Mass Effect: Andromeda

I figured I would make this thread considering how news is always popping up about new Mass Effect games and EA likes to spit out games faster than a bat flying out of hell so I'm sure we'll hear a lot about it regardless.

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*Mass Effect 4 is a working title and logo above is unofficial*​

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RELEASE: TBA​

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T R I L O G Y - B A C K G R O U N D:​

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Ever since the beginning of the Mass Effect Trilogy that began with Mass Effect's release in 2007 and ended with Mass Effect 3 this past March, fans knew it would be just that...a trilogy with Commander Shepard taking lead as the main protagonist. Obviously response to Mass Effect 3 has been less than exemplary especially due to its controversial ending, which led many fans (aka what the gaming journalistic media called a "vocal minority") to garner support for a change in how they saw their Shepard's story come to a close (hoping for the 16 different endings that were advertised prior to launch). The Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut was released June 26, 2012 for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC worldwide and in North America and July 4, 2012 for PS3 in Europe. With little change, some fans were content, others displeased or plain old pissed off. Due to the fact that no ending of Mass Effect 3 - Destroy, Control, Synthesis, or Refuse is considered canon people saw it as BioWare cornering themselves story-wise for any future games with the same logo. Casey Hudson, the series' director, stated that the universe is so vast that there are many opportunities and directions that future plots can take.​

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A N N O U N C E M E N T - T I M E L I N E:​

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Spoiler

• 2007-2012: Mass Effect Trilogy featuring Commander Shepard as main protagonist
• September 18, 2012: Official BioWare blog post detailing BioWare founders Ray Muzyka's and Greg Zeschuk's retirement from the company. Also there is official word about Casey Hudson's involvement in the future of Mass Effect at this time in another blog post stating:
  
• October 19, 2012: News that the next Mass Effect (working title) will NOT feature Commander Shepard or a "Shepard 2" character with a similar personality/goals.
  
• November 12, 2012: Official BioWare blog post by Yanick Roy, studio director at BioWare Montreal states that Frostbite* will be the new engine of the future Mass Effect game and that it is already in development.​
• November 19, 2012: Mass Effect game director Casey Hudson tweets and asks fans for feedback on whether the next Mass Effect game should be a prequel or a sequel then thanks fans for their thoughts. Click here to take a poll on IGN and see results from more than 30,000 fans.
• Unsurprisingly, thoughts for a sequel greatly outweigh prequel fans 20,000+ to around 8,000 give or take.
• December 12, 2012: According to an interview with Gamer Syndrome the next installment should not be expected until late 2014 to mid-2015. **Source proven as false**
• March 23, 2013: Mentioned at PAX East, Casey Hudson states that they are in the developing stages of the next Mass Effect game. Not really any new information, but good to know they are working on it.
  
  

*Note: For those who are unaware, the Frostbite engine was developed by DICE, the creators of the Battlefield series. The untitled Mass Effect game will be third person-shooter/roleplaying with multiplayer and use Frostbite 3.0, the same engine that was debuted in the Battlefield 4 trailer/gameplay in March 2013. To put it in perspective, Mass Effect 3 used Unreal Engine 3.

 

That title looks incredibly fake and I hope never official!!! XD

Not surprising fans want a sequel and not a prequel. I mean what happens pre Mass Effect 1 apart from the First Contact War? That is if we're keeping a human galaxy about.
Problem though with a sequel is establishing canon with it.

Spoiler

Which I believe is actually Destroy since Shepherd officially lives in that, meaning it is official, otherwise why tell us what happens in an unofficial ending?

But I can see too many good things about a sequel then I can a prequel. It has to happen, new aliens, new weapons, new characters, new locations, just go with the sequel gaiz!

 

Yeah I didn't make the title I just found it somewhere lmao, I'm keeping my eye out for another one.

