Mass Effect Legendary Edition will include single-player base content and DLC from Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3, plus promo weapons, armors, and packs - all remastered and optimized for 4k Ultra HD. It will be available in Spring 2021 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, with forward compatibility and targeted enhancements on Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. More information to come in the new year!

Meanwhile here at BioWare, a veteran team has been hard at work envisioning the next chapter of the Mass Effect universe. We are in early stages on the project and can't say any more just yet, but we’re looking forward to sharing our vision for where we'll be going next.

With the news of the Mass Effect collection coming out there also came a new piece of information that apparently a new Mass Effect game is under development and is led by a "veteran" team.

So what do people actually want from the next Mass Effect game? Andromeda tried undertaking a step away from the original trilogy and all bugs aside personally I thought the biggest failing of that title was the writing. The quests were forgettable and you repeated a whole bunch of boring cookie cutter activities but this all boiled down to poor writing. No one from the new set of characters was interesting or particularly likeable and the primary story quest was a rehash of "the ancient ones" coming back that the original trilogy was based around. None of the side quests or even major quests were particularly impactful - with a few minor exceptions - and the entire premise seemed squandered on making sure you had a lot of question marks on your map rather than meaningful character interactions.

You could go on and on listing the shortcomings of Andromeda but it really makes me wonder what it is that I actually want from Mass Effect. A part of me wants them to just continue the story of the original trilogy but I also feel like we've already done that. Prequels rarely work because you're faced with having to think up new gameplay mechanics that somehow predate the cool tech of the future. Andromeda already ran up against this with having gear and abilities that seemed way more advanced than anything you experienced in the original trilogy despite being set hundreds of years in the past. If you go too far forward you run the risk of become too far detached from the source material to the point where it might as well be a totally different game.

So what do you guys want? More of the same? A complete departure from what we already had? Would you want members from the original cast to make a return? Old man Garrus sending you out on missions and telling you stories of what happened after The Shepard chose the green ending?

My first reaction is to say don't bother. Just give me the remasters and let it end.

But if you put a gun to my head and forced me to come up with a new Mass Effect story I could actually care about, it would be set in the far future in relation to the original story, and would revolve around conflict between species. No big universe-ending baddie, just some good old internal politics.

Admittedly it might be a bit of a challenge to sell that to the Mass Effect audience, and I would bet my car that Mass Effect 4 will be the most predictable story possible - the resurrection of the Reapers.

I want a sequel set in the Milky Way after the main trilogy. I also really want (really, really, really,really want) Bioware to stop their wishy-washy "all choices are valid and should be respected" horseshit and just pick a cannon ending to do it. Personally, I would prefer a fairly "Paragon" version of the universe since that gives them the most to work with going forward (i.e. Geth are still alive, Krogan genophage is cured, etc.).

As far as story goes, I think it would be fascinating to see the state of the galaxy in a post-Reaper invasion timeline. You have all these power structures that have existed for thousands of years in that universe that are now either gone or are on their last legs. Like, maybe some version of the Council still exists, but the Citadel itself is gone. Lots of major homeworlds and industrial centers are pretty toasted. The Mass Effect Relays shut down and everyone (presumably) needed to figure out how to reboot them. What do all of those things mean for the galaxy at large?

The thing is, as bad as the ME3 ending shat the bed, it actually provides a wonderful opportunity for a sort of soft reset to make the universe fresh again. The best part of ME1 was just going down the rabbit hole of how universe worked. It's also partly why ME3 kind of sucked - the series stopped being about the nitty-gritty of the galaxy and instead tried to be a Big Dumb Sci-Fi Movie.

For example, how does the Turian ethos of "next person up" work when like half of the population is dead and there isn't necessarily a "next person?" How is Quarian society changing now that they have a homeworld and aren't bound to ships all the time? What do the Geth look like now that they are true individuals?

Goddammit. I normally hate fan-fiction, but I suddenly have the urge to head-cannon a lot of this stuff just to see if I can do it better than Bioware.

The two big ones for me:

Get back to being an RPG first.

