Share your thoughts on how you envisioned "Mass Effect 4"

I kept my expectancies very low; high expectancies usually mean big disappointments when reality clashes what you imagine or hope - especially since the EA takeover. My disappointment with Andromeda was with BioWare for releasing a game too early and with myself for not having the patience to wait until it was released. So here I am, back to waiting for the next patch...

But I'm overall pleased with the direction and scope of the game so far.

Didn't really expect BW to do this (EDIT: well, if they had done EXACTLY that, that would have been quite the coincidence ) but here is what I would have gone for:
Make destroy ending canon (before people start an ending discussion, this is mainly for the sake feasibility and not a statement about which ending is best, I think destroy just offers the most interesting scenario for a sequel that could feel like a classic Mass Effect).
The player used to be a black ops guy, doing dirty jobs for the Alliance in the 2160s and 70s (e.g. sabotaging Batarian interests in the Verge, maybe even preventative actions against council agents, to cover the Alliance's illegal AI research during the 60s, stuff like that but they definitely have a shady past). During the reaper invasion, the player character got stuck on earth and fought in the resistance.
The game starts on earth, in the final hours of the reaper war. This is the Tutorial level.
For the tutorial, the player is part of Operation Mantle, basically a massive offensive to divert as many reaper resources as possible from London., while Hammer, Sword and Shield attack London and the Citadel. Beforehand Anderson had organized as many resistance groups on earth as he could reach and set them up to be Mantle and attack reaper installations around the globe as Hammer attacks the beam. As a result we are starting somewhere on earth (maybe even the moon, whatever makes for a cool starting level) and assault a reaper processing facility, fighting Husks, Cannibals, etc.). The Tutorial ends with us destroying the base and cheering as shortly after that the reapers are defeated. - fade to black -

Two months later, we are still in the same location. Life is hard. The reapers have been defeated but they left earth in a dismal state. The soil is mostly poisoned, fresh water is scares, so is power (with cloud cover from reaper destruction still block out a lot of sunlight and not much Helium 3 left). It's a post apocalyptic atmosphere with scavengers hunting for food and raiders preying on the week. No one has heard much from the fleet, there is barely any communication with the outside as most technology was broken by the red wave no one showed up to explain what happened. The player character is among the leading people of a small community that built in the rubble. They can walk around a bit, talk to people and get a sense of what the situation is. The whole thing feels a bit depressing.

After a few conversations, a shuttle arrives, everyone gathers and is excited. It's basically the first real contact with anyone who might have a clue of what's happening in the grand scheme of things. Some alliance soldiers exit the shuttle and distribute some ration packs. The officer however comes straight to you and informs you that Admiral Hackett has requested your presence and that they are here to pick you up.
The shuttle brings you to a dreadnought in orbit where you get to meet Hackett in person (if there is too much talking in a row here, throw in a little skill evaluation thing in for some action). He explains that the fleet was scattered and badly damaged after the reaper defeat. Even they don't know what exactly happened on the Citadel, they only know that Shepard was there, then the thing exploded and set out the wave and beam that destroyed all the reapers. You can ask what happened to Shepard but Hackett will only say that if he were to know anything, it would be classified.

He then tells you why you were brought here. Only the Charon relay was destroyed, as it was hit by the full force of the crucible beam. So to connect to the rest of the galaxy, one has to travel to Arcturus via FTL, which of course isolates earth quite a bit). As the energy propagated through the network it got weaker and Mass Relays forther away from earth were just slightly damaged and still work, albeit unreliably (they might just randomly not work sometimes or have lot's of drift but the further away from earth you get, the better the situation is).
Ironically, this means that the most established races pre-war were hit the hardest. Obviously the humans are the worst off but salarians, turians, asari, krogan, basically everyone in council space also has traveling issues and the ones who are best off are the Terminus Systems.
In this leveled playing field and with all the military losses, the council races took in the war, pirate gangs and mercs from the Terminus as well as younger races that nobody heard of before are trying to seize the opportunity and get their slice of the galactic pie.
Therefore, Hackett's top priority is to secure humanity's interests in the galaxy and with your background, you are to help. He wants to make you a Corsair, a secret independent Alliance agent with full autonomy and only underhand connection to the chain of command. You job: To investigate possible threat in the Terminus Systems. They picked up parts of a transmission from Sur'Kesh to an STG team, that was active in the Terminus when the reapers invaded. They don't have specifics but apparently a weapon was mentioned that the STG team is supposed to locate and activate to gain the salarians an advantage. You are to find the team, assess the threat for the Alliance and terminate it if necessary, all under the guise of being a pirate, so if actions are necessary that might compromise Alliance diplomatic relations, you can be disavowed.

