Mass Effect '5' speculation (Official Thread)

I really think people misunderstand that MEA could have been great had they not wasted the first three years fucking around and then actually only had two years to work on the game.  Had they spent the full five years working on it we'd have had a different game.  Honestly, had ME4 been set in the MW and had the same time spent working on it we still would have had a royal fuck up of a game.  It's not the setting that's the problem; they have to make use of the full development time.  (I'm not rehashing the details but this is close enough.)

As others have pointed out, the MW is not a fix.  Now, it's true, humans beings on the galactic scene for like 30 years but deciding to leave the galaxy is outright bizarre behavior.  Still, I believe moving forward is always better than backward.  Just do it right.  Actually, having the AI leave the MW 500-1000 years after the Reaper War would have made much more sense.

And that's exactly what was out of their control.

That's not the same thing as not canonizing any of them. It's decanonizing all of them.

You're not preserving people's choices anymore, so what problem does that actually solve that canonization doesn't solve too?

I rather they'll not touch the franchise and fuck it up even worse than Andromeda. And I rather they would never make a sequel of it either, until they got their shit together and start listening to people, and learn from their mistakes.

You do understand that if BioWare had fucked around for three years and then only really spent two years on a ME game set into the Milky Way with a canonized ending and Shepard featured...it'd still have been a completely shit game, right?  The setting isn't the problem.  The lack of time spent on its actual development (three wasted years and then two scrambling to make up for it) is the culprit.

I'm halfway with you on this. Bioware wasting time on a gimmick was probably the biggest that made Andromeda... average if I'm being nice. That said, I really do think Andromeda is a less interesting setting compared to the Milky Way. 

I mean, Andromeda could be viable, they'd just have to commit virtual genocide against the kett, and fast-forward the time about a 100 years.
Otherwise, no Andromeda for me, thanks.

My point was really that the bigger problem was the development time.  We could have had a fine game in a different setting.

By the shitty, unimaginative, boring kett.

But then, 'could be there' is the same as 'aren't there'. I don't see how non-existent races would, in any way, add to the depth of Andromeda...

I think actually it could have been more interesting than the MW if they had more deeply used their imaginations. Like, we are in a whole new galaxy and every species encountered is humanoid? Ok. But also one problem with making it a frontier/colonizing game is that there can't be much land there occupied already, so we got just a bunch of empty landscapes and caves/ruins on every planet. I think it was a mistake to plop us in this completely undeveloped boondocks Solar System without a proper city-hub to explore (like the Citadel) or villages to stumble across while exploring (necessary in open world-ish games I think). Consider that the fun of exploring in Elder Scrolls or TW3 or Fallout games or even a game like Horizon Zero Dawn is partly getting to the next big city or stumbling upon a major side quest in a village; that's what open maps are all about. I think what should have happened is: the AI think they're going there as colonizers, but actually the solar system is already developed and thriving with life and new species and complex politics, and you've accidentally stumbled into some (more interesting and fun) dramatic storyline instead. Thwart their (and our) expectations in the first act.