I know its not the top opinion, but to me ME 1 is the best ME game by a a good amount, in part because of the RPG elements that were shed going forward. I know a lot of that stuff is rough in the first game, but basically instead of refining it they got rid of all that stuff for a totally linear progression in 2, and a little improvement in 3 but still very limited as far build variety, party customization, and many aspcects.

So why go back to being an RPG now? I don't think the tight corridor gameplay is going to play anymore, on top of my tastes. Real RPGs can sell, as CDPR has and will prove. And I think the way forward is along a Deus Ex sort of route of allowing gameplay in an open space to be dictated by your RPG choices and story choices, which it seems Cyberpunk 2077 is doing.

Tell a Story with a Refined Scope and a Good Villain

ME 1 was also my favorite because the game had a good villain in it and a clear arc with that, even if larger things were brought in to loom and set up the next game. This is basic storytelling stuff for a reason.

As far as scope, some like their epic stories but to me it simply always waters down a lot of elements in most all cases. If you pick a story of a bit smaller scope, say not the end of all living life, the choices aren't so binary and ham fisted clear perhaps, like say the end of ME 3. Instead, more Witcher series style (although yes things get pretty epic in 3, but it was still done well with all the groundwork laid).

ME 2, 3, 4 bungled one or both of these elements entirely to me. Get back to basics.

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Then I'm open to whatever else I guess. I would like to see them keep focusing on the ship and crew and allow a ton of customization for those elements, as well as any kind of general away team and crew you have. Please actually allow you to customize your party again. Then stuff like that could factor into story and gameplay moments, big battles and options your ship allows. Take a page out of the MGSV playbook and let me put custom music on my ship and call it in to pick me up from the field.

I would focus on that plus the elements I mentioned above, with some good tactical shooting.

And of course, this all requires good execution. I believe Casey Hudson has a better vision for the series and hopefully post the Frostbyte debacle at EA maybe something good can come from ME again.

Let’s make Vinny‘s Detectivr Garrus game happen!

I would love to see the franchise expanded into different types of genres. Like I personally think the Mass Effect canon established in the trilogy is fantastic, and there's lots of different events like the first contact war that would be cool settings for like a FPS. I'm excited to get the remasters, but for the future of the franchise I want more experimentation to be done on what is a Mass Effect game.

At the end of the day, Andromeda is an okay Mass Effect compared to the Shepard trilogy. The gameplay was awesome at best due to being able to pick and choose your abilities, the story and characters were okay at worst, but its development cycle was an absolute nightmare, and we've all see the results of that. So, I'm fine with an "Andromeda 2", but with EA not being EA during development.

Just gimme a smaller scale action RPG with a good story that doesn't rely on generic open world quests.

I feel like Mass Effect needs solid writing, tactical combat, a sense of sci fi wonder, and galaxy-spanning conflicts.

Or some smaller Citadel stories, or prequel events from the Codex.

Good?

Seriously, there are so many ways to do it well. You could tell a smaller, more focused story set on a handful of worlds with personal stakes instead of some big galactic threat.

You could tell another galactic threat story, preferably not involving the reapers but some other dangerous force.

You could tell a political intrigue story.

You could tell a side story set during the Mass Effect trilogy but focusing on other things.

There are lots of ways to do it well and all are reasonably valid. It just needs to have good vision and execution. I think going smaller in scope to try and reboot might be pretty good.

But I bet they try something huge because it's EA and they are going to want to take a big swing. I just hope it's not the reapers and it's not Shepherd.

When I finally got around to Andromeda last year, I found a game with an extremely promising premise that slowly whittled away at it until all that remained was the husk of the previous trilogy. I would be totally fine with a game that actually followed through on the initial tone of Andromeda, lost in space and believed to be capable of steering a rudderless ship because you are the closest thing to a superhero these people have ever known...except actually you're just a regular guy/girl who was along for the ride because of the name on your birth certificate and you're not an expert in any of this, let alone a super-powered biotic super-soldier.

If they're afraid of inventing new alien species - and I get that, the originals are so fleshed out and realized already - then they have a really easy path towards this by reverting back to the First Contact War and reshaping humanity's place in the galaxy. So far the Mass Effect series has only shown us a human race that clearly wields the most political power and the most effective military force, or if they don't are on that way to achieving such by the end of 3 so show us curious and confused instead. Make it a game that's more about discovery than destruction, but on a much more curated level than something I could point to like No Man's Sky for immediate inspiration.

