The new Mass Effect game doesn’t need Shepard
Last Sunday it was N7 Day – a day where all Mass Effect fans come together and celebrate the sci-fi series that they love so much (and not so silently hope they’ll get some more information on a new Mass Effect game).
Yesterday was no different, only this time BioWare did decide to give us all a little treat in the form of a huge new teaser about the next Mass Effect game in the form of a tweet.
As you can probably tell from the 1.5k responses to the original tweet, speculation about what this could mean for the next Mass Effect game has been rampant. It’s hard not to theorize though when the above image pretty much shows a Geth head at the very top, as well as a ship that looks similar to the shape of The Tempest, Ryder’s ship in Mass Effect: Andromeda.
It, of course, isn’t The Tempest but god, I wish it was so that it could put to bed any sort of speculation or desire for a new Mass Effect game that follows Shepard once again.
As anyone who knows me will tell you, I actually prefer the plucky, naive hero that is Ryder to the pragmatic, war hero known as Commander Shepard. Not because Ryder is a better character – far from it – but because they still have a story to tell. There’s still the relationship with SAM, an AI companion interlinked with Ryder, the history of Ryder’s mother and father, the connection with their twin… There’s so much left to explore that Mass Effect: Andromeda barely touched upon.
As for Shepard, what else is there to know more about? A new Mass Effect game featuring Shepard as the protagonist would ultimately be…what? What exactly could Shepard do that’d make this a brand new, exciting game that would appeal to fans? There are four endings to Mass Effect 3, and canonizing one ending in order to get more of Shepard would not only feel disrespectful to fans and their choices – something that BioWare has often prided itself on caring about – but the Mass Effect universe as a whole. There is so much left to explore, so many stories and histories worth telling – why limit us to the same characters we’ve come to know across three games?
Ultimately, the new Mass Effect game should try to implement what made Shepard’s trilogy great with the new stories provided in Andromeda in order to entice old and new fans into a new game. From what we’ve been shown from BioWare so far – a visibly-aged Liara, what looks to be an Angara companion in concept art for the next game, etc – it does seem as though it’s going in that direction.
But then, there’s also Liara finding an N7 emblem in the snow. This doesn’t necessarily mean the return of Shepard, as they aren’t the only N7 soldier around, but it’s hard not to connect the battle-hardened commander to the emblem all the same…
What any of this could mean is anyone’s guess, but I personally hope that these teasers lead to a reveal where Shepard plays a key role once more.
Shepard’s story is over: let it end with the bang it did, and not a painful whimper of forced relevance in this all-encompassing, sci-fi universe.
About The Author
