As far of video games go, the Mass Effect series has to be one of my favorites. I had so much fun playing as a Spectre, both male and female, and progressing through the game, stopping evil and creating relationships. As a writer, I treated every moment in my two character’s lives and let me just say, wow. The amount of epicness this series give off, and the amount of depth I can give to my character, is just wonderful.
I would love to see a Mass Effect 4, and I have several ideas that would be make it as fun and memorable a game as its predecessors.
1. The Krogan re-emergence
I wouldn't want to be on the wrong sie of a Krogan.
The war is won, the Reapers are beaten back, and now it’s time to deal with the elephant in the room. What is to be done about the Krogans? They have proved useful in helping turn the tide in this war, but they were also a useful force right around the Rachni incursion. There is an uneasy feeling with the Krogans in force once again in the universe, and it won’t get any easier.
Let’s add to the fact that there will be a splinter sect who isn’t ready to welcome the Krogans with open arms. As a number of terrorist attacks are being done on Tuchanka and other Krogan-friendly buildings, old wounds begin to ripen and the world of Mass Effect may be looking at another bloody conflict on the horizon.
2. Old faces…
What's a Mass Effect sequel without a few familiar faces?
When you carry over your new Mass Effect Data, you’ll be in for a surprise when you find out that you aren’t playing the man, or woman, who saved the galaxy a handful of times, but rather being tutored by them.
Commander Shepherd is now teaching the next generation of Spectres to defend the galaxy when trouble comes a-knocking. But they won’t be the only friendly face helping you. Liara, who was a Shadow Broker in ME3, is a reliable source of information and will keep the player up to date on how these matters with the Krogans are shaping up. There’s also a familiar Turian who is always up for challenging the newbies to a little shooting competition.
Also, with the Krogans taking center-stage, expect to see Wrex and Grunt, if they’re alive in your save file, in the middle of this political nightmare.
3. And new ones
Someone has to take up the mantle now.
With Commander Shepherd in a more stable position, someone new will be needed to look into this terrorist cell. As a newly-inducted Spectre, it will fall to you to keep our galaxy safe.
Players will now to be able to make a brand new character. You will be choosing from six different races (human, turian, quarian, asari, salarian and drell), which all have a selected last name picked out for them. All the classes you know and love will stay the same.
Also, be prepared for a lot of new faces standing shoulder-to-shoulder with you as you deal with this new threat.
4. Covert Missions
An attack from the shadows.
The villainous society in this game will not be acting like the Reapers r Collectors did. They will be discreet, hell-bent on completing their objective, and like ghosts when the need to escape comes. The problem now is how you will be fighting this threat.
The solution, as Shepherd will teach you, will be to go on covert missions. This means you and your ground team will be going into areas with very little firepower and protection. Your goal in these missions will to try and gather some information to see if you can find out targets of this terrorist organization.
There will be the sort of missions you’re used to, so don’t worry. You’ll get your chance to unleash a lot of firepower onto your enemies.
5. Brand New Multiplayer modes
Nothing like somre healthy competition?
Mass Effect 3 introduced multi-player to players, which was a lot of fun to play personally. But now, it’s time to add a couple new modes for players to sink their teeth into.
One of the new modes will deal with control points, where both the Spectres and the Seperatists will be fighting to control over communication relays long enough for information for the next attack to be received.
The other new gameplay mode will deal with the Seperatists or Spectres trying to deliver a bomb and the other team must stop them. Similar to the game mode from Call of Duty, each character will only have one life during each round and the team to win the most rounds will win.
6. A.I Companion
Robots are our friends. They want to help us.
Are you jealous that Joker got his own A.I companion? Ok, maybe you’re not looking for THAT sort of A.I companion, but now you’ll be getting your own little robotic buddy that can be quite useful.
As you go on your missions, you’ll be taking along a little drone that will be used to detect threats. It’ll have three different settings that you can set it on: long-range listening post, bomb detector and jammer. Using the drone effectively will mean the difference between a mission complete and the need for you to redo the entire mission.
7. Buddy System
Hope you're a people person.
As you soar across the galaxy fighting evil with crew of fellow Spectres, you’ll find, if you talk to them, that there are a variety of opinions being held on your ship. How you choose to approach these issues will impact the loyalty of the crewmembers to you. They can speak up without prompting if an NPC begins acting threatening to you, or they may even refuse to follow orders you give them, which may jeopardize the team.
This will hopefully cause you to watch what you say, not only to the people you are hoping to hook up with romantically, but also to all of your crew. The success of your mission may very well hinder on this.
8. Playing Cupid
Whether you slept with everyone you could or found your one virtual soulmate, you know a thing aor two about romance.
Another new type of interaction you’ll be dealing with could be convincing members of the crew to hook up. You will need a high enough Paragon score to pull this off, but you will be able to drop hints about other crew members to whomever it is you’re talking too. Talk enough about a crewmember and you just may find the two spending a lot of time with each other. If not, well not everyone is a match made in heaven.
This will be a completely optional thing, but it will thrill people who always felt two characters would be cute together. You could also use it if you have a devious side and want to get a crew member you really dislike to make a fool of themselves in front of someone who’s clearly not interested. Be careful though because, like all other dialogue options, they can have big consequences.
9. Experience a whole new side to space travel
See what happens after-hours on your ship.
Since you and your crewmembers will all be Spectres, command will be a shared thing. Since you got the highest combat scores, you will always be leading the teams on the ground, but you will rotate duties with other members while up in the Normandy. You may be roused from slumber to go on monitor duty, or be confronted by a sick crewmember to cover their shift.
In any case, this will open up a whole new role-playing element for you. Certain crewmembers will be more talkative, or be open to discuss certain topics, depending on the time of day. Your tasks may sometimes fruitful for a Kodak moment and give you something to remember for a long time. You can also take free time to maybe make some calls to notable characters from Mass Effect for advice, or maybe even call your friends back on the Citadel.
10. More Vehicle Options
You missed controlling an Atlas, didn't you?
In times like these, a Mako is not going to be enough to get the job done.
As you go on missions, you’ll find yourself being able to access more vehicles than you were able to in previous games. You’ll be able to drive hover cars around to get from location to location within a city. You will also have access to Salarain speeders to chase down culprits down narrow squeezes and across long stretches of barren land. And if you need to get into the air quick, there should be some fighters you’ll be able to “borrow”.
There might even be a mission or two where you can get into an Atlas.