Hell, they wouldn't even necessarily have to approach it from the humans' perspective if they wanted a more structured game that still had a lot of action. Play as a turian strike force interacting with the world and picking up the pieces from previous conflicts around the galaxy who are eventually tasked to check in on a long-ignored Mass Effect relay where they discover the first humans that made contact with the wider galaxy. If they wanted to go full-on bonkers they could even let you play that scenario out, perhaps not even firing, and explore how seemingly small decisions can have far-reaching consequences by subtly rewriting how the galaxy functions in the years leading up to the Reapers' return for a new trilogy.

Really, I just keep coming back to the moment you first meet a new species in Andromeda and almost immediately understand what they're saying. We all know universal translators are magical devices but they're still established as sourced from documentation and research provided by all consenting parties to better understand each other - total strangers from separate galaxies should have no way of understanding or even comprehending each other, and I think the Mass Effect series is really primed to explore that in a way many other huge AAA experiences aren't.

There are several ways to do it well. Unfortunately they already burned one of them with Andromeda, such that I don’t think they will be touching that concept ever again. To me, the clearest way forward is a sequel to the Destroy ending of ME3, about whatever huge, chaotic realignment of power happens after the Reapers upended the galactic chess board. My personal hope is that BioWare stays away from Reapers, Architects or other kinds of ancient technology plotlines and keeps it grounded in social and political interactions between groups. They already did the big eldritch baddie plot twice in this franchise, they absolutely cannot pull it out for a third.

What really was specila for me about Mass Effect was teh story....story story story. I loved teh dalague choices and I even came to appaues teh Pargon system of "Selfless" vs Selfish" that they insuded into teh story. If they make a new game I want choices, I want choices bakc better than ever.

The teh basics:

- More choices that are controlled by the player for everything! Character design, clothing, speaking voice, race of alien, attitude, choices of who to befriend and whom to romance! Choices!

- A story that is a bit 'toned down' on the whole Galaxy is in peril - the sky is falling! Making the main story more personal. MS2 and ME 3 were too bombastic and downers. Why am I farting around the galaxy when that galaxy is ending? Give a story where teh stakes are personal, so going on PERSONAL missions makes sense!!!!!

- Let teh lead character be a WIDE selection of humanoid alien : Asari, Drell, Human, Salarian, Turian, Volus, Batarians, Krogan, or Quarians

- More sub-stories and more choices to make in those sub stories. I want my choices to influence how mission go, who helps my main protagonist, and who takes away help based on what 'the main character' has done or not done.

- More areas to explore in the friggin' Citadel. More home worlds cites with more building and architecture to explore for each Citadel race.

- Actually, if the story is about an earlier time just after Humans found the Citadel. Allowing the player to be a human or any of the other races would there allow and broader experience for the game and a far wider point of view.

- A broader Relationship system that covers both Platonic and Romantic engagements. Let the PLAYER choose who their main character befriends and who they snub.

- A STATE OF THE ART character creation system. I want some real choices! If I want my main character to be a 4ft tall Trans-Woman human than allow me to make that. If I want my main character to be an abnormally tall Volus than make me a 1ft taller than ANY other Volus! Allow for clothing chocies on the ship, out in space, on plants with armor, and out dancing at a club....cut teh shit with there being fiev ship uniprms and armor taht mostly looks the same.

Less shooting. More talking.

I want it be a more fleshed out RPG experience, with more options to explore the diverse characters and overall facets of what make that universe so appealing. One of the biggest issues with the ME franchise from the get go was their desire to make you absolutely play as a human. That Andromeda stuck with this format no less was basically criminal. It's a universe filled with tons of interesting Aliens, if there aren't a whole suite of race options in this new thing it'll be a huge undersight imo.

