A few weeks ago, we Mass Effect
fans were presented with two sets of news. One of them being that the Take Back
Omega DLC rumors were indeed true and that Bioware has decided to release an 8
hour long DLC that depicts the reclaiming of Omega, a city housed in an asteroid
that was largely featured in Mass Effect 2, from Cerberus hands. This was only
the first bit of news we had received. The other was that there were indeed
plans for a Mass Effect 4. I was not entirely surprised to read this, since the
franchise was so successful and had generated so much support from its fans. The
more I thought about it though, the crazier the idea sounded. Here are the
reasons why:
The Reasons Why
There
are some obvious reasons as to why the creation of a Mass Effect 4 would be
logistically challenging. For one, with
the release of Dragon Age 3 near about the same time as the release of the next
generation of consoles, how would there possibly be time for Mass Effect 4 to
hit the market before the next generation? It wouldn’t. The real problem here
is what does that mean for our flag saves, and for all of the decisions we had
made in Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3? For PC gamers, this is not an issue, but for
us console players, we could be in for many, if not all of our choices being
made standard for all players. This is most likely wild speculation, seeing as
I have no idea what level of technology the next gen consoles posses. Perhaps
there will be a cloud save system that allows us to access our saves from our
360 or PS3. I don’t know, maybe I’m crazy.
Another
issue that stands out even more than the issue of the choices that we made in
previous Mass Effect games appearing in ME4. It’s the actual complexity of the
choices themselves. Is it even possible to account for all of the variables
that Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3 created? The final choices made in Mass Effect 3
could drastically alter the events of Mass Effect 4, almost to the point of one
person who chose Option A playing a different game than the person who chose
Option B back in Mass Effect 3. They could make certain endings canon in order
to solve this, but this is also a huge blow to the concept of Mass Effect,
where our choices truly matter.
The Obvious Decision
With
all of these obstacles in the way of making Mass Effect 4, what could Bioware
possibly do to make their game worth making? Here’s a thought: Make it a prequel.
I feel that there is a large chance that Mass Effect 4 will end up being set in
a time before the events of Mass Effect 1. While this does seem like the easiest
and most obvious choice to take the series, I hate it. I generally hate most
prequels. They never hold up to the quality of the series they are in. Why? It’s
because nobody cares. Who cares what happened in the past with this person, we
all know what’s going to happen to him. Also, how can you make giant galaxy
changing decisions if story has already progressed beyond them? You can’t.
Conclusion:
The
bottom line is that making Mass Effect 4 will be incredibly difficult, and
while I feel that Bioware is up to the task, I also feel that they might get
lazy and make a decision that will ruin the future of the series forever. Who
here remembers Fable 3?
