BioWare has offered up more fuel for speculation that Mass Effect 4 will take place before the events of the original Mass Effect trilogy, with BioWare Montreal producer Fabrice Condominas commenting that a time frame has yet to be decided upon.
"There is one thing we are absolutely sure of - there will be no more Shepard, and the trilogy is over," Condominas told VG247 in an interview. "This is really our starting point.
"So first, we don't want to make 'Shepard 2′, or Mass Effect 4 with like, 'oh there's no more Shepard but you're a soldier in the universe'. So this will be a very, very different context for sure, and nothing has been decided on the rest."
I discussed the prospect of a Mass Effect prequel with Mass Effect 3's executive producer Mike Gamble in February. "Without going down any specific path, you can think of many, many different areas throughout the IP, throughout the history, where there are large wars to be won, large battles to be had, and a lot of development to be done around where these races came from, how they came about," he said. "We have so much to draw from."
Where and when would you like Mass Effect to go next?
8 comments so far...
Vegetunks9000 on 19 Oct '12 said:
I'd like Mass Effect to go ahead to the future. That way you could use your save from the trilogy. Plus i think it should be named some other than Mass Effect. Kind of like the way Star Wars went. It was the Star Wars films, but everyone uses their Chapter names (A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back.....). Plus choosing your race would be pretty sweet. Be a good way to develop more sides to a single story, hence creating more Water Cooler stories.
voodoo1102 on 19 Oct '12 said:
If I'm reading this right, Mass Effect 4 (or whatever it ends up being called) will be entirely separate from the previous trilogy. So I'm assuming none of the "supporting characters" will feature either. Shame really, as some of them were worthy of their own spin-offs.
As for what I'd like to see Mass Effect become...I know its extremely unlikely but I'd like to play a "proper" RPG set in the Mass Effect universe - think Skyrim or Fallout. Create your own character, starting with a choice of race, then advance them through a variety of career paths. Trader, Soldier, Quarian on a Pilgrimage - whatever you wanted to do. I imagine any game like that would probably end up as an MMO, and whether BIoware would do something like that with Mass Effect, I don't know. I do know EA wouldn't give them the time they needed to do it well. *cough* Star Wars: The Old Republic *cough*
I'd also like to see a space combat game. For a franchise featuring city-sized battleships and interstellar warfare, precious little of it was ever seen, and none of it was interactive. Again, there is scope for an RPG style game where you're given a choice of race (affecting what ships are available to you) and you progress through the ranks until you command the largest ships in your races fleet. This advancement would be achieved through fleet command tasking, exploration, random battles, rescue missions - pretty much anything you can come up with. Unlikely to happen since this sort of game has long since fallen out of favour for console publishers. I think the last franchise was Colony Wars back on the PS1.
I guess pretty much all the things I'd like to see done with the Mass Effect franchise are only really feasible if it became an MMO, and its the wrong developer and publisher combination for that to happen. What I DON'T want to see is the Mass Effect franchise become a biannual series of FPS/"Action RPG" games that focus less on expanding on a brilliant, unique setting and more on shooting stuff in the face, which (if its predecessor is anything to go by) is probably what'll happen.
Waffles2541 on 19 Oct '12 said:
I'm hoping for a far future setting, meaning that they could create an entirely different universe from the one we are used to. There are so many things they could do for a future mass effect game, they will probably make loads of spin offs and prequels in the long run, but i hope that they will go and do a story set a long time after mass effect 3.
GallifreyDog on 19 Oct '12 said:
I want to be an Elcor bounty hunter. Like, not a bounty hunter who specifically targets Elcor - I want to actually play as an Elcor.
frostyfeever on 19 Oct '12 said:
I agree. I don't exactly like the idea of going back. No matter how far we go in the past, there's always that idea in the back of your mind, as you're playing, that there comes a much bigger fight in the future and one person and his/her group come along to defeat it, perhaps dying in the process. I just want to move forward in the future, and if there's no Shepard in it, I agree you should also change the name, or variate it. Choosing your race would be fine, but I'm really interested in relationships and romances with your buddies/ ncp (?)
I miss Garrus. Please find a way to bring a sexy turian into the party. Garrus can't be the only one of his kind
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RyanGowran on 19 Oct '12 said:
Im a little bit torn with what i want to see in the future games
because i love shepard and would love to continue with my current character but on the other side of things i would LOVE to see the first contact war
either way im looking forward to the new games because theres no way it could be worse than the last
JacobsM on 20 Oct '12 said:
I think mass effect should go on into the future. Maybe you could be Shepards great grandson and try to fix the galaxy that has been out of contact for many years. You have to do good things in the vast new city's of earth to earn cash to build Relays to find new areas how maybe are ahead of you in rebuilding the galaxy and start a war and you need to fix what was started by your great grandad.
YoungTobias on 20 Oct '12 said:
Let's face it, under EA Mass Effect is no longer about the narrative. That was partially evident in ME2, and they proved that with the bullshit ending of the last game and fatuous attempts to paper over the cracks with histrionic emotionally-manipulative set-pieces in the DLC. There's no direction anymore, so EABioWare (or what's left of them by the time they get around to starting ME4) might as well just send it into the far future and make it as space-magicky and action-based as they want. I'll bet you anything they won't even mention the Catalyst or the Crucible and will just retcon that whole brainfart out of existence. It'll be a good game, but it won't be a good story. The story died with the original Mass Effect. EABioWare could just as easily make it an MMORPG.