And that’s just the best part of the entire fight scene.
Last time I tried to play the original Mass Effect I couldn’t figure out how to make the darn ship move, and I never had a chance to go back to it. Maybe someday we’ll learn the fate of Germain Shepard, but that’s not what we’re here for today.
With the announcement that EA was shutting down BioWare, a move critics saw coming after Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Anthem were just the biggest flops in a descending level of quality even before the cultural nonsense, it’s not surprising that people in the creative areas wanted to show off what they were forced to give up. Work on something long enough, and whatever you think of the IP you want to show off what all the time and effort went into, even if just to add it to the resume.
Yesterday was the announcement, and today was an alleged trailer leak for a fifth game in the series, after the disappointing ending of the third game for some players based on their decisions in the trilogy and the utter mess that was Mass Effect: Andromeda. Mass Effect Universe could have been a working title or a definitive title for a game that took the series away from the military to a new concept. The trailer doesn’t tell us much about the story, just the concept. That’s of course if the trailer is legit and not someone taking advantage of something they were working on and trying to pull a prank on the internet. We’ve seen plenty of those. Still, it’s worth looking into on the chance that this is a leak by a staffer upset he or she (or whatever) is about to lose their job before all their work at least tried to pay off.
Here’s the original reddit post if you’re curious. I don’t use reddit because they like to censor certain points of view. There’s no gameplay footage. As Geeks & Gamers points out, BioWare would tease a new game while still in pre-production, and the trailer outright admits they’re using early assets. Who knows how far in they were? I guess if someone releases a playable build of the game we’ll find out. That’s happened to canceled projects of studios still active, after all.
The basic plot seems to be that our hero is former military. Whether you’d play a Shepard or a new character we don’t know as of yet. Andromeda had you choosing from a new “family”. For simplicity I’ll just call him Player, since it’s a guy but we don’t know if he’s a Shepard or a Ryder. (I probably would have named him Max. Germain Shepard and Max Ryder. Think about it.) Anyway, Player is a former military guy who got sick of not being able to “put out fires” and…yeah, I’m not sure what he and his team are. Troubleshooters? Vigilantes? Mercenaries who choose their clients based on morals as well as money? Either of those would be an interesting direction.
The footage was done with the in game engine, and the pre-production assets looked okay. The voice acting’s not bad. It might make for a good movie, but would it make a good game? There’s a difference, and it’s one BioWare slowly forgot. Star Wars: The Old Republic, the MMO whose future is now up for debate, might be the last time they made a game with branching paths that ended satisfactory. Mass Effect 3 was criticized for endings that didn’t feel like the choices matter, but that seems to have depended on your choices in that game and possibly the other two. I don’t know if there were any problems with Mass Effect: Andromeda‘s story because the complaints about the glitches showed a lack of game quality that drove people away. Anthem was so unmemorable that nobody talks about it, while from the gameplays I saw Dragon Age: The Veilguard suffered from limiting exploration, a story whose choices seemed to be “yes” and “definitely yes”, mechanics that didn’t always work, and an ignorance of the lore in favor of social pandering and preaching the usual stereotypes. Those last two seem to have hurt BioWare the most and why so many aren’t sorry they left before they did more damage to the legacies of Mass Effect and Dragon Age.
I would have ended there, but YouTube just showed me this short from eight days ago, just before the announcement.
So not a Shepard then, unless Player is his/her descendant. That’s fine. Not much changed in 600 years, though. Looks like the same “world” to me. The writer of Guardians Of The Galaxy, a movie so well received that the director thinks he’s good enough to run DC Studios? (He isn’t.) Well, people do like that movie, but could she make a video game with branching paths where your choices alter the narrative? I couldn’t. Not everyone is right for every job. I could see them messing up the Asari in how they approach gender versus the “modern audience” trend. As to the host’s question, I’d be okay with Shepard’s story being done if the new Player was a good and interesting character. Mass Effect is a franchise that could continue the universe with new characters because it’s that massive. The question is whether Player would be worth following and playing.
So would the game have been good? Given recent history that’s rather doubtful. The cinematic doesn’t tell you how the game would play, and as everybody who throws hissy fits at trailer reviews love to point out you can’t tell a story from a teaser. (You know, ignoring the job of a trailer is to get people excited for something, so you can at least review the trailer’s effectiveness.) It looks cool, but that’s not enough. BioWare used to be one of the big names in video games, but lack of quality control and social commentary over story and gameplay is what killed the company. Maybe someone will pick up this game and finish it. Maybe not. It’s disappointing, but it’s the crew that actually cared about making good games that suffer for the acts of idiots upstairs who listened to consultants over their own fanbase.
