Update: BioWare Teases Release Date for Next Mass Effect Pages PREV 1 2 | |
You can't make a Mass Effect sequel that takes place after the third game, regardless which ending you pick. In all possible outcomes, the entire Mass Relay network was destroyed. It's not the same world anymore. What used to take hours/days of travel now takes decades or centuries. It would take millennia for them to replace the network; each relay needs to be linked with a corresponding partner. That means building these blasted things from scratch, then fly over to the desired target location and build one there as well. Of course, to cut time, Earth and say... Palaven could coordinate to build linking relays on each others end, thus negating the need to fly between the places during construction but that requires them being able to communicate with each other. So lets assume the various homeworlds can talk to each other with these newfangled quantum entanglement communications arrays, and speed up the rebuild, there's yet another snag in that plan. The difficulty to build these relays. Each relay is 15 kilometers long, is made out of unknown materials and requires wast amount of element zero. The stupid council never even bothered studying the relays with the intent of learning how to build one and now they're all gone. The only possible relay that might still exist is the Conduit on Ilos, which was an experimental miniature version, built by the Protheans and not part of the original network. Its corresponding partner was inside the citadel, before that blew up and it's entirely possible that it also was affected by that choose-your-color-explosion. Of course, someone needs to fly over to that planet to check if it's still there, which would have taken decades, from the nearest relay. This of course is just one of the many things that people, that actually cared about the story, were complaining about when they were bitching about the ending. Any way you slice it, if you want to see a sequel that allows you to travel the galaxy and interact with the various worlds/races, it either needs to be set really far in the future or before Shepards saga. If taking the far in the future route, Bioware would also have to pick one of the endings, like you said, since the various choices had the potential of changing how the universe worked in rather radical ways. At any rate, I really don't feel the slightest inkling of a desire to get it. Bioware really needs to work their butt off to sell me the concept of any future releases, before I can even consider buying it. | |
See a trailer for this earlier, said November 27 at the end. *Edit*
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Im tempted to use a certain spiderman meme about a new Bioware game. Look at all the fucks I don't give | |
Wrong. As of the EC, the mass relays are not destroyed in most endings, but merely damaged. Hell, they even show them being repaired. There may be issues with a sequel, but that's not one of them. | |
im so excited for this. i finished mass effect 3 last night and its probably my favorite game of 2012. thats not flame bait or anything, i loved the game and loved the ending. it doesnt really matter to me that your actions didnt really affect the ending. they had large impacts on the game, thats more than enough for me to be satisfied that my decisions mattered. my opinion of bioware is much higher after the mass effect trilogy than it has been since the days of baldurs gate | |
I've yet to see the Extended ending, since I have a girlfriend, who's still working her way through the Mass Effect series and I want her to see the original ending before I get the "patch". Now, the way I've had the Extended version explained to me, they weren't gonna change a single thing, merely fill in some missing details or as they themselves said it "provide additional context and deeper insight to the conclusion of Commander Shepard's journey". This is changing the ending. Those relays clearly went boom in the original version. Edit: Now that I remembered (and checked) the Star Child even specifically stated that the explosion would destroy the relay network, in the original ending. | |
Looking forward to it. I don't think I will ever be as hyped for a game as I was for ME3, but ME X should be a quality game. Thing is, I know that there are so many things that can go wrong. A prequel would be hard to justify seeing as it would never be anything but a sidequest compared to the galaxy-spanning apocalypse epic of the trilogy, and any sequel is probably going to have to pick a single ending from 3 and run with it. My biggest worry there is that they go with Synthesis; that resolution is bananas and I want no part of it, but whichever they pick would obliterate the ending canon of roughly 2/3 of their fans. Also, EA is indeed an evil overlord, though I think even they may have learned a lesson from ME3, at least inasmuch as it risked one of their biggest franchises. They will probably be more careful with it for this next installment. The loss of much of the top-level talent at Bioware is obviously bad, and the fact that Hudson and Walters seem to be running things is definitely scary. So yes, there are several reasons to worry. But I am still confident that it will be a great game, because despite everything I don't think they fucked up ME3 that badly at all. The marketing blunder was the biggest one and you can't blame the game itself for that, no matter what promises Casey Hudson made to your face. You should know better than to trust advertisements anyway. I can see where the game was rushed in spots: the ending was incomplete before they fixed it, the final sequence was lacking in gameplay epicness, the dialogue trees are stripped down. But I can be picky with anything. Bottom line, I wasn't disappointed and I sure won't go into the next game with any expectation but to be impressed. | |
