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.)

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.