Larian Studios Forums General Chat RPG Chat Commander Shepard Returns: Mass Effect 4

Great news! Commander Shepard's body has miraculously landed on the ice planet and will be revived again! How it was done in part 2 when a sequel was needed.

The red ending is canonical, judging by what we see in the trailer. What do you think about this?

New Mass Effect will be released in a few years

I wouldn't count on it. First, I don't think they've really done any serious story work yet. Second, If current pop-culture tropes carry on with ME 4, I think it's safe to say that ME:4 will be a soft reboot of the universe, set far into the future, far enough that they don't have to establish a canon ending with actual ramifications on the game, fortunately Liara is Asari so she can live hundreds of years and give old players some continuity with the original games.

Sadly I just don't think its in game studios to make games that are true sequels, they need to make games that everyone can pick up as their first without feeling like they're being excluded from the story by continuity.

Then again apart from this teaser and the certainty of another Mass Effect game being made I haven't done any research so if anyone knows more I'd be happy to hear it.

Which ending is red? Is it where we kill all the AI? It kinda sucks then, all of them do.

And on being sequels, you can pick up ME from any release. I actually never played ME1, just watched it on youtube for the story after ME2 got me hooked. New galactic menace plus Shepherd reborn and we can get a decent sequel. And yes, Liara, there can't be a ME without her.

ne'er have truer words been spake.

The discontinuity between each game is what laid the foundation for the disappointment of ME:3 story.
Being able to pick up ME from any release is what you'd expect, but having choices carry over from each game was what is most exciting to me, having to build-in resets and workarounds for these choices in order to make it more easy to pick-up is what I'm afraid of

For me it was the lack of "happily ever after" option where Shepherd doesn't get royally screwed. That they actually may be able to fix in ME4 considering all the ambiguities of the ME3 endings. He certainly deserves a decent retirement, at least until next Mass Effect.

The new task: make the story work fine in all three cases. No matter whether AI was wiped, synthed and controlled, ME4 must move on. You can set it in the tutorial via a questionnaire because I don't believe there are any saves to import.

Just seeing Liara walking again makes me happy. We can only hope they fired the animation artists from Andromeda though. *Their* work on Liara just might make me a mass effect hater

Mass Effect Andromeda was already an attempt to do something like this, that's why I think they'll be doing something similar with ME:4.

As for the 'questionnaire' that's pretty much what they did with the Tapestry you could make before playing Dragon Age: Inquisition, I thought it was fun, but it also showed what little impact you big choices had on the total trajectory of the story, for Inquisition the reset happens from the jump.

I'm curious to see how they'll handle it in ME:4 too.