Mass Effect 4?

 So, we just gonna forget about that last game or...

In a Game Awards packed to the gills with no surprise after no surprise, how curious it was to note that the most interesting moments popped up separate from the awarding process whatsoever, such as through the two anaemic Bioware trailers the studio threw our way. Now to be clear, my very first thought when I saw these little snippets was "Isn't this more the bare minimum that gets reserved for N7 Day?" But then I guess we did get the remasters teased that day so these get to take the much more coveted game awards spot. (Makes sense.) So that's why we got a prolonged trailer for Dragon Age wherein someone who sounded a little like Varric (only tired) tried to gaslight us all by telling us that this time around we'd have a different protagonist "Without a 'magic hand'". Oh, that's funny Varric, because literally only the Inquisitor from the last game has a magic power, that's what made them feel different from the last two, so don't wave this powerless protagonist in our face like they're some sort of break from the norm you trumped up Cameo-case who's not nearly interesting enough to carry the prolonged screen time you are so often rewarded! Sorry, that one just rubbed me the wrong way. Also, I still haven't finished Inquisition, (sue me) so I prefer to focus on the Mass Effect stuff this time.

So this trailer came at the tail end of the event, wherein typically sits the biggest trailer that is set to blow literally everyone away with it's grand scale. And honestly, that did work a bit against this trailer because the second we see the Milky Way and think 'anticipated space game', I think it's safe to say that most of us default to Starfield. But as Bethesda seem deadset on making Starfield another stealth launch from their studio (because that went so well the last two times...) we instead got a zooming in on a broken Mass Effect Relay and that small hope vanished. Yet somehow, more the fool I, it took until the trailer zoomed in on a curiously familiar Asari woman digging Shepard's helmet rim out of Luna's dust for me to realise what this means: The next Mass Effect isn't a sequel to Andromeda... it's four! (Which, again, I should have realised immediately from the broken relays because Andromeda rather pointedly had no Mass Effect Relays which is why everything took place in a miniscule space with only one new alien Civilisation and was terrible.)

Now I know I'm not the only person scratching their head at this because, by all reckoning, there shouldn't be a Mass Effect 4. The first 3 Mass Effect games built up this epic Science Fantasy opera revolving around a galaxy-level threat where action and consequence built up into the crescendo that was Mass Effect 3 and its game-long wrap-up event. Some people disliked Mass Effect 3 because they found themselves turned off by the three (later patched to four) colour endings by the end that felt completely independent of the unique choices that led them this far, but this was meant to be the conclusion none the less. Me personally, I interpreted the entirety of Mass Effect 3 as the culmination of the last two game's choices, so I got a lot more mileage out of the game, but even then I didn't really see any of this game as a jumping off point for the next Mass Effect to pick up right after this one. But then again, here we apparently are.

I think the most puzzling thing about this apparent reveal is thus; despite the three endings being wildly mocked at the end of ME3, they were still so ludicrously distinct from one another that making a follow-up game seems a tad foolhardy. One ending saw the Reapers become slaves of the galaxy, disabling the threat for now but leaving the machines alive to potentially rise up again someday. Another saw them all destroyed along with the Mass Effect Relays that their creators built (thus disabling FTL flight seemingly forever) And another still saw organics and synthetics merged at a molecular level to reach some new species. (Never really understood that last one, seemed a little out-the-blue) Oh, and then there was the ending they added in where the player proved to be an obstinate ass and refused all choices in favour of damning all the species of the Milky Way for another 10,000 year cycle. How do you spring off from all those decently distinct paths and create a sequel? That would be impossible, no? Well not if you just ignore half of them!

Although this is going purely off of the ludicrously slim reveal trailer that we saw, which was accompanied with no information apart from the redundant "Mass Effect will continue", (Ya don't say?) It seems we can narrow down the exact ending that Bioware went for. As I remember it (And I played this game literally six years ago so forgive my poor memory) the power required to execute any of the endings required the destruction of the Mass Effect Relays, so merely seeing one drifting through space in pieces isn't enough to tell us anything. Seeing Liara, however, tells us that this wasn't the 'obstinate ass' ending, because she's alive and otherwise that probably wouldn't be the case. She appears entirely organic too, with no mechanical glint in her eyes or something to denote she's part synthetic, so either the team chose to hide this or the 'synthesis' ending has been written off as well. Then comes the smoking gun which nails it down; the mask fragment which she found. We can assume it belongs to Shepard because otherwise there would be no reason for it to feature in this trailer, and we can assume this is Luna because she travels to a moon and Luna would be the closet to where Shepard was last seen. (Although I don't remember it being particularly snowy on our moon but maybe that's several years worth of ash and debris, who can say?) Such would imply that the Citadel which Shepard was on exploded, thus settling things on the 'Destroy' ending.

Not that there's really any special reward for figuring that out, as not only was the destroy ending easily the most popular among players, but it was also the only ending given special treatment of there being two variations of it. One you get just from hitting the bare minimum requirements, (I.E. reaching the final section of the game) and the other you get by completing the majority of the side content and amassing a War Asset score threshold higher than is required to get any of the other endings. It's just a little teaser shot of Shepard's body lying amidst the rubble in a ponderous pan before he takes in a breath of life like freakin' Captain Scarlett up in here. Although I don't think anyone really expected anything to come of it and I'm not sure how I feel about continuing this story.

On one side of the fence I do realise that Andromeda was a absolute false start that seemed to bumble any remote build-up whatsoever to the point where by the credits I honestly couldn't identify a single plotline I wanted to see continue apart from the fact that I liked some of the teammates and wanted to see them evolve. (Not Liam. God, not Liam) But on the otherhand I thought this left the field completely open for the team to learn from their mistakes and really make the next Andromeda game special. Yes, the alien design for Andromeda sucked, but that was just incentive for the next round of aliens to be amazing! Yeah the Milky Way Refugees spent the majority of the game setting up crappy outposts instead of having a driving force to them; but that just opened the way for an actual narrative now that all that admin stuff was out the way! I was genuinely excited for the future of Andromeda and now I feel like a mug for ever feeling that way. Plus, I'm honestly done with Shepard and felt there was no more to say with his/her story; so why exactly are we going back to them? Isn't the same problem everyone had with The Last of Us Part 2? Continuing a story that didn't need anything added to it? Just seems like a recipe for ruining the last fond memories anyone had of Mass Effect in my opinion...

Misgivings aside I will admit that, unlike with Andromeda, this feels like the right time for a new Mass Effect; so I'm ready for whatever Bioware has to throw our way. There is that slight nagging feeling that this all just reinforces how Bioware has lost such confidence in itself (or from others) that they're retreating to what they know, but Mass Effect isn't the least creative franchise on the planet so I don't think they'll be scraping the barrel just yet. Of course, given the current state of affairs with literally every single AAA company on the planet, I'm far from given my confidence to a studio like Bioware, but I'm also a fanboy deep down and if I have another chance to fly the Normandy, by god I'm going to take it. Good tease, Bioware; now you just need to follow through.