“How easy would it be to cop-out and do a straight action title with Frostbite 3 destructibility and set pieces? It could turn out to be the most difficult thing possible but it won’t feel like Mass Effect.”

Aside from the Frostbite 3 stuff, that was pretty much was ME3 was. It’s all very well to say that “ME4 has to be fresh, but familiar” but the fact is ME3 wasn’t even familiar really. It was like it was trying to get as far away from the original game and the original conceit of the series as much as possible for overly bombastic action gameplay, linearity and to essentially be modern mainstream garbage. ME3 was the definition of “the rule of cool” and “style over substance” really (and the style it went for wasn’t even that great). ME3 didn’t feel like Mass Effect, and that’s the biggest thing that’s wrong with it as a whole. On paper it may have been a good TPS action game, but as the final entry to the Mass Effect trilogy it’s garbage and a failure in almost every respect.

Mass Effect would lose its identity if it moved to along a more directed style of story-telling. The choice makes all the difference. I am a massive ME fan but I would buy the next one only during a Steam summer sale if they went down that path.

Finally, the mulkti-player (MP) in ME3 was great. I own BF3 & BF4. The player’s avatar is much too fragile in that type of MP. ME3 required strategy, and admittedly, some glitch advantages to truly conquer it on Gold and Platinum difficulty settings. ME needs co-op and team based missions with groups of 4-5 people. That, in addition to objective-based competitive multi-player, would envigorate the series.

I can see some of your points in the well-written article. I just think removing the thing that makes the series unique is the wrong answer.

Its easy to see the influence of EA on the series. It goes from a compelling game with a tight, well told story, to just a generic CoD clone in space. Instead of refining what had been clunky (exploring in the Mako), they just remove it in place of scan and shoot at a planet. To make the next ME special, make it more like what we were fans of in the first place, Bioware needs to make sure Casey Hudson is far, far, away from the team developing the game, and keep EA’s influence to a minimum. Bioware excelled at telling good stories within the game framework, with detailed characters that ran the gamut of race, look, color, etc. ME1 got the M rating for the story, the characters and their drives (Garrus wants to find the criminal and KILL him, not catch. Not the best moral standpoint for a cop). ME 2/3 gets the M rating because whenever a female character is on the screen it takes an extra 5 minutes of gameplay because of the slow, panning shots of that characters ‘attributes’. And top it all of by inserting a game reviewer in the game itself? Niiiiiiice.

There doesn’t need to be a next Mass Effect. Its dead, let it rest.

Let’s relax a little bit.