The Fate of Mass Effect

If you tuned into the last Bioware induced post a few months back, during the late summer months, Machine Mean discussed, to some extent, rumors and overall fate of the continuation of the Mass Effect universe. We discussed the terrible three choice ending of M3, as well as possible future directions. The web is still abuzz with fan fiction rumor, but the continuation as been, more or less, confirmed. Bioware producer Michael Gamble, in answering a fan question regarding any new DLC for M3, responded with “nope. Citadel was the last DLC, we have a full, brand new game to make!” With that being said, i’m sure every subject of the nerd kingdom had already assumed as much, but then again…with as much hate over the ending to M3, many of us nerds were left with nagging uncertainty. At this moment, I think its rather safe to exhale. There will be a new Mass Effect…perhaps as soon as 2015 (best guess). 

Whatever direction the new game will take is still highly conjecture. No one knows for sure. I’ll be praying that its not a prequel as I want the very memory of M3 behind me. It happened. It was horrible. Lets move on. From some of the stuff leaked during PAX, in a closed meeting with a few hardcore fans, Bioware reps asked a few interesting questions that could lead to some insights in the direction M4 (or whatever its eventually called, but for now, for clarity, lets just call it M4). Here are a few of the questions:

1. What does N7 mean to you? (Most interesting question. Sounds something similar to what was discussed on Machine Mean back in August)

2. When asked if the group preferred a prequel, sequel, or something new entirely, the group responded overwhelmingly that they preferred a sequel. (Which sounds good to me because, though some prequels are necessary, it would feel like a waste of time and effort with Mass Effect.)

3. Two new species was revealed; however, the group was asked if they had to choose two from the already existing pool to leave out of the game, which ones would they choose. (The revelation of two brand new species sounds amazing; the two the group by % choose to leave out of the new game were the Krogan and Quarian species’. I can get behind leaving the Quarian’s out, to be perhaps included later on in a DLC, but how could they vote off the Krogan’s? They are the most badass species in the entire Mass Effect universe!!!)

The rest of the presentation basically was to talk about having a more detailed armor customization and crafting better looking species for in-game play. There was also some talk about bringing back the feel of M1, which is also something we talked about here back in August. Don’t get me wrong, M2 was an amazing game and highly replayable, but the feel and mood and tone of M1 was what really set the series apart from other RPG’s. If you want to check out my source for all this new info, watch the video by RocketChainsawAU  below:

For now, it looks like we’re going to get something similar to what we here at Machine Mean speculated back in August; except for having a story crafted around the Specters, we’ll get an N7 based story. The only nagging issue with an N7 story is that it limits the chances of having an multispecies character option to nill. Best to my knowledge, N7 is a human special ops team. Will the N7 story still be awesome? Maybe, but less than if they allowed character creation to branch off a little more, giving the player to choose a foundation other than human. Just like the Specters though, N7 is an area that hasn’t been fully explored before. So even though we know what it is and have heard about in our past adventures with Shepard, it will be entirely new.

Until then, we’ll have to keep our ears to the ground and hope more credible information will be leaked.