Mass Effect 4: 10 Essential Things It Must Get Right

5. A Sense Of Purpose In The World

Which entry in the series do you think had the best sense of drive and purpose? We're going to go with part two for the sake of this entry, as although the first had a great sense of proving humanity's worth amongst swathes of alien races in everything from combat to politics, you just can't beat being revived as cyber-Shep and then having to shape your allegiances on the fly. We've covered how the third ME was completely lacking in a sense of in-universe realism, so it stands that alongside putting you in the shoes of a new protagonist, we need a suitable motive and purpose to the world itself. Commander Shepard was slowly unveiled to be the linchpin of the entire galaxy's inner-workings, so it's going to be pretty hard to make for another character that's of semi-equal importance. Chances are we'll end up with something akin to the last Bourne movie, wherein footage of Matt Damon's character and relating scenes were patched in around Jeremy Renner's newcomer as a way of going "Hey, all this stuff was happening too!" It's a narrative device that's not explored as much in gaming as it is in film - just look at the Saw sequels too - and as much as it might feel cheap to crowbar in another character that was watching in the wings or following just behind Shepard the whole time, there's still potential to expand on things like what happened to certain locations after Shep and his team left.