Things working against a possible Ryder series sequel as of right now

I dunno. The franchise basically being gutted into another BF2 doesn't exactly seem harmless. It sure harms my chances of ever owning another Mass Effect game, because the singleplayer component is the only reason I'd ever buy it. Without it, it's as good as dead.

You say that people aren't buying RPG's anymore, but is there actual data to show that they're just not worthwhile, or is it just EA that isn't interested? Seems to me that other excellent, focused singleplayer games still come out here and there, and while they may not have the level of options and customization as I've grown accustomed to from BioWare's past work, they still provided a lot of what I love about these sorts of games, and did some things much better than BioWare's recent works, especially on a technical level. 

Sorry, I didn't mean people don't buy RPGs I mean as long as Bioware didn't trick their customers into thinking this particular game was an RPG.

I'd quite like someone to run with a multiplayer Mass Effect game specifically to keep EA happy so Bioware can work on an SP game without having to split their resources into a multiplayer element.

I've never understood why having a canon ending is so bad in the same universe where the Reapers were controlled by a child AI or the protagonist dies and wakes up later like nothing happened, and the villains are capable of mind controlling people and making them believe certain things happened that actually didn't.

The writing at the end of ME3 wasn't just bad, it was boring and anticlimactic.


Personally? I'd gladly welcome a canon color ending or Indoctrination Theory or some other absurd premise if the result is a game anywhere near as good as ME2 that's set in the same basic universe.

How is any of that relevant to what I said? The writing quality of ME3's ending has absolutely nothing to do with forcing a canon ending on the story. Which is bad because it turns every choice you made in 3 games irrelevant.

It's relevant in the sense that my point is that something bad is worth retconning; in this case I believe it's worth retconning to a canon ending so as to sidestep a lot of the messiness of how ME3 ended up.



I don't think Destroy even needs that much retconning to be viable, so long as they make sure to stick with the "Path of least number of NPC deaths." The only ones other than the Reapers who got completely wiped in High EMS were the Geth and considering those are constructs, it's easy to say "The Quarians decided to rebuild the Geth and avoid the mistakes of the past" or something to that effect.

IT's not a "retcon" to have a sequel set in a universe which had one particular Shepard who did particular things. After all, my second MET playthrough didn't retcon my first playthrough.

I agree that Andromeda was probably the safest option for BioWare, I just don't think anything they would try to the endings would make the situation any better then leaving for Andromeda and in plenty of possible outcomes it might be worse.

Just because some people say they wouldn't mind a "canon ending" I really don't think it would go over that well due to how the internet is looking for a reason to rage. Even with the problems in Andromeda I think it is still safer for BioWare to stay there then to go back and even think of adjusting anything as a reason to canon ending it will go back to what we started to see at the end of Mass Effect 1 with the thread posts of "my choices don't matter" especially when you see people complaining that they didn't get an "awesome CGI battle based on my choices" which I saw several times. Its the same as people saying "I want an open world BioWare game" that group of people might be saying it, but in reality it didn't go over well for they never thought out the trade-offs that would happen.

I recall BW saying that MEA was designed to be a spiritual successor to ME1. Or what ME1 was supposed to be like. Least as far as exploration and colonizing goes, because that is it's main focus.

Uh, no? There was no interaction between the crew in ME1 on Normandy beyond main plot story debrief's( point of which is to discuss plot, not character interaction nor development) and love triangle issue.

ME2 was pretty bad too, as crew only seem to interact with EDI, conflicts( only Miranda vs Jack and Legion vs Tali) and Suicide Mission.

ME3 is first to get Normandy interactions an actual thing! This is the game where our crew get's to chat with one another on different locations on ship as story progresses. One issue ME3 has is crew, beyond some nameless NPC's, never move. Sure they appear from one room to another as story progresses, but they are still just standing or sitting, with only basic use of animations. And talking trough intercoms was a thing in ME3 too.

ME:A expands it by giving some movement to your crew, although rather basic and limited to Liam. But just like in ME3, ME:A crew switches around room as story progresses and crew does talk to each other in same room, like in ME3. There is more talks trough intercom for sure, but that is somewhat justified as Tempest has a very tiny crew as there are no nameless NPC's roaming around. So every person on Tempest does it's work constantly, so talking with is only possible via intercoms. And another thing ME:A does and ME3 didn't, your crew actually interacts in cutscenes on Tempest not related to the main plot! And even when related to main plot, they don't just advance the plot but also character development.

ME:A did the best job on character interaction, to say they regressed back to ME1 is just foolish thing to say even if I were to concede ME3 did it better. Clearly ME:A did superior job then ME1 and ME2, while I also staunchly think it also did better then ME3 too.

The funny thing about being "demoted" in Mass Effect is that the lower on the rung you are, the more special you are to the story. It's clear from the onset that any Mass Effect game going forward will have a human-only protagonist, so we'll just be special no matter how puny we are. 

After the trilogy though, I'm not sure. Humans basically led the final assault on the reapers at the homeworld of humanity, and the most notable hero of the war is a human. Needless to say, it's kinda too late. They'd really have to just toss some kind of wrench into the narrative to suddenly have the xenos saying "Rawr we hate all humans again". 

I want the salarians to have the main antagonist faction. They're really due for one, I think, with all their mad scientists and wayward dealings with uplifting and research. 

It would be easier to do in Andromeda because of the situation and the numbers, there are less than 20,000 humans there, it wouldn't take the loss of many to reduce their influence. Plus there are more immediate chances to balls things up by exploring a new galaxy; if they unleashed a new threat or some initiative set up by humanity goes catastrophically wrong, they would lose influence.

For the Milky Way it is harder. In some post-ME3 setting I imagine the best way for mankind to make the races hate them is just by being humans. The power-grabbing, arrogant, aggressive humans that are typically in charge of things would likely grate against the other races more than the original Council did. It's quite clear in the games and books that mankind are viewed as an upstart species that are pressing for too much too soon, and I doubt that winning the war with the Reapers will help. Depending upon how long after ME3 a game in the Milky Way is set, the war against the Reapers could be a distant memory to all races but the Krogan and Asari, at which point, the fact they led the charge would have diminished in the eyes of many. Afterall, the Krogan saved the galaxy from the Rachni, but their aggressive expansion led to them being laid low, and the same could happen to mankind. In fact, I think it'd be great to see a story where that happens.