Fortunately, Hackett has the perfect ship for you. Just before the war, the SSV Carthage, a Normandy SR1 class frigate rolled off the production line. Apparently it was badly damaged but not destroyed in a battle against an advance reaper force fairly early in the war near the Terminus Systems but they picked up it's encrypted emergency locator beacon. The ship is a derelict but salvageable. You are assigned an engineer and a biotic commando (human, not asari), both of which will go under cover with you, so you three can pose as a small pirate gang that got lucky and happened upon the derelict ship. With the engineer able to repair it, once you get there, you are to set course for Omega and start your investigation. You have leave to recruit more outside help in the Terminus if needed but only in you assumed position as pirate captain. Then he sends you and your new companions on your way. (I thought maybe the Normandy might even fly them to Arcturus and Joker has a cameo but is not allowed to talk about Shepard either, might be too much but it would be cool to have one last walk through the old ship for the nostalgia).

After this setup, the player can basically do the usual ME stuff, travel the galaxy, explore worlds in search for clues as to what the STG team did, what the mysterious weapon is and where to find it. They could pick up crew mates, who would be shady characters but wouldn't know that the player is under cover. I think this could create a nice bit of tension with your crew (not sure if BW games ever had the main character/player interacting with their companions under false pretenses, certainly no ME game has and I think it could be really interesting).
During the course of the adventure, the player fights mostly mercs, rival pirates, left over indoctrinated people (maybe even some rare spared reaper forces where the crucible beam got weaker, since the assets are in place anyway from the tutorial level) but also STG personal, asari commandos, turian vigilantes (yep, you get to fight Archangel 2.0 as you are under cover) and even a SPECTRE. You get to discover a new race, that you hadn't heard of before, crash land on a planet with a pre-spaceflight civilization and pick the remains of a reaper corpse in your search for intel.

Along the way, you are in sporadic and secretive contact with Hackett. While you are out in the Terminus, the situation for humanity gets worse and worse. Conflict is brewing over desperately needed transport and living space as people get relocated to the less destroyed worlds. The turians want the humans to make a barren but still habitable world with native dextro-aminoacid algae available to them which however is in a strategically important position in the Exodus Cluster. The salarians are secretly trying to undermine asari authority on their border worlds and rumors are that the Krogan warlords from Tuchanka are beginning to salvage abandoned military vessels from the war in preparation for a campaign (and they are uncomfortably close to alliance space). For this to work, the game would probably take place over the course of about 2 years or so.
In short, Hackett feels more and more over the course of the game that humanity desperately needs an edge, so your orders change to securing that weapon rather than destroying it. At the same time, Hackett has assumed the role of Commander in Chief of the Alliance. And since the Alliance is under martial law, he is effectively the lone ruler over humanity. Note: This will be a gradual process that escalates throughout the game. While Hackett will certainly become ever sterner and do and say some disturbing things, he'll not become mad with power or obviously corrupted like TIM or Udina back in the day. He just feels that a firm hand is necessary at this time and it is up to the player to decide whether to agree or not.

