Mass Effect 4 Andromeda: 8 Big Risks Bioware Must Take

6. Give Us A Way More Diverse Paragon/Renegade Crew

Mass Effect works on the Paragon/Renegade dichotomy, yet doesn't really allow you to put together an all-Paragon or mostly Renegade crew. Instead, characters mostly occupy a centre-ground, with a couple of notable exceptions. The previous games cleverly played on this with the arguments that cropped up between crew-members to highlight differences, and in the context of putting together a ragtag band of heroes to save the galaxy, it made sense. But in Mass Effect 4, we're going to be pioneers in another galaxy. We need to go more extreme. If you had more characters available to take out in the field than we've ever seen before, you'd be able to make a more diverse set. It would force the player to make choices about who they'd want around and to be associated with. This isn't a new idea - this is pretty much how many isometric style RPGs worked. The risk here is that you're spending time on content that people could potentially never use. The reward is a hefty one, though: replayability. RPGs particularly suffer from a scarcity of replayable content because the main point is the story. Once it's done, a large section of gamers won't go back to experience the story again. If your playthrough is dependent on the characters you've recruited, and therefore the recruitment choices you've made, however, that's a very compelling reason to go back and replay. And that in turn could be a powerful selling point.