There is so much worldbuilding baggage in those games that feels extremely 2005, I am amazed they are still making Mass Effect 5 instead of just coming up with another franchise
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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Bioware created Dragon Age and Mass Effect to be able to create games like Baldur's Gate and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic without licensing a popular franchise. At this point, I'm pretty sure most of the people who made the 00s Bioware games fun or interesting are working at other places and all that is left is a husk of late 00s/early 10s extremely mid IP.
Yeahhh
sucks that Andromeda was pretty eh cause I think it could've been a pretty decent clean slate for the franchise otherwise
Honestly, Andromeda didn’t deserve the hate it got. It wasn’t awful. It had some issues, sure. But many of the complaints about the story basically boiled down to “it wasn’t larger than the entire first three games combined.” It was trying to start a new story, but instead of being seen as a new start it was compared to the entirety of the original trilogy.
It completely misses that the entire first Mass Effect game was basically just an intro to the Reapers. Like the entire first Mass Effect game is basically just “oh hey here’s a new villain.” And by that metric, Andromeda did a lot more than the first Mass Effect did. But it wasn’t larger than the entire trilogy, so it got panned by the players who were too impatient to wait for a sequel.
Same goes for the Mass Effect 3 ending 
drama. Like, Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 also had the "bring your save over from the previous game" thing but someone has to make the endings - of course they're going to be just a few of them. What made Mass Effect interesting at the time is that you got little emails and encyclopedia entries that were effected by stuff you did in the previous games. The ending of 3 was never going to be remarkably different.
Definitely do agree, it's still a game I enjoy a lot and replay regularly
coming up with another franchise
As if
Jade Empire 2 coming 2028
jade empire 2: will our racist made-up pastiche of how asian languages sound to white people fly this time?
It was already kinda racist in KotOR with all the aliens sharing the same three or four voices lines. I was shocked when they reused that idea in Jade Empire
The idea of a Wuxia inspired RPG is cool, but 
Bioware.
The idea of a Wuxia inspired RPG is cool, but Bioware.
I wish a Chinese company made one instead of a bunch of Canadian nerds
I keep eyeing those Sword and Fairy games, but I think they're made by a Taiwanese team. Might still be cool, but I'd fully expect some 
I have some bad news for you. Many games are in fact made in the United States
What are you talking about, games made in the United States? I only play Crisis in the Kremlin and Disco Elysium 
Every character voiced like Splinter from TMNT
coming up with another franchise
They tried, starfield sucks
I think you mean Anthem, which also sucked :V
Uhhh but have you considered the Batarians are the Bad Race? They're all warlike and militaristic and hate Democracy
Unlike the Turians, who are valorously militant, thoroughly disciplined, and love hierarchy.
Yeah, but they go about it in a exotic but civilised Japanese way (it's even mentioned in the codex that some Turians have begun practicing Zen Buddhism, lol)
The Batarians are just a stand-in for Russians/Soviets/Arabs
i mean mass effect 2 is basically just "listen, i need space hitler as much as he needs me..."
tbf the cerberus plotline in ME2 does raise some very important questions such as "why did you think this was okay to write, like morally?" and "what about the 'white supremacist'-coded group did you think really deserved critical support"
always thought it was funny shepard has the sole survivor profile by default and the way they resolve this pretty obvious and deep tension is by just ignoring it and hoping, nay, praying you don't notice it lmfao
The entirety of Mass Effect 2 feels like the EA marketing department heavy-handedly trying to make the series more appealing to Xbox bros. MORE VIOLENCE, MORE COOL ACTION, MORE SEXY BABES, MORE EDGE! The first game kinda nailed a cosy 90s science fiction TV show feel. I assume EA worried it seemed too nerdy and uncool
Just look at what they did with Garrus. In the first game he's an unsure rookie cop that Shepard can nudge towards becoming either a goody two shoes good cop or a reckless loose cannon. Then you get to the second game and none of it matters because he left his job to become the fucking Punisher on a crime planet. He's also filled with rage because his vigilante team was murdered by criminals
the constantly-smoking boomer being blasted by close-range solar radiation is so cool tho
ME1: Cerberus is some shadowy conspiratorial breakaway faction of the Alliance military that are doing insane experiments to create supersoldiers. They go so far as to kill an admiral to keep the secret.
ME2: Cerberus has made you, the hero of the Alliance military, into a supersoldier and also they have infinity money.
ME3: Cerberus can make anime real and also they have even more infinitier money.
Not just turn Shepard into a supersoldier, but fucking resurrect them from a hunk of charred meat first
Mass effect 2 especially is a perfect representation of everything wrong with Bioware's writing and why they get away with it.
The world building is paint by the numbers at best and neo liberal brain worms capitalist realism at worst...but by God they know how to write characters I actually get emotionally invested in and genuinely give a shit about.
Really one of the reasons mass effect 3, the ending in particular, was such a catastrophe is the direct result of this problem. The entire attempt to be deep and profoundly philosophical and hinge the entire emotional weight of the story on saving earth fell completely flat because the themes of the series are fairly pedestrian and they never bothered to give the player a reason to care about earth beyond that you're human and your psuedo father figure was "born in London".
Nobody cared about earth. We cared about seeing Urdnot Wrex with hundreds of Krogan babies, Tali getting her home built on Rannoch, et al.
they never bothered to give the player a reason to care about earth beyond that you're human and your psuedo father figure was "born in London".
How dare you forget the generic child NPC that got vaporised at the end of the first level? HE HAD A TOY NORMANDY 