Beyond that though I think another thing the original ME did that was a bit underwhelming was the falseness of it's class options. Yes there was some variety to abilities and powers and how you approached combat, but the game was still always combat. You were still fighting out of the situations they designed. RPG's are better when the diverse class options actually have an overall impact on the way you play the game. If your an engineer you should do less shooting and more hacking, more things with technology and equipment. For me for a sequel I'd like to see an actual attempt to separate the overall game experience from some of these classes, and hell even the narratives.

Bioware themselves explored the concepts of this with the original Dragon Age and some of SWTOR, the idea that the class and race you picked impacted your starting location and narrative. I want to see this concept extended. If I want to play as an engineer, or a medic on the Starship and never advance to Captain there should be an arc that does that. Games have gotten so obsessed with you being "the one person who does it all" and obessed with this idea that if you don't give the gamers "everything they want" that you won't sell. We have enough of this content already. Give us rich deep experiences with good characters, with good true options and choices in how you can play the game.

To be specific, I wouldn't mind entirely different single player story campaigns based on some of the several key positions you'd see filled on a ship. There can be an overarching narrative or a larger plot point but working more towards the idea that this thing is a crew and relationship simulator over top of a space and action sim is exactly what I want personally.

Totally different story set in the Milky Way that has nothing to do with the old games. Just make a new sci-fi story and world and species with bionics and thematic similarities and the Mass Effect name slapped onto it.

the more i consider the question ("what do i want from a new mass effect?"), the more i feel they really blew it with andromeda. they concocted the perfect setup- keep all the world-building of the OG trilogy by using aliens and tech that's already established, but grant the writers total narrative freedom by placing it all in uncharted space.

and then andromeda happened.

as a recovering mass effect superfan- it's really, really difficult for me to imagine what a new game should be. the intervening years since ME3 have really coloured my preferences- and while i can't tell you exactly what i do want, i can say:

• i don't want it to be a fate-of-the-universe-hangs-in-the-balance story; they need to dial down the stakes
• i don't want to play as another anodyne avatar for player choice (shepard); i'd like to play a character with a specific characterization
• i don't want the narrative thrust of the game to be about uncovering an ancient secret or big bad; i'd prefer it to be character-driven and a greater degree of political intrigue

beyond that i'm fairly open-minded. make it a 3rd person shooter, a turn-based strategy game, or a character action game- as long as it's a good vehicle for that fiction, i'm down. i care less about building my own personal character than being in that world- these days i'm having more fun stepping into someone else's perspective than trying to forge my own.

another approach would be something like rogue one- write a story that supplements shepard's journey, but as a bit-character that had a retconned enormous impact on the success of shepard's mission. that way you get your new stuff with a hit of nostaligia, just like rogue one did with the death star plot.

There's so much uncovered ground outside of Shepard's crew during and before the original trilogy, I don't have a specific desire but there's the usual suspects: The First Contact War, anything with Anderson, exploring the species that didn't get much screentime or homeworld visits (let me roleplay a volus you cowards).

I also think they should bring back the paragon/renegade stuff, because as binary as it was it was a damn sight more interesting than the complete absence of any choice -> consequence scenarios in Andromeda, which felt empty in comparison.

Honestly, there's just a lot of potential for a smaller scale mystery to uncover, because of the way they set up the world. Something as simple as a murder mystery would work for a main plotline in this universe because they have so many opportunities for red herrings and entertaining motives/character interactions/locations.

@toughshed: 100%

be an RPG. will agree that the first is the best looking back on it.

if i could add anything, be a big sprawling RPG. wouldn't mind character driven Skyrim. they probably thought they were trying that with Andromeda though.

Give me either a mass effect CRPG or an XCOM-like.

Making a game that is equal parts RPG and shooter seems damn near impossible. I don't think I've ever seen anyone do it right. Mass Effect might have the RPG parts right, sort of, but the actual feeling of combat in that game is awful, some of the worst third person shooting I've ever had to deal with. And in a game where you do a lot of third person shooting and, quite frankly, not a whole lot of RPG stat management, I personally would say the shooting should come first.

