The Mass Effect ending support group

That's simply not going to happen and we both know it.

Sorry, but this is all utter nonsense (except MEA being punished for ME3) and would not work.

Can you elaborate?

You’re already overusing Shepard and Co. They had a complete story, but this is undoing that to merely whore them out for some popularity. Not an indicator of a good story, which will just cause the same problems if not make it worse (“They can’t even do Shepard right anymore.”). If they do make a good game, people will absolutely keep demanding more Shepard. Especially now that they know if they stir up enough of a tantrum BioWare will cave. Not to mention leaving it open like what you suggest. So they’ll never get back to Andromeda or any other stories since when pulling Shepard off people’ll keep demanding it, and once they fail it’ll be the same situation as after ME3 of not worse.

There has not been a single Shepard game in 9 years now, going on 10. This is not overuse. The "complete" story is arbitrary. Any writer will tell you that a story being complete does not mean in any measure that you can't make a new one. Nor does it undo the previous one. Although, in this case, undoing the Reaper trilogy entirely, could be beneficial. But we both know that's not going to be what happens in Will Continue. Leaving the ending open doesn't mean that you would require back to back Shepard games. It simply leaves the window open, at some point, down the line. It doesn't have to be the next game, nor the game after that. In fact, not using Shepard for a couple of games, would be beneficial to Shepard's audience power. If they can't make Shepard right anymore, what makes you think they can make anyone compelling anymore? You already know what Shepard is like, having to create a new personality from scratch to be compelling to a comparable level as Shepard, is increasingly more difficult, in addition to having to face the growing distaste of the gaming public toward Bioware's treatment of ME. If ME3 left it in a bad state, MEA's reception left it in an ever worse state. To have an MEA2 that will suffer from the same attitude from the gaming public as MEA, is not going to provide MEA2 a way out. There's no reason to believe that a Bioware ME game will be a 9/10 the moment it stars someone other than Shepard, because we already did that and it wasn't received as such. Evidence and public reaction, especially to the Liara reveal in Will Continue, would point to a better chance for the franchise with a return to Shepard. Leaving the ending open, as I suggest, merely means do not kill Shepard off a third goddamn time. Let Shepard take the Normandy and fly off to space with the rest of the crew. That's the end. Maybe there will be another adventure some time in the future for them, in 10 years after Will Continue. And that's fine. Nobody needs every game to be a Shepard game. There is no luster to that. It is best, even if some fans clamor for it, to take a break. I think Bioware knows that as well. They are the ones that chose to retire Shepard in the first place. They kinda had the right idea. They just went about it in probably the worst possible way. Had ME3 provided something different, there would have been no need for Shepard to return so soon. And when I say so soon, not after 9 years, but after just one ME title.

There is no reason to believe that ME will be a Shepard franchise alone, going forward, if you make even one more Shep game. It is illogical to believe so.

Lol, if you're "undoing the reaper trilogy entirely" then why even make another Mass Effect at all?

I’m not sure that the span of time since the last game featuring Shepard is really relevant to what constitutes overuse, and I’m not sure the “completion” of a character story is entirely arbitrary either. While you probably won’t find any writer that’ll claim that you can’t make a new story out of an existing character, I’m betting the answer might have a few conditions on top of that. For one, there’s the medium in which this story’s told and how it’s presented, then there’s the state of the character by the end of their last story. After basically being a galactic savior that presided over the fates of multiple species, what occasion does this character really have to rise up to at this point? What’s their character progression going to be like? Is Shepard going to continue to get stronger, or are we going to get someone who’s no longer in their prime, and is now feeling the effects of time? 

You’re right that there’s no reason to believe that Mass Effect will just be a Shepard-centric franchise going forward, but then, why not just do the new protagonist now and forget about another Shepard game after already getting 3 of them? To what end should this new game lead then? You say the completion of a story is arbitrary, but every story ends at some point. I’d be curious to see how people would take it if this meant a definitive, final death for Shepard, this time with no option to escape it. 

I'd hardly call 3 games with a single character in the span of 15 years as overuse. If your complaint is as to the amount of games in a certain franchise, that is a problem you have with Bioware, more than Shepard.


A story can end and that's not necessarily arbitrary, although depending on the story, it can be. What I mean is that the end of a story does not have to mean the end of a character. Even if the character died. You can ask Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I don't think there's a better example than Sherlock Holmes.


That is a direction one can go. It can be more personal, or it can be about restoring the status quo to the Milky Way. Besides, growth does not have to mean character power levels. This isn't Dragon Ball.


Because the new protagonist didn't fare so well, there's little incentive to believe the new one will do any better, quite the contrary I'd argue and if the point is to just make one more game in the franchise to, most likely, kill it off and possibly take the studio along with it, then there's no reason to go back to Shepard. But right now, that is the most likely outcome, of not returning to Shepard. Especially after honey dicking the public with the Liara teaser.


You know, up until Generations, the TOS cast and crew of Star Trek had a fine send off with "The Undiscovered Country". You know. "Second star to the right, and straight on till morning" and all. You don't have to kill a character to give them an ending. This is what I mean when I say "open" ending. Even if you never plan on using these characters again, let them have their rest, not necessarily a death. Apparently, it doesn't work that well with fans. They didn't like it when Kirk died and they didn't like it when Luke died. I kinda got the feeling they didn't like it when Shepard died, either. So how about we don't kill Shepard? Radical idea, I know. We can retire Shepard, with Shepard left alive. You see, that spares you the complaints. Proven.

This post was quite the roller coaster.

As a matter of course though I often find it that death is often a cheap and easy way out to solve this kind of thing and to 'raise the stakes.' Sure character death can be important but also so is torturing them or making them lose a limb or some other huge trauma which will effect them from then on and they have to then deal with it.

I have a feeling you are talking about Picard.