Mass Effect

[CharlesPhipps]

Yeah, that's why I said 'should' - I never lost my ardour for the rest of the galaxy ('cept, you guessed it, the batties) but by the end of ME3 I was thoroughly sick of humanity. (I admit, I made it worse by years of roleplaying as an asari without a mean bone in her body - the dissatisfaction with humans getting the red carpet rolled out for them canon-wise kind of built up with no opportunity to vent.)

I admit to being very much Team Humanity. But that's my Renegade tendencies.

[SlackerinDeNile]

A lot of people have issues with Mass Effect Andromeda, including me, but one of my biggest problems with it is that it feels like the absolutely safest possible sequel to the franchise that could have been made.

Placing it away from the Milky Way galaxy in an entirely fictional setting is fine in my opinion but I just feel they could have done a lot more with the concept. It doesn't feel particularly intriguing or alien, it just feels like generic, big-budget space opera, I'll admit the first Mass Effect felt like this at first too, but then you got into the intricacies of the different species and worlds and their politics and the potential of the reapers. Andromeda doesn't have much of this and ironically it felt like what Stargate Atlantis was to SG-1.

Also, making it less of an RPG was a big mistake, if the writers wanted to go down a more linear path with the story they should have made it more like Deus Ex, where even though your character has an established background and nature, they act as an avatar for the player allowing the other characters to give the necessary exposition and explain their view of things and have the main character respond to them based on their playstyle and key choices. Yes they did attempt this, but I don't feel they did it as well as it was done in the Deus Ex games or the first two Mass Effect games. Although Shepard is quite a manufactured character, being able to choose a different background and mold him\her throughout the games was a big part of their appeal in my opinion. The Mass Effect trilogy did a good job of allowing players to live out an epic space opera fantasy, although I personally could have done with more level exploration and combat and game interactivity.

I kind of wish that Obsidian had gotten the chance to develop a sequel or 'gaiden' game to the Mass Effect franchise, they likely would have done something more creative with it.

[bronnt]

Cerberus is awesome in Mass Effect 2.

But it only works if your Shepard is the kind of guy who is willing to bend the rules to work with SPECTER to defeat Cthulhu.

Not all Shepards are.

They needed Anderson to order Paragon Shepard to do it.

I never saw either version of Shepard as being able to work with Cerberus after the events of the first game. Paragon Shepard would have flipped her shit the instant Miranda murdered a man who was surrounded by 3 armed badasses who could have easily been taken captive and questioned. Renegade Shepard would have resented taking orders from TIL (which is what happens in the story, despite the fact you can have dialogue options pretending it's not), and wouldn't have trusted any of these people enough to let them stand behind her with a gun.

In short, too many plotrails for the renegade, but too much collateral damage for the paragon. Either version requires Shepard to be too credulous to be an effective character.

[excalibur]

I think the only way to save the Mass Effect series is rehire everybody that left and make Mass Effect 4 starring Shepard again. It's very safe to bring him back but better than trying out new stuff that failed so badly.

Thinking about it, maybe that's why they didn't call Andromeda a number.

[SlackerinDeNile]

I think the only way to save the Mass Effect series is rehire everybody that left and make Mass Effect 4 starring Shepard again. It's very safe to bring him back but better than trying out new stuff that failed so badly.

Thinking about it, maybe that's why they didn't call Andromeda a number.

You'd have to redo Mass Effect 3's ending to make that work...

[Independent George]

I kind of wish that Obsidian had gotten the chance to develop a sequel or 'gaiden' game to the Mass Effect franchise, they likely would have done something more creative with it.

I can see Obsidian making a phenomenal ME4 set in a dystopian aftermath of either the 'Control' or 'Destroy' endings.

In a 'Destroy' ending, the galaxy is in tatters, with various warlords filling in the power vacuum left by the war. With the genophage ended thanks to a Paragon Shepherd, Wrex loses control over the Krogan, who start rampaging over a weakened, depopulated galaxy. The new PC could be one of the zillions of nameless refugees struggling on a world with a destroyed mass relay, cut off from the galaxy with a ruined infrastructure.

