Mass Effect 4: 12 Mistakes Bioware's Next Gen Sequel Must Avoid

1. Not Outlining Things Ahead of Time

Bioware's biggest failure of the Mass Effect trilogy was the writers' and producers' inability to plan ahead. We first got inklings of this between Mass Effect 1 and 2, but it's been pretty much confirmed thanks to post-ME3 interviews with Mac Walters and Geoff Keighley's The Final Hours of Mass Effect 3. Despite being planned as a trilogy from the start, Mass Effect was written much like Lost and Battlestar Galactica €“ on the fly €“ and shares those shows' inability end in a coherent and logical manner. To be fair to the writers at Bioware, until ME1 was released and did well, having everything planned out would've been an insane risk. If the game had flopped as hard as Advent Rising did, an Xbox game that aspired to do some of the same things Mass Effect did, all that work would've been for nothing. But it's fairly obvious from some of the plot points in ME2 and 3 that there wasn't a lot of foresight when it came to story. For instance, while the Suicide Mission ending ME2's regular story is great, it came about because no one on the writing staff remembered that they would have to import the saves into ME3 until too late. If they had remembered, they probably wouldn't have designed the whole Suicide Mission with potentially killing everyone in mind and avoided having to have surrogate characters for all the dead ME2 ones. Many people's problems with ME3's ending came from the suddenly introduced and unforeshadowed organic/synthetic cyclical conflict that was at the heart of the Reapers' motivations. Essentially, we'd been given clues to unravel a mystery, only to be told at the end that everything we knew was wrong. A lot of this criticism is harsh, but it's because Bioware themselves set higher expectations for the fans by saying the Mass Effect games were designed to be a trilogy from the start. Indeed, all the problems related to the Reapers seem like they could've been solved if all the writers got together between ME1 and 2, simply hashed out a paragraph or two on their motivation, and stuck to it. While it is true that lots of things change during the development and production of media, the villain's seems like one of the things that wouldn't. Of all the mistakes Bioware Montreal has to avoid for ME4, this is the most important, especially if there's another trilogy planned. Even if there isn't a new trilogy and the new Mass Effects are loosely connected stories, outlining things like who the villains are, their motivations, and the state of the setting during the game is still a good idea, because it gets some of the hard work out of the way early. And if ME4 is the start to a new trilogy, having those basic bits of information locked down early means time and effort can be spent on fleshing other things out and making sure the overarcing story is coherent and satisfying. And that is ultimately what fans want. What do you think Bioware should avoid doing in ME4? Let us know in the comments below.