In order to make something really great, you have to take risks. It's a fact of creative art that some find uncomfortable, that you can't simply reason out a winning formula and apply it over and over again. God knows many have tried, especially in Hollywood. The Mass Effect series is an excellent example of this high-stakes game. The forthcoming sequel, Mass Effect: Andromeda, has not only the usual massive expectations attached to it, but the extra burden of smoothing out the dent Bioware's brand took with the backlash against the Mass Effect 3 ending. This game has to be extraordinary. Niggling doubts that seeded in the minds of fans about EA's acquisition of the company were allowed to fester and bloom like corpulent flowers. There were whispers of too much dumbing down, too much emphasis on getting those coveted 'new players' on-board rather than focusing on making sure the game had depth and soul. Mass Effect 3 was an imperfect cap to a brilliant series, but it was still a brilliant series. Still, I sense the goodwill for Bioware is about to run out. If it is to assert its dominance of the RPG market once again, it's got to do some really bold things. That said, the people holding the purse strings may not like the list that follows...
8. Commit Fully To Player Agency, Or Bin It Entirely
There have been so many reasons put forward as to why the ending of Mass Effect 3 wasn't well received, but ultimately it came down to player agency. Prior to the ending, the player had been told that everything they did mattered. The problem wasn't that the available endings were similar, but that each of them made the rest of the game's choices meaningless. Example: two races had been at war for ages. It's possible to end the war and sow the seeds of cohabitation, but then the ending comes along and destroys all of race B, with the line about how there could never be peace, because reasons. Some people found this unsatisfying. It was a mismatch of story-telling modes. There are plenty of RPGs that offer the player no choices, but provide an unbelievable experience (see The Last of Us). Mass Effect told its players it was doing one mode, then undermined it at the very end. It didn't work. Andromeda must choose a path. If it goes for the 'amazing story with no choices,' then fine. As long as it's breathtaking, no-one will care. But if it continues its pedigree and goes for 'choices with far-reaching consequences, and still an amazing story', then it must commit 100%. No snatching them away at the last moment to ensure a narrative coup de grace. It needs serious amounts of development time to work properly, which means serious amounts of money - and that means serious risk.