That's not to say that character building can't be a part of it, but perhaps they could abstract it a little more. Give us a set of DnD-like attributes (strength, health, stamina, that sort of thing) and have those stats influence what we can use (you need x strength to wield assault rifles, you need some dex or something for snipers) and tie biotics to a sort of magic stat. This way, character builds don't affect weapon stats (as in, assault rifle A always has accuracy x and damage y for everyone who ever uses it) but you're still building a character (if you dump enough in strength to get assault rifle A, you're going to have to give up the ability to use high level biotics). I personally think this is a way more interesting character building system than Mass Effect 1's stat options, where everything is very specific (here's your charm stat, here's your shotgun stat, here's a stat for this biotic stat, etc.).

I don't want worlds as big as ME Andromeda's or Dragon Age Inquisition's if they can't fill them with interesting stuff to do. No filler quests, no "gather ten of these", no "kill x number of y enemy". I will take the super-linear levels of ME2 and 3 if it means the side quests all have fully fleshed-out stories to go with them. I'm fine with driving the Mako across beautiful landscapes, finding abandoned outposts or new towns off to the side, or caves with something interesting in them, stuff like that, but I'm not OK with checklist game design.

As far as setting or time or place goes... I don't know. I'm personally way more interested in what happens in the time right after Mass Effect 3 ends. Yeah, I know, that means that suddenly one of the endings was the "correct" one and they'll probably have to define some aspects of Shepherd's character which might invalidate some playthroughs, but who cares? I don't! Make a canon and give me a great story afterwards. Baldur's Gate 2 made a canon for the first game and forced everyone to use it and nobody complains about that, so Bioware can just do that again.

On there other hand, there's a lot of pre-Mass Effect conflict to explore. Turian wars. Garrus's doings before he met Shepherd. Or something we haven't actually heard of.

No matter what they're doing with it, I'm definitely interested in another new Mass Effect.

EDIT: I was re-reading my post and I'd like to bring up something else: Stats for party members.

I personally would rather the developers have an auto level-up for them, with an option for people who want to manually level all of the characters. I always think it's kind of weird that these people with their own personalities, desires, pasts, and futures leave their growth and development entirely up to Shepherd and, honestly, I'm not terribly interested in managing more than my main character.

- strong, distinct characters that can die or leave you

- for the love of god, no open environments. each environment should serve a purpose and have a coherent narrative arc, like ME2.

- no fetch quests

- no universe ending story. ive always like the idea of crime stories on the citadel or having an x-files-like story of uncovering strange things around the galaxy... but none of it should amount to a reaper-like situation.

- impactful ship customization that is both aesthetic and functional.

Just let me romance an Elcor.

I really don't know what I would want besides not a boring hobbled mess that was Andromeda. I honestly wish they would remake the trilogy from scratch for the next generation on the level of a Resident Evil 2 and 3. That kind of fidelity in a Mass Effect 1 game with a sprawling Citadel would be dope...

OK maybe now I know what I want from a new ME game. Give me something like a cyberpunk game that takes place on the Citadel mixed with Vinny's C-Sec cop theme.

From what I have seen about the making of Andromeda, that is exactly what was going on with that game, yeah. They were trying to almost make a No Man's Sky level of freedom to it initially or something it seemed. It was massively dialed back.

It was also in the Frostbyte period where every game tried to use that engine even though it was never in the games best interest unless it was a Battlefield game. Its not the engine for that type of game at all.

I personally would like to see a pretty open structure in my theoretical game as well. It doesn't need to be No Man's Sky or maybe quite Bethesda go anywhere at any time kind of stuff, I'd just allow for drop offs anywhere on big open maps, like an expanded version of MGSV.

Combat gameplay wise, I actually thought Andromeda was really good so I don't think a ton would need to be done different there. Just, well, everything else lol.

Do something small in scope and experimental and nothing like the DA:I/Andromeda template. Don't do any sort of Chosen One story. Basically, do Dragon Age II in space but good.

1: Take one of the three endings of ME3 and declare it canon (I think it would probably end up being the Destruction ending, as that one allows them to effectively reset).

2: Jump forward just far enough in time so that the cast and crew from the original trilogy aren't really a factor anymore.

3: Keep the scale of the story small; or, at least in comparison to the civilization ending threat of the Reapers.

4: We got this?

We supposedly have all this power available to make the most impressive games ever? Okay. Give me each planet with a different gravity.