I believe in Destroy too since that's what I chose and will continue to choose every time, but honestly unless they have something sneaky planned I can only really see things working out if the scale is downsized dramatically in terms of the scope of how much of the universe is involved, or if they set it 500-1000 years in the future to get away from any discrepancies between the endings.

Spoiler

I've seen some pretty cool ideas outlining the potential for a new game to have indoctrination be true but not to the full extent that everyone think when they think of indoctrination. For example, be playing as a new character, but you are placed right in the battle for Earth at the beginning of the game trying to look for Shepard, you find him and he's trying to fight indoctrination himself. Then after that sequence ends you just go off on your merry way as another soldier - since it has been revealed that the next character will be a soldier supposedly, but not a soldier "of the universe" like Shepard.

 

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Damn you libre, one day I will get to news before you! XD

Heres another article because I want to show I actually looked elsewhere first:
http://www.xbox360achievements.org/...e-2014-to-Mid-2015--Launch--Says-BioWare.html

Not sure how I feel about this. I want to be excited but I am worried, the series is getting saturated by EA, the next ME won't have a number of the key members that worked on the original trilogy, which makes me apprehensive. Wouldn't mind so much if EA was influencing everything, so...

 

ME2 was released in 2010 and ME3 in 2012. Obviously one of the concerns is look where 2 years put us. A rush job with ME3 in order to get the most money possible. Honestly, yeah it sucks that the major characters won't be back, just considering how it was left off makes me cringe. I hope this next DLC with all of the voice work will be better than Omega was...because that was full of bugs and literally just a shooting range. As long as I get more Garrus it's all fine with me. However, I have no doubts that the VAs will do some sort of voice work for ME4. Little cameo characters like random civies on the Citadel, etc.

They aren't even advertising ME4 as primarily a RPG, that's the thing. The series has more shooter elements now and that's the way EA likes it and they know this well. The same sort of issue can be applied to 2K games and BioShock. BioShock Infinite was getting a bunch of shit from people about "angry guy holding gun" on the front of their game box, but they made a valid point saying that a lot of people aren't "gamers". They are frat boys/college kids who want to shoot shit with their friends. It's what continues to sell so well that guys skip class to pick up things like Call of Duty, or other shooters so they pick up a box with a soldier or a guy with a gun on the cover and they pretty much know what they are getting right away. When I played ME1 I was so surprised at how RPG it was, I just hope they learn even an inkling from their mistakes and take out some of the crappy auto-dialogue. That's what really irked me.

 

Just letting everyone know that the interview at Gamer Syndrome was a fake btw. EA never confirmed it and the information was given to GS by a fake source. Having said that, 2014-2015 doesn't sound completely out of the realm of possibility.

Also there was a recent interview with Mac Walters with IGN and he said that they have not ruled out the possibility to use save games from the previous games in ME4. Start at 6:46.

 

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I don't care what ME3 ending is made canon in ME4, as long as it isn't the Synthesis ending.

 

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Boy, I'm so glad they're making a sequel that doesn't involve Shepard because this series wasn't about him nor did he mysteriously live in one of the Mass Effect 3 endings. Nope. Didn't happen. Let's just not talk about it.

Negativity aside, I love this universe and will probably enjoy a multiples of stays in this new entry.

 

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Bioware Blog post.

 

I thought that they didn't have the technology to travel between galaxies in the Mass Effect games because technology kept getting sent back from the Reaper Attacks. Is this far enough in the future that they can get out of the Milky Way?

 

Suuuper late, but I believe so. In a couple of the posts libre made above, Bioware kept saying it was "long after" Shepard's time, so I'm assuming that they've managed to get a foot into intergalactic travel

Spoiler: ME3 Ending Spoils

especially since regardless of what ending you chose, there's still Reapers (and Reaper corpses in Destroy) that everyone could salvage tech and what not from. If anything it could be around the time of the end credits scene where Aldrin's telling the "legend of Shepard" or sometime after that, but there's not really enough info to have an exact guess.