In the end, close to the showdown, a few things happen:
- Your team finally finds out who you really are. If you did their loyalty missions and are friends with them, they may stick with you regardless, if not, you might have to fight them.
- You get your hands on the weapon. I am not going into the technical specifics of what I want it to be but it's basically a QEC that allows remote destruction of entire planets by destabilizing the subatomic forces between molecules. The destructive potential is devastating and it could be triggered from anywhere in the galaxy with no chance of ever finding the culprit. Basically, it's any terrorists wet dream. (Needless to say we'll see at least one planet disintegrate during the late parts of the game).
- Now you have to decide, do you hand that weapon over to Hackett or do you disobey orders and destroy it?
- The last level will be different, depending on that decision, in the former case, you need to fight your way back to earth against a coalition of council agents that don't know what you have but just know that it's something dangerous. If you make it, you'll finish the game as a hero of the Alliance but that Alliance has taken on some distinct Starship Trooper qualities (the outro will definitely feature a Starship Trooper like broadcast with Hackett giving you a medal ). If you choose to betray Hackett, he'll send the Alliance flag ship after you (basically a huge dreadnought) (stealth is no good if they have your locator beacon signal) and they will capture the Carthage (gobble it up, think Star Wars Ep 4 beginning). You'll have to fight through parts of the enemy ship, to free the Carthage and escape. The ending will see you on the run, now an outlaw for real on Omega but with a clear conscience. And Admiral Hackett is set up to be the villain for Mass Effect 5.

And that's it. Too detailed?
Ah, I just have a bit of fun thinking up this sort of stuff.

I was expecting a game that would take place several years or decades after the reaper war. I expected the Leviathans and the Yahg to emerge as new threats and I expected to see post reaper war political fallout. Had a lot of scenarios floating around in my head. I guess that is where things get tricky. A game set in the Milky Way would have a lot of major variables to deal with even before the ending. Mainly the fate of the krogan, quarians, geth, and to a lesser extent the rachni. Of course the endings determined the fate of the reapers. Though I think they could have written something in like having most of the reapers return to dark space if the player didn't pick destroy. But still overall too many variables. Personally I wouldn't mind if bioware had picked a canon and went with it but the whining and crying from the internet would have reached new heights. So basically it would have been another Tuesday for the internet. So yeah bioware should have picked a canon.

If Bioware had picked a canon ending out of the BS that was ME3, I wouldn't be playing the abomination of a game that was developed from that.

Nice. Details are important, big and small.

Same. Outposts, big areas, no real need to visit other than out of curiousity, basically Inquisition without any polish.

We are explorers.

Constantly moving forward.

And looking back.

We have to try.

For our insatiable curiosity.

For our fear of what my happen if we don't.

But wherever you go.

Whatever you do.

We will be with you.


This is commander Shepard signing off.








What we got was Benny Hill music while the Archon chases us around a remnant pillar while Remnant chase the Archon. While Sloane Kelly watches with an Angara, their necks slowly rotating as we all run around in circles.

Trying to do something that doesnt make any sense and making our faces tired.

I envisioned quite a different style of game than what we actually got. I envisioned a more open-ended and exploration focused game instead of a stricter story like what we had in the original trilogy. I thought that with the new team working on the game and the trailers that this would be a realistic vision. The setup in my mind was that you had to make at least 5 planets viable out of some number like 8 or something so that you could decide to not do some planets if you did not want to or you could do all of them. I hoped that the pathfinder would be less of an established figure so that you could really make a character and role play them well especially with the 4 different styles of dialogue that they showed off in the footage before the game came out.

The best way for me to describe what I wanted is to imagine Skyrim but with a Mass Effect theme. I wanted something close to that level of freedom and world-building, but with the main story to be making planets viable for the Initiate and thriving in Andromeda. I realize though that this is Bioware and not Bethesda so I should have expected the structure and story focus that I know they always do, but I just thought with emphasizing being a pathfinder and exploration and all that we'd get something a lot more different.

My biggest disappointment with Andromeda is that we are essentially doing the whole Reapers story again. In the beginning I felt like a Pathfinder, but the further I got in the game I realized that I'm just a wimpier commander Shepard fighting the big bad "we are beyond you level of comprehension" bad guys again. It focused way too much on the Kett and the Archon and I feel that we could have had a much more interesting game if they instead focused on exploration and being a pathfinder instead of a soldier who makes planets viable as like a hobby.

A game loaded with many action packed N7 missions.

you and i played very different games my friend.

What, the constant pseudo poetry isn't serious?!?