Mass Effect 4: 10 Essential Things It Must Get Right

9. A More Focussed, Overarching Narrative

People like to hate pretty heavily on the end of ME3, it's easily the catch-all go-to reference point for any story when talking to any fellow gamer - "...well, at least it wasn't as bad as Mass Effect 3's ending!" But that seems to get away from how lacklustre all of the final game felt. Right from the off, opening it with the Reaper invasion should have been a solid way to kickstart the most fast-paced entry in the trilogy. The idea of having to scarper around the galaxy as humanity tried in vain to repel the alien horde is a great one, and if resource-management was a key tact in ensuring what state Earth was left in throughout those final missions, it would have made sense. However that wasn't the case whatsoever, as instead we were swanning around doing meaningless tasks for random NPCs. Worse still, if your Shepard was anywhere near a conversation pertaining to a quest - like a lost item or whatever - it would be automatically added to your log, meaning that in the world of Mass Effect, Shepard suddenly starts turning up to people with their lost objects even though they've never asked him to retrieve them. The whole structure of 3 felt completely off, and as far away from the narrative drive of 2 as possible. Where that was so incredibly tight, 3's idea of tasking you with anything less than saving the human race every step of the way helped to derail all the momentum 2 had expertly built up. For whatever 4 puts together to get us back in the saddle, it has to be better on paper than any of this.