They lied. They even added an ending where you can say "FUck you, Star Child, I won't do what you say." They changed quite a bit in the EC. | |
You mean sort of how they narrowed the focus of DA2's story and everyone loved that? | |
I'll try to keep an open mind but I haven't been impressed with a Bioware game since the 1st Dragon Age. They have been releasing mediocre games for a while now. I was amazed by the outrage caused by the ending of Mass Effect 3 not because I thought the ending was good, but because I thought the plot was weak for the entire trilogy. | |
I got the impression they don't want to make mass effect games anymore judging by how the trilogy ends. So is this a sick joke? and no, I won't look at their save face ending. They wanted to end their trilogy that way, thats the way it is with me. They wanted to kill their own franchise, and now they want to make a new game? No matter what they do, I will never get starchild out of my head for the fact that that is the way they wanted it to be in the first place. ME is dead, shot by their own creators. If I could I would kick it while its down for being the biggest entertainment dissapointment in my life. It was THAT BAD that it was not only a dissapointment it simply disgusted me. I hate Mass Effect and I almost hate bioware for MAKING ME hate them. | |
When it comes out doesn't really matter. Because, well, Day-One orders between myself and EA are long done. | |
Retconned! I love the internet sometimes. | |
Did actually ANYBODY see that ending in the midnight park where the 'child' asks 'grandparent' for 'one more story' and the 'grandparent' sais 'ok, one more story'? Anybody? Or was I the only one on the internet getting that hint? The ME3 story - following indoctrination theory - is far from finished, for me. | |
B-but I want Dragon Age 3! I couldn't get into ME at all but I love DA. So far. ME has the upper hand with 3 titles already out there and a 4th one in the work. DA, on the other hand, only has two titles, and the second one wasn't that great from what I hear (Barely started it). | |
I think it's cause everyone would rather not remember the less desire-able aspects of ME3. | |
I played KotOR for the first time recently (I know, I'm upset with myself too). I was astounded when I discovered that Casey Hudson played a major role in that game. Anyone who's played KotOR knows exactly what I mean. | |
I for one can't wait till the next installment in the series comes out. Love the mass effect universe | |
Well, as others said, the EC did retcon the endings so that the relays were clearly shown to be merely damaged instead of outright destroyed (as the fanbase largely assumed after the original endings). All that said, though, I'm going to go out and say it will be impossible to make an ME4 given the current circumstances. I still fail to understand why (given that this is a franchise that had - emphasis on that word -the potential to be a persistent franchise) the writers backed themselves into a corner. As I've said before (and as others have rightly pointed out), there's little prequel material to draw from - all of the major conflicts were either way too short (the First Contact War - two weeks) or way too long (the Rachni Wars, which stretched on for decades). If they're going to create a sequel, they have to answer the following (potentially universe-changing) variables: - Is Shepard alive or dead? (less of a concern if it's far in the future) I honestly don't know how any of these variables can be reconciled unless the entire ending is retconned. The fact that the development team (as noted in a recent Game Informer article) honestly didn't know there would be a problem with it until the game was released shows that they didn't think any of this through at all. | |
You have summed up my opinion almost to the letter. To be honest with Mass Effect, I feel the franchise has been too ruined for me, too many issues with the lore and writing now, so I am only hoping that Dragon Age 3 might be able to show me that people leading Bioware games are still capable of making decent decisions. | |
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I don't see a sequel making sense from a lore perspective. Unless Bioware wants to declare one ending canon which raises the whole ending debacle again after that horse was beaten into paste. Its not like the issue can be side-stepped either. From the beginning scene the audience is going to know whether synthesis was picked by the robot green eyes.
I'm hoping for a prequel but if the ME game is a prequel then I hope its in the same vein as KOTOR is to Star Wars. Keep the universe but a completely separate story. Playing as a geth during their uprising against the Quarians would be cool. You even have a built in mechanic for leveling since geth get better the more of them there are.