Give me the fucking Mako Mk 2. Fully customizable to cope with the different environments. Wheels, tank treads, hover platform, legs.

I agree with everyone saying keep the story small. Not everything has to have a galaxy-ending threat.

Bring back the best feature of a BioWare game in the past dozen years: A number of unique origin stories to choose from and play.

In one sentence: I want a Cowboy Bebop game.

If you're thinking, "Wait, but Cowboy Bebop isn't like Mass Effect", that's partially because I don't want another "Mass Effect" game with my Mass Effect. No Reapers, no Collectors, no Geth, no Protheans, no...whatever was in Andromeda (I never played it). I would go so far as to say no N7, no council, no Cerberus, etc. etc.

The lore and history behind Mass Effect is so rich, you can do a lot with it, without a Shepard or some progenitor alien race. It's sort of the thing with Star Wars. There's so much in that universe, so many novels, side stories, random one off characters that people wonder, "I wonder what's this guy's deal?", and yet so many things go back to Jedi and X-Wings. Even if familiar ground is retreaded, you could tell an interesting story about a Quarian on their pilgrimage without bringing in the Geth, or what it's like to be a Krogan living through the Genophage, without addressing how to cure it. So my pie in the sky answer to what do you do with Mass Effect is something like a Cowboy Bebop. A group of characters on a ship, doing jobs. Not to save the galaxy, but to get paid and get by.

Alternative answer: Garrus Vakarian, Citadel detective.

Best way to start a morning is with Mass Effect Legendary edition teaser :D
We all knew it was coming but it's still great to see it and know it's official.
As for a new Mass Effect game I just want a good story to be told in ME universe with easter eggs and familiar characters (bring back Tali)

I couldn't even tell you. I'm super hyped for the trilogy remaster..but a new Mass Effect? After I was hesitantly willing to give Andromeda a chance at launch and burned by that hot mess, I have no idea what I would want from a new game. I put many hours into Andromeda, hoping to find something about it that was redeeming (getting the Platinum required 3 playthroughs from me), but I found nothing. So I guess my only request would be "Everything they did for Andromeda, don't here".

Granted, I waited until the final patch released to play it, but I am apparently a crazy person who wasn't mortally wounded playing Mass Effect: Andromeda. I do think they went a little more cookie cutter, action blockbuster than political sci-fi with the story. I equate it to being a little more Star Wars than the original trilogy, which was a little more Star Trek. But I also think they had plenty of room to expanded on the story stuff in sequels.

Honestly, I was way more disappointed after the end of Mass Effect 3 than I was at Andromeda. I think a lot of video games handle player choice very poorly. I think Mass Effect 3 was the tipping point for me with that stuff. In the end, what are my choices actually getting me in a game that has to conclude with the ending the writers have come up with? More often than not, it's a slightly different line of dialogue, and the possibility of the death of a supporting character, which ultimately has little bearing on the story. 9 times out of 10 it adds nothing to the story. It in fact subtracts from it. 9 times out of 10, all it does is continue the game as scheduled, just with fewer cutscenes now that that character is gone. It's not giving you actual choice, it's giving you an optimal way of doing thing. So by the end of 3, I was ready for them to throw everything out, and try something different. Where as Andromeda at least left me saying "Okay, lets see where they go from here".

So what do I want from a new Mass Effect? Another chance to fuck some aliens!

...I don't know. At this point, I'm not expecting a AAA developer to reinvent the wheel on choice systems in video games. Just give me something that plays good, make it look pretty, and maybe I'll be more lenient with you're sub-par story. I guess what I'm saying here is that the bar is pretty low, and I'd be fine with another Andromeda? Oh, but make sure it's not a broken mess on launch day this time.

Get rid of the Paragon/Renegade system altogether. Everyone would just go 99% paragon or renegade anyway. Focus on telling a good story with some meaningful choices instead of doing two things half-heartedly.

Mass Effect: First Contact. Humans were late to the party so how late? Where the other species looking for us? How far ahead were they, etc?

Firstly, I could not bring myself to play Andromeda, so I'm just going off the original trilogy.

