E3 2014: BioWare Wants Your Ideas on a New Mass Effect

Less Earth-like trees. It's a specific request but an important one.

ME annoys me for the gushing fan praise over an above average franchise. The games are "good", but not OMG best series ever! Nothing beats ME! Check out my sweet N7 tattoo! Shepard FoEveR! Anyone else ever hate a game because of its fan base lol?

@john1912: Zero punctuation comes to mind.

I feel bad for whoever has to sift through the Tali fanfic at Bioware now. They're gonna need therapy.

I thought the whole ending clusterfuck was predicated on them wanting exactly not that input.

The story really is one of the best and most memorable in all of video games. I played ME 1, 2, and 3 with all of the DLC over the course of a month a year ago and I still remember the characters and story moments vividly. I very curious to see where the story though. They say its an entirely new universe.

More dynamic environments, with less linearity. A little bit more open world.

Seamless transitions, improved DLC management... Improved and updated multiplayer...

Improved character animations would be great, too. The whole way you interact with the world was static and a bit unnatural.

So many possibilities.

If they write the ending first, and work towards it like Lost? ... Scratch that. More cool aliens and guns?

This is exactly what I wanted them to do! ... just start fresh new characters, new stories, explore the big universe you made and keep going forward.

My suggestion for a new Mass Effect: Don't make one, make something new, let the ruins of the old trilogy rest.

To land on any planet I find as in ME1.

Proper side quests, not the incredibly silly 'I overheard that you needed this' rubbish from ME3.

Well hidden loads - no obvious load screen. Hide them with elevators, drop ships whatever. Just don't pull me out of the universe every time I walk through a door.

A more personal focused story. Make me important, but not the chosen one here to save the universe. I want to feel part of the games universe, not that the universe is there purely to serve me.

It's always good when a creator says, "Fuck it! I don't know what made this good... what shit will make you buy the sequel?" I totally doesn't reek of pandering.

How about you give them what they don't know they want? But try to make it good this time, not like the terrible ending to the first trilogy.

@john1912: You hate people for loving a game series? Man, you need new priorities.

I really hope so. Not much more depressing in game design than being allowed to select classes like cyber ninja, hacker, or a literal teleporter and somehow being railroaded into yet another shooting gallery where the only recourse is to kill everything you meet (ok you can also blaze through and disrupt spawn points). Seems like some of those classes might try to open this random door that for some reason is impossible to open.

Might be asking for much but I'd like a more interactive ship. Either less mook crew so they can concentrate on character dialogue, or even more mook crew so it feels like a real ship.

EDIT - Obviously Casey is now a recruitable NPC. These are just the next gen versions of the Mass Effect 2 crew interviews.I am curious if the shifting lighting points to a game set on fewer worlds (or even a Skyrim like open world). Or if it's just every place will have a day/night cycle where appropriate. Did you kill Conrad Verner during the day or night?

From what I remember, this kind of thing was taken out after ME1 because of complaints.

This, let sleeping dogs lie. Mass Effect 3 was the bullet in the temple of a series in its prime.

My suggestion is to write your own fucking game and stop trying to write them via crowdsource and committee, Bioware. Have some integrity. Goddamn.

You might as well say, ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ hey we wanna make more money and we keep hoping that our games will sell more than they do so we change them but then they don't sell more and sometimes they sell less and alright just... just tell what we need to do for you to give us moar of your monies. Preferably all of your monies. ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

I love the idea of going somewhere else. If it takes place after ME3 in a neighboring galaxy would be a great way to build out the universe and incorporate new species and world types. What worries me the most about the future is looking back a lot of bioware games. they build this epic scale, but in the reality of exploration the player only sees a fraction of it. Bioware has hit the mark with cover based shooting, but some varied mission type that aren't just turret sequences would be a nice treat.

/rant Still mega effing pumped for more from that universe.

I approve of the ME1 music.

@angeln7: indeed! A new IP would be great. I think they need to start fresh!

Well the other Bioware studio is working in something new right? I like the ME universe and I want to see familiar places like the Citadel or some Asari planet like Illium rendered in new hardware but they can tell a lot of great stories and introduce new characters with the lore and history they established in the previous trilogy they just need to get away from the "Shepard tales"

Sadly i WANT MORE OF THE SAME i want to play with the characters i loved in ME 1! instead of them havent progressively smaller roles in the sequels.

All I ask is that the game actually be finished this time.

With Casey Hudson working on the Edmonton thing, I'm in.

Dammit, they are giving me hope for more exploration in ME like the first game tried to achieve.

So glad to hear Casey Hudson is working on a new IP in the ME universe. Hopefully EA lets the team complete the game. I do wonder who's writing story for this.

They need to change the Mass Effect artstyle back to 70s sci-fi style as opposed to looking like it did in ME3, generic!

I have no idea what to suggest beyond, 'whatever made ME2 awesome' because I must have played that game through ten plus times, which is nine plus more times I played the other two through. Man I loved that game so freaking much and I can't really articulate why.

@herbiebug: "we have no idea how to make our game!"

This is all I hear.

More hot same sex alien relations

I know I'm in the minority but i thought me2 was terrible. 3 was good and 1 was great. still enjoyed the story and am looking forward to more in the ME universe.

It's always dark in Space, even if you're killing Conrad Verner on the Citadel :D

I think they should try doing more standalone games (a bit like Infiltrator, to focus on other cool stuff in the ME universe) in the meantime while they don't know wtf to do and how to bring the next epic galaxy-saving trilogy to us fans.

More sex scenes, and timed chat options.

Seeing No Man's Sky in action really gave me an idea for a Mass Effect game. Open World (see: Galaxy) exploration with fast travelling as well. I love KotR and Mass Effect 1 in terms of conceptual ideas of RPG and exploration of the galaxy, much more than I liked Mass Effect 2 for removal of most of the RPG elements, exploration elements, and how it streamlined every thing (removed) of what I loved about KotR and Mass Effect 1.

Sure there was some very glaring issues with the exploration in ME, but most of that was out of sheer laziness by the developers. The only thing that really changed from planet to planet was the colour of the rock, but that doesn't mean it can't work. Everything was too "samey", with interiors all having their bases made of the exact same materials, and layouts often replicated from a batch of what seemed like 5. The inventory system in ME was also atrocious, but it didn't need to be completely gutted from the franchise.

I feel as though if they brought those two things back to the Mass Effect IP, and got rid of the restrictive exp system, they could make one of the best sc-fi RPG to date. I don't consider ME2 or ME3 RPG because of it's lack of freedoms.

well that was a whole lot of non information. EA hasnt really be doing anything for me in that past year or two so im kinda scared. mass effect is my favorite game series by far and it had/has almost limitless potential. if they make more amazing games for me to play great but honestly my hopes are not set too high just yet.

lightning almost never strikes twice