Mass Effect will continue

 Apparently...

Recently we were 'treated' to everyone's favourite annual event that we only get reminded by in news reports after the fact, N7 day. You know, that strange Mass Effect holiday that Bioware have celebrated for a while despite the fact it represents a franchise that was on life support for several years. But those days when the many journeys of Captain sleeps-with-the-entire-crew had slipped into naught but myth are now long gone. Thanks to the release and success of the Mass Effect trilogy remasters, people have the ME brand in their mouths once again and are sitting on a fire in their bellies wondering whatever happened to those games. And then they simmer down when they soon remember "Oh yeah. They got a sequel. And it was Andromeda... shame."

This break that we're going through right now, four years without a concrete whisper of a word about the new Mass Effect game, is the sort of gap I expected between Mass Effect 3 and Andromeda. Instead, it sort of felt like no longer than two years after 3 dropped, everyone was already gearing up for the next game. I can't speak for the rest of the community, but to me the overarching sense of "It just isn't the right time yet" was the main reason why I had my troubles with Andromeda. That being said, I do love me some Mass Effect and even Andromeda has some characters whom I'd be distraught not to hear more of in the future of this franchise. (Not Liam. Liam can go burn up on re-entry for all I care) In fact, I'm guilty of doing that super fan thing where you create an entire new trilogy of your own head and plan it out in ludicrous detail alongside major narrative twists, character revelations, set-piece moments, and even the seeds of a subsequent spin-off series that might well with the Yakuza formula. (Hmm? Literally no one else in the world thinks that much about this franchise. And only I would be dumb enough to think Mass Effect needs a Yakuza-style spin off series? Well okay then, you don't need to be rude about it...)

But breaks are not ends, and despite the very real fact that the Mass Effect series was dealt a perfectly serviceable point to cut their losses and run, they're back in the business, baby. And to be clear, I guess I do sort of see where the team at Bioware are coming with both, both within the confines of Mass Effect and taking in the bigger picture. Inside the franchise boundaries, Mass Effect Andromeda was sort of like a slap in the face from a wet sock, unpleasant and lingering. It introduced a whole new world, promised a whole new threat, and made the questionable choice of recycling important thematic elements (mysterious technological superior progenitor race) only this time in a universe that has a grand total of 1 native intelligent alien race. (If you don't believe me, I'll give you a second to think about that. And if you still don't believe me, look up a synopsis for the game, I'm right.) So for a series that's a tour of weird alien worlds and cultures, that made the entire universe of Andromeda feel like a tremendous let down. (Something I would have fixed in my Mass Effect Andromeda continuation series, whereupon the various species are actually sequestered into a specific region on the other side of the galaxy under the rule of- huh? You don't care about my fan fiction? Okay...) 

Outside of the Mass Effect brand, Bioware are in trouble. And everyone knows it. Sure, the totally oblivious smooth brains over in their PR department can waft away the smoking fumes of a house currently on fire all they want, but the can't change the fact that Bioware have delivered consistent substantial flops to a parent company not only renowned for being all around awful in as many areas as it's possible for a company to be, (EA) but one that has a specific reputation for acquiring studios, bleeding them of their IPs and then shuttering that company. The fact that Bioware jettisoned an entire Dragon Age prototype game they were conjuring just because they thought some high up at EA would like their flying jetpack game a tiny bit more, displays that very fact wonderfully. (And how did that work out for them again? Oh right... Anthem.) Bioware need their next games to be hits or else they're up for the chop next, (if they aren't already) and so it comes as no surprise that the words 'new IP' are entirely absent from their docket for the foreseeable future. (They didn't get a look-in for the KOTOR Remake: how the mighty do fall.)

So with all this playing behind the scenes, and in public if we're being honest with ourselves, is their even a glimmer of grandeur in this year's N7 day special surprise: A vague screenshot of a spaceship with the caption 'Mass Effect will continue'? Oh really? Will it? You mean the years of leaks about such a project wasn't enough? And neither were all the stars aligning to make this the next sensible move? The investigative reports which bluntly said such? How about the trailer that you had released at the end of a next gen conference that showed footage of a game that you entitled 'Mass Effect' and which featured the familiar face of famed Asari Liara T'Soni? None of that was enough to confirm a new game was in the works, you needed to screenshot confirm it? Guys, I think Bioware are actually going through the first stages of collective memory loss right now, we need someone over there to make sure they've turned off all the stoves and aren't trying to drive the car.

But sure, whatever. 'Mass Effect will continue'. Allow me to blow-out all of the party streamers and do a back flip. Now that all the celebration is out of the way, can we sit here and reflect exactly what we can expect from this news, given that Mass Effect seemed to doing just fine as a corpse up until now? First off, obviously, this means that Mass Effect is going to continue on from 3 rather than keep up with the Andromeda series, which I find a shame because I liked some of that cast, but I can definitely see how that world building was so god awful no one even wants to return there. (It's just a shame that all the main ME cast are dead by the Andromeda timeline, else I'd hope they would dream up some stupid stuff to drag the new team back to the Milky Way.) Also, I guess the ending of Mass Effect 3 is going to be entirely nullified, because their individual ramifications are far too vast for any one game to try and cover sufficiently. (Which, to be fair, Bioware has done before with the ability to kill off Shepard at the end of Mass Effect 2)

Now comes my complaining, because I'm just not entirely sure we need more story tacked onto the end of this series. Early hopes were for a prequel Mass Effect series that would explore the first contact war against the Humans and Turians, but for my part I really wasn't interested in a game that didn't have most of the cool alien species and environments to explore. It's becoming clear that Bioware might have felt the same way, but is a post Reapers universe going to be any better? It will likely be a galaxy without FTL travel, considering that the Mass Effect relays are rendered inert in most endings. (Sort of defuncts the name of the series, but then I guess Andromeda had practically no relays in it at all aside from the Slingshot mega relay from the intro) The intergalactic governments will probably have been reduced to tribal squabbling. The citadel will be no more. A lot of species will be endangered. More likely than not this entire game will be focused around rebuilding the galaxy, which will make it feel like a stepping stone to the actually interesting story, just like Andromeda felt like with it's "colonialization done ethically" plot.

But I guess it's unfair to judge the game at this point, because the sky really is the limit right now- as long as that sky is given the go ahead as decently financially viable from EA. I've given Bioware some slack over the years, and getting into CRPGs recently has really highlighted all the areas in which Bioware undersell what could be their best mechanics, but I do love them. (As a whole, that is, the individual staff are proving themselves more and more out-of-touch and grating over the past year.) I don't want to see Bioware be eaten by the EA machine, and so I hope all the best for a Mass Effect sequel even if I secret away dour misgivings about the whole affair. Please feel free to prove me utterly wrong team, and please prove you guys can still make half decent games. (We're getting worried out here.)