I agree with everyone asking for a story with smaller scope than the whole 'sentient life wiped out galaxy-wide' setup. Lower the stakes. Even if they were to do something on the level of 'curing the genophage', and flesh that out properly (not just 'talk to this guy, put the cure in this magic radio tower'), I think it'd make your actions feel much weightier. The way we just raced around the galaxy in Mass Effect 3, solving galactic problems that had existed for centuries like we were crossing items off a shopping list really cheapened the experience for me. For more of mid-sized main story, what if they set it in Batarian space? The Batarians were almost wiped out at the onset of the invasion, so maybe there's a power vacuum, with all sorts of interested parties trying to claim the territory left behind. Or, one of the best things about these games, for me, is getting to know the characters. So why not focus on their stories more? The thing you're doing doesn't need to have a huge impact on the wider universe as long as it feels meaningful to one of your space friends; more Firefly, less Mass Effect 3.

Also, I liked the way they increasingly had characters interact with each other in 2, and especially in 3; the way you'd be wandering around the ship and find them hanging out and chatting amongst themselves. More of this, please, but what if it had more of an impact in gameplay too? Bring back some of the ideas from older Bioware games where siding with certain characters in certain situations would affect other character's dispositions toward you.

I think they should try a replacement for the paragon/renegade meter but I've no idea with what.

Gameplay-wise, I prefer the more streamlined stats and weapons system they ended up with to Mass Effect 1's constant stream of incrementally improved weapons and armour. I'm not at all wedded to keeping it a 3rd person shooter though (I'm sure they will); if they want to make it a FPS or a turn-based tactics game, I'd be totally fine with that, as long as it's serviceable. The combat is not what I come to these games for.

Also, I wouldn't say no to a Turian playable character.

I don't mind the approach Andromeda took of going to another galaxy, but I think they handled it poorly.

First of all, writing is king. That means, a) give us less side quests with interesting writing instead of a gazillion fetch quests, b) you want a different cast? Fine, just don't make the protagonist neo-Shepard, and c) if you want to go to another galaxy, take full advantage of it: more races, more interesting cultures, with social and political quirks... the best thing ME had for it was exploring and learning about the other races and characters, without it, the series is just a generic 3rd person shooter. We all accept the gameplay was better in Mass Effect 3, but the series wouldn't have reached it if it wasn't for Sovereign, Garrus, the Elcor, etc...

Idk, as long as they don't do open world again. I like open world games but its obvious that Bioware thrives in semi open/Linear settings.

@zoofame: I'd be really excited if they explored the sudden isolation of all those planets and cultures, but I don't trust them do something so cool. Even when Bioware was good they were never that interested in that kind of causational, smaller-scale plot design.

I’d like to see what many here are looking for: something after the events of ME3 when you’re picking up the pieces. One take on it that I would personally really like is something akin to DA: Origins when you can start as different races to get differing Act 1 storylines, converge in Act 2, and have variations on a common conclusion to set up the next game. It would let you focus on more small scale stuff and also enhance replayability by starting a bunch of new characters. Might also provide a great opening for DLC of playable races and origin stories.

I really liked Andromedas premise and it's not a bad game. It just didn't have any soul in it what so ever.

Just keep Mac Walters and whoever wrote Andromeda far, FAR away from the writing and characters.

Small.

The Mass Effect trilogy gave us big, galactic events, wars of millions, an extinction event driven by machine gods, a reality-warping machine powered by a ghost child, we did big. The series went big as hell, and with the exception of the last 10 minutes of 3, it worked great. Part of what made Andromeda shit was that it was clearly trying to stick to the same script of setting up a big, galaxy-spanning threat.

The best part about Mass Effect, and the thing that I think no game has done as well as Mass Effect since Mass Effect, is the inter-party dynamics. Create a small, contained, personal story that give your party space to grow, to argue, to share their views of the world, and to provide context. Cowboy Bebop and Firefly have been mentioned in this thread, and "a crew of n'er-do-wells having fun space antics" feels like the perfect tone to hit.

