BioWare, the maker of Mass Effect series, has hinted that the game's next title, Mass Effect 4, will not have anything to do with the events of Commander Shepard, which was the story in the Mass Effect game trilogy.
In an interview with Complex, Mac Walters, the lead writer of Mass Effect 4, said that the next edition of the series will not have Shepard in any form. The studio wants to create a new title which can stand on its own.
"Well, I can't get into details, but the idea is that we have agreed to tell a story that doesn't relate necessarily to any of the Shepard events at all, whatsoever," he said.
He also said that the upcoming title must have Mass Effect at its core, but without the characters of Shepard or his companions.
He further addressed the issue of the controversial ending in Mass Effect 3 and how the studio dealt with it. "It's been 18-19 months since it came out and my thoughts on it are that we addressed it the best we could in the extended cut. We're obviously not going to be changing anything now. We're only going forward," he said.
"And I think that's one of the things we really underestimated, which was how much ownership people would take over a character that they could do that. You know, you've been given free choice to make all these decisions with this character, with the fates of millions of people, and then, you don't get to choose your own fate."
"I'm not saying that our decision was wrong or right. I think we just underestimated the impact that would have on certain players. To be fair, I get people, especially at the Cons, who will say, 'I loved it. It was heart-wrenching, but I felt it was right for my Shepard.' And to me, that's why it was the right path. But because there was no choice, it was going to be right for some people, and for others, in the middle, and other people were obviously very upset about it. In hindsight, I don't think there was anything we would have changed about that, but it is a really good lesson learned," Walters concluded.
As a wrap-up, we know that Mass Effect 4 will not have Commander Shepard or his companions. It might be a prequel or sequel with a bigger possibility of it being a prequel. But the game will be about Mass Effect as a whole. There were suggestions from Yanick Roy, studio director at BioWare Montreal that Mass Effects 4 might have multiplayer features too, reported X360 Magazine.