I would see a 'Control' game being about the realization that life under a seemingly benevolent God-Emperor Shepherd is not all that it's cracked up to be. Beneath the facade of order and safety, it becomes evident that nothing happens in the galaxy the God-Emperor wills it. All the races of the galaxy are basically pets - they are fed and kept safe, but ultimately have no purpose except to please Shepherd. All attempts to challenge Shepherd's will in the name of sovereignty are swiftly put down by as threats to Galactic peace. Life is good, long, and utterly stagnant. When you meet various members of the old crew, they are divided between those happy to finally see an end to wars, and those horrified by what's happened to their old friend. The game is not a battle against an unbeatable enemy, but to shape the soul of a God in the name of free will.

[GandALF]

Obsidian has neither the money nor the manpower to make a AAA game anymore. I think they do a much better job working in their own settings with Pillars and Tyranny anyway.

[excalibur]

I think the only way to save the Mass Effect series is rehire everybody that left and make Mass Effect 4 starring Shepard again. It's very safe to bring him back but better than trying out new stuff that failed so badly.

Thinking about it, maybe that's why they didn't call Andromeda a number.

You'd have to redo Mass Effect 3's ending to make that work...

Not necessarily. The fans are already pissed off, so there's nothing else left to do but pick the "Good ending" and run with it. They've messed up the ending and even tried to patch it up the best it could. Seriously, I'd take the ME3 ending over the entire story of Andromeda.

Pick the red ending where it teased Shepard being alive at the end, use elements of The Citadel DLC like the clone of Shepard's dead body to rebuild the battered one after the battle. Have it so he's in a coma for years again and wake up in a changed universe affected by his decisions. Maybe have predetermined player choices in the game, like a prequel Genesis style comic where we can have the specific choices like romances carry over and perhaps have him meet his children from any of the potential love interests. And with the threat of the Reapers over, we can have a more open ended game with no high stakes and have it be an exploration adventure game.

[CharlesPhipps]

Combine the endings like in Deus Ex.

[Madner Kami]

I kind of feel like they should have a point - okay the inner workings of the Citadel (specifically the big countdown clock with 'time until doomsday' written on it) are deliberately tucked away where nobody can study them, but the Reapers haven't DRM'd science in general; it bothers me that humanity seems to have got anywhere near par with the Council races despite their centuries/millennia head start. And then (Paragon path) we get a Council seat - one sympathises with the volus - and then the Reapers of all people decide we're even more extra-super-special, and merit being the one species to be Reaperised this cycle.

Humanity was only space-jesus once ME2 happend. Within the constrains of the story as set by ME1, humanity being special actually made a lot of sense. As humanity was only recently "polluted" by reaper-technology, they were not set in the same mindset as the council-races who already developed along the lines of the intentions of the Reapers for millenia (particularly in the case of the Asari). Humanity was special because we didn't think as the Reapers wanted us to, but outside the literal box everybody else was put into.
It is obvious to assume, that everybody else started out as humanity did, otherwise they wouldn't have ended up being at the top of the food-chain in a natural development, but gradually regressed into the static state intended by the Reapers by a "sort of" Indoctrination due to the extended use of the Reaper-tech.

Placing it away from the Milky Way galaxy in an entirely fictional setting is fine in my opinion but I just feel they could have done a lot more with the concept. It doesn't feel particularly intriguing or alien, it just feels like generic, big-budget space opera [...]

Am I the only one who actually began to think, that Mass Effect Andromeda is a fictional happening within a fictional world? The kinds of errors done to the game are exactly the kinds of errors movie- and game-makers do all the time and over time, I began to see ME:A in the light of Blasto. It's a movie or a book or the equivalent of those within the Mass Effect universe to me.