The Citadel Cop idea has been floating around discussions of ME for like a decade now, so here's my completely different suggestion for a premise: protagonist was a high-ranking officer in one of the preestablished mercenary groups (I think Eclipse is the most interesting, as the sort of sketchy, assassin-y, most secretive of the three big ones) who was the right-hand man of previous gang leadership, but as part of a successful coup by a rogue faction within the gang, the MC was left for dead on some bum-ass world at the end of space.

Stranded on the ass end of space, rapidly getting (stealing?) a junker ship, the MC's thrust is to call in old favors, break bread with old enemies, and slowly build up a gang of their own capable of taking on the new Eclipse leadership. This speaks to my own storytelling preferences, but I think the thrust of the game should be in slowly picking off members of the new Eclipse leader's associates, in a sort of Kill Bill, Assassin's Creed style that creates a parallel "evil" party against which you can play the player's "good" party. Once the player's built up their perfect motley crew of criminals, outcasts, and loose cannons (in a lovable way, like the more rogueish members of the trilogy crew), they can finally lay siege to the Eclipse headquarters and attempt to reclaim control of the gang.

It's a new story which explores factions, characters, and settings which the OG trilogy only hinted at, it hits the best notes of the previous trilogy (building the crew for one big mission is intentionally very ME2 without being a carbon copy), and a new focus on villains, who frankly were never really the highlight of the original trilogy, create new opportunities for the intercharacter relations which this series is known for.

@theflamingo352: it would be an interesting idea to have your ship be the only one somehow capable of jumping long distances, giving you reason for why you’re solving everyone’s problems. Rebuilding the relays as a means of acquiring new team members is a classic RPG trope. Exploring unknown space with no backup could add some freshness to what is otherwise a known galaxy. I also love the idea from above about customizing your lander, ship music etc similar to MGS5. Those are small things that add a whole lot of “you” into a linear experience.

@humanity: Oh the "we're the only ship that can still connect the worlds" premise is wayyyy more up Bioware's angle (as the protagonists are centrally important to saving the fictional world). I can imagine it way more easily now.

And that's not a bad thing; in fact, I think having one ship as the dramatic vanishing point for everyone's problems is fucking fantastic. That's the kind of game premise that could see you having one mission where you need to act as dignitaries to try and keep two solar systems together, and another mission trying to explain to a desperate crowd of normal people why they can't all shove on your ship to escape their unsupported colony.

@theflamingo352: ..and then.. stay with me here.. what if you realize one of the moons is a zombie moon trying to eat everyone? A little bit of synergy? Huh.. wait no.. come back!

I basically want The Mandalorian but in the Mass Effect Universe. Do 10 episodes in the vein of the Dark Pictures Anthology stuff, each episode focusing on a different aspect of the universe. But make it space western-esque like The Mandalorian, and also in the sense that there are plenty of nods to the source material but very much each telling their own story that all come together in the final episode.

@youeightit: So what you actually want is Cowboy Bebop.

@humanity: exactly.

@humanity: "One" of the moons? Didn't you know the first letters of each level in DS3 combine to read "There are more moons" or "The other moons are awake"? Dead space 4 is going to happen! It has too! ʰᵒʷ ᵉˡˢᵉ ʷᶦˡˡ ᶦ ˡᵉᵃʳⁿ ʷʰᵃᵗ ʰᵃᵖᵖᵉⁿˢ ⁿᵉˣᵗ

I'm surprised how often Deadspace appears when talking about Mass Effect. Pleasantly surprised because that's what I want too.

Dead Space -esque Mass Effect or Cowboy Bebop are what I want as well.

I'd also enjoy if they made the ending canon where the reapers win and you play as a human somehow thawed out like Javik 50,000 years later by someone whose on to the trail of the reapers and you're their only clue to tie it all together. Lots of avenues to play as either a hero or a reluctant hero or a fish out of water regular joe swept up in the political machinations of some future universe you may or may not care about.

Gameplay is slower, more deliberate with environmental story telling and exploring truly unknowably alien and exotic locals.

OR Do a literal remake of the trilogy, using the additional development time to flesh out and refine a lot of the story beats.

I also wish the series explored more of the elderitch horror aspect of the Reapers that ME1 established and kind of... did away with in 3.

Ah I see I'm back to Mass Effect: Deadspace.