of feel like the Shore Leave DLC is the real ending to the series.

I don't think most people's issue with the ending was that they couldn't go off and live happily ever after, but rather how narratively disconnected the ending was (and often in direct contradiction of multiple running trilogy themes), how silly the Reapers logic and the whole Starchild concept ended up being, and how many plotholes in created, coupled with an inital complete lack of epilogue.

It also didn't help that ME3's ending was almost identically copied from Deus Ex, same 3 colors, same 3 choices of "destroy AI, control AI, merge with AI".

I did see the EC ending that added a slide show epilogue and patched some of the plotholes, but never botherd with the Citadel DLC personally as it didnt come out until about a year after ME3s main launch.

Anyway, I think EA's biggest misstep with Andromeda is that the follow-up to the Mass Effect trilogy was...another game in the exact same genre. I feel like the better option would have been to give us a different genre game in the same setting. Something like a Mass Effect version of Sins of a Solar Empire or Master of Orion would have been awesome. But, to a company like EA, games like that only make some of the money and not all of the money, so it wouldn't have happened.

To be fair, ME was a Bioware game, and Bioware has largely only done the action/rpg genre for many moons, it would have had to have gone to another studio.

That said, i'd have totally played an ME SoaSE.

 Yodhrin wrote:


Everyone with too much time on their hands should go and read Shamus Young's epic 50-part retrospective of the series. .

I've gone through this over a couple of evenings this week and have to say it's a great read and, even though I can't look back and say I didn't like either sequel, I found myself nodding along to all of it. I'm now wistful over the trilogy that could have been if the same philosophy behind the first game was followed through with (I'd still rank ME1 in my top 10 of all time, maybe even top 5).

You know, I always did plan to do a renegade playthough and never got round to it, and it's sitting there in my Steam library...

 Riquende wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:


Everyone with too much time on their hands should go and read Shamus Young's epic 50-part retrospective of the series. .

I've gone through this over a couple of evenings this week and have to say it's a great read and, even though I can't look back and say I didn't like either sequel, I found myself nodding along to all of it. I'm now wistful over the trilogy that could have been if the same philosophy behind the first game was followed through with (I'd still rank ME1 in my top 10 of all time, maybe even top 5).

You know, I always did plan to do a renegade playthough and never got round to it, and it's sitting there in my Steam library...

Yea I got sucked in by it as well, Yohrin playing it all innocent saying "just read these two small bit guys"

The author completely whiffs on my favourite characters of the series though, giving no attention to Warlord Okeer, Morinth or Ka'hairal Balak in the parts I read

 trexmeyer wrote:
I think Andromeda primarily suffered from three things.
1) It wasn't a Shepard story. Following up a trilogy with a beloved MC and supporting cast with brand new characters isn't easy.
2) It suffered from some extremely aggravating bugs and animation issues at release.
3) It came out in the post outrage world where thousands of angsty fan boys decried things they disliked about the game as being pro-SJW elements.

You forgot EA's Origin nonsense, which includes accounts being wiped or deleted for inactivity.

 dogma wrote:

You forgot EA's Origin nonsense, which includes accounts being wiped or deleted for inactivity.

???? I've only ever bought one thing (the Mass Effect trilogy ironically given this thread) there but I haven't logged on in years. I'll have to check in to see if that happened to me.

edit: It appears that it's not true.

UPDATE - 4 Aug 2011
Electronic Arts has issued the following statement to RPS, via EA's John Reseburg.

'The Origin terms of service are designed to protect against misuse of the Origin system. No Origin user who has paid entitlements and/or downloaded games will have their account cancelled or games expired due to extended non-use. The term regarding account cancellation for non-use is designed to guard against creation of non-active accounts for inappropriate reasons.'

https://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/pc/ea-s-origin-to-delete-inactive-accounts/1/

I definitely didn't log in for at least two years and I wasn't deactivated. The reports about that seem to be (discredited) shortly after being published in 2011 so my multiyear inactivity would definitely have triggered that if it were true.

 warboss wrote:

I definitely didn't log in for at least two years and I wasn't deactivated. The reports about that seem to be (discredited) shortly after being published in 2011 so my multiyear inactivity would definitely have triggered that if it were true.

EA has wiped my Origin account 3 times for inactivity. The account still existed, but all games associated with it were removed. The first two times they restored everything after the standard CS rigmarole, the third they told me it was a known bug in their update process associated with low time users that they weren't going to fix.

 dogma wrote:

 warboss wrote:

I definitely didn't log in for at least two years and I wasn't deactivated. The reports about that seem to be (discredited) shortly after being published in 2011 so my multiyear inactivity would definitely have triggered that if it were true.

EA has wiped my Origin account 3 times for inactivity. The account still existed, but all games associated with it were removed. The first two times they restored everything after the standard CS rigmarole, the third they told me it was a known bug in their update process associated with low time users that they weren't going to fix.

That's surely not legal?

Now I remember why I never got the PC version of ME3!

I was a huge fan of Andromeda, really enjoyed the story and the plotline discussing colonialism was surprisingly insightful and quite refreshing. The fact that the planned DLC for the missing arks was never finished was incredibly annoying to me. It really surprised me that EA just cut the game completely. I enjoyed two and three but frankly I thought one was a nightmare. I tried to play it through again before 3 came out and the whole intro at the citadel which seems to take 30000 hours to complete just put me off it. But if I'm honest I didn't go mad for the series as a lot of my friends did. I much preferred dragon age but I think that's because at this point I've lost a lot of interest in sci fi..

If they do another ME (which with EA being the inexorable money swallowing garbage lord that it is will be inevitable) I think as others have said it'll be a prequel.

On the chance that you don't know, the Quarian ark DLC was mentioned as possibly being turned into either a novel or comic book iirc.

As for ME1, I agree that the beginning is hard to get through although in my case it's because of the horrible game mechanics for shooting. The first time around I had a soldier build that focused on sniping and it was like playing a drunken sailor on shore leave playing with a sniper rifle. I didn't aim as much as simply waited for the reticle to drift and sway randomly over the target for the first 1/3 of the game.

The second and third times through I played a biotic build with assault rifles as the primary weapon and it was alot better in that regard since I both had a much higher ROF and had biotics to spam instead of just waiting while aiming for the reticle to do something useful.

 warboss wrote:
On the chance that you don't know, the Quarian ark DLC was mentioned as possibly being turned into either a novel or comic book iirc.

That is excellent news! I hope that does end up happening, at least it doesn't die a death completely.

Yes the shooting mechanics were dodgy. Also I seem to remember the autosaves were less than frequent and towards the very end of the game my xbox froze and I had to start an extremely difficult bit all over again and I was distinctly miffed and so didn't play it again for about 5 months. So for me ME1 has always had a negative memory for me, I don't think I'll ever shake that. I think 2 I enjoyed the most for the story and characters, 3 was not bad. It was certainly more streamlined.

It's already out.

It's "Mass Effect: Annihiliation".