I'm no expert, but doesn't 'Mass Effect' refer to the process of altering the mass of objects -space ships, for example - to achieve a certain effect?

FTL travel, for instance.

Were the Protheans -or whoever that tech came from- limited to that galaxy?

 

I want total freedom, like in TES:Morrowind. Even if it screws up the main storyline.

 

That would be fabulous, but it will never happen - Bioware doesn't have the balls.

The tech long predates the Protheans - and actually, a couple notable pieces of fanfiction pounced on the fact that Reapers apparently are outside the galaxy between harvests. They figured they weren't just hanging out there, but going around reaping other galaxies.

Leviathan blew that out of the water, but is best ignored anyways.

 

Ahem.

The Protheans were not the first. They did not create the Citadel. They did not forge the Mass Relays.

They merely found them.

The legacy of my kind.

Bioware gloriously fucked pretty much the entire plot up in ME3, but whatever.

 

I'll eat a shoe if they don't find some way to drag Shepard into it.

This. There's almost nowhere to go and nothing they could do for 4 that wouldn't be a step down from 3, because they answered all the questions, showed us everything, and the overarching bad guys of the entire universe were wiped out as a threat.

As haphazard and halfassed as it was, they tied up every single string with Mass Effect 3 in one way or another.

They won't make a game about political intrigue or some small non-Reaper War. They don't have the balls. Not anymore. The only thing they'll see themselves as being able to do is if they raise the stakes again. We'll probably be fighting the people who made the Reapers next time. Or some foreign Yuuzhan Vong equivalent species that is somehow more badass than the Reapers were.

They can only either be classy or jump the shark. And they aren't going to be classy.

 

So we'll be fighting the Leviathans then?

 

Basically yes. Either the Leviathans or something like the Yahg, some ridiculously overpowered evil Mary Sue species that does the galactic conquest version of a hat trick and has everybody shitting themselves.

Like I said, they can either be classy or they can jump the shark. And they aren't going to be classy. They don't even know the meaning of the word anymore. It's not like Obsidian is helping to make the game or something.

 

I will freely agree that the team/managers on Mass Effect are crap, but the interactions I've seen and decisions made by the Dragon Age: Inquisition team lead me to be a lot warmer to Bioware than I have been in the past. So...we will see when Inquisition comes out November 18th if that warmth is deserved.

 

After everything I've seen the industry do in the last seven years, I know better than to let a game that doesn't exist yet inspire hope in me.