MASS EFFECT TV series gains showrunner, moving forwards at Amazon

Amazon have hired Doug Jung (Mindhunter, Big Love, Banshee, Star Trek Beyond, The Cloverfield Paradox) to produce and showrun their Mass Effect TV project.

The original Mass Effect trilogy (2007, 2010, 2012) sees late 22nd Century humanity discovering alien life and reluctantly joining the Citadel Council, which represents dozens of alien species at a colossal, ancient space station of ancient origin. Commander Shepard, the first human soldier to be nominated as a Spectre, a Council agent with wide-ranging powers, uncovers evidence of a powerful alien threat to the entire galaxy, known as the Reapers. The Council are sceptical, forcing Shepard to undertake a series of dangerous missions to expose the true nature and scale of the threat. The fourth game, Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017), explores what happens when a series of great ark ships from our galaxy arrive in Andromeda some six hundred years later. The games are noted for the quality of their writing, characterisation and especially impressive worldbuilding.

Amazon picked up the Mass Effect rights in 2021, but there's been little word of the project since then, with some assuming it had withered on the vine. Today's news is not quite a formal greenlight, but it sounds like they are moving to that point. Jung will be the lead writer and showrunner, joining Dan Casey who has already been developing the project. Michael Gamble will produce for Electronic Arts, with Ari Arad and Emmy Yu of Arad Productions.

At this stage there is no sign of any of the original Mass Effect creative team from BioWare being involved. Most have long since left BioWare and are scattered working on different projects for different gaming studios. Fans will also be hoping for the involvement of the original cast's iconic voice cast, including Mark Meer, Jennifer Hale, Seth Green and Brandon Keener, though likely in different roles given their ages.

Fans may also recall that Henry Cavill is a huge Mass Effect fan and had previously teased an apparent willingness to appear in a project.

A Mass Effect TV show is likely still 2-3 years away from reaching the screen. Meanwhile, BioWare is developing a fifth Mass Effect video game, with no word on a potential release date.

BioWare unveil teaser for fifth MASS EFFECT game

BioWare have unveiled a brief teaser for the upcoming fifth game in the Mass Effect franchise.

As part of N7 Day - an annual celebration of the franchise derived from the N7 special forces group in the video games - BioWare released a series of text and video bursts teasing a new clip. Once fans had done some detective work, the full clip was posted as above.

The accompanying text (in the original files) suggests that the next game in the series takes place in or after the year 2819, the year that Mass Effect: Andromeda took place in, and a distress call from the Andromeda Galaxy has been detected. The text also suggests that the Systems Alliance, the Earth-led human faction in the Mass Effect universe, is still extant. The original Mass Effect trilogy concluded in the year 2186, for reference.

BioWare and parent company Electronic Arts confirmed some years ago that a new Mass Effect game was in development. However, it is still likely some years off; the company is currently working hard to get Dragon Age: Dreadwolf finished for its likely 2024 launch and will only turn its full firepower towards Mass Effect 5 (or, more likely, Mass Effect Colon Dramatic Subtitle) after that game comes out.

The Mass Effect franchise was launched in 2007 with the titular original game; it was followed by Mass Effect 2 (2010) and Mass Effect 3 (2012). The three games are notable for combining into one very large mega-game where players can guide their characters through almost 100 hours of an epic space opera war story, in which humanity and the other races of the Milky Way are plunged into war against an ancient alien threat, the Reapers. In 2017 BioWare released Mass Effect: Andromeda, a spin-off story set more than six centuries later in the Andromeda Galaxy. However, the game garnered a lukewarm reaction from fans and middling sales. BioWare decided not to proceed with a direct sequel, despite the game setting one up. In 2021 they released Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, a packaging of all three original games into one title with some upgrades to the graphics and controls.

It sounds like the new game will take place in the Milky Way again and will have to decide which one of Mass Effect 3's endings is canon. However, by taking place after Andromeda, it may also be able to resolve some of the unresolved story threads from that game.

Although teasing a new Mass Effect game is welcome, fans have also taken advantage of N7 Day to criticise the lay-offs of numerous developers from the company in the last few weeks, including some of the last original team-members from the Baldur's Gate franchise (an interesting look after Baldur's Gate III launched back in August from Larian Studios and was a massive critical and commercial success of the kind that BioWare has not enjoyed in over fifteen years), as well as QA staff after they voted to unionise (although BioWare have pointed out that was a decision by their contracted company rather than BioWare themselves).

It's fair to say that an enormous amount is riding on the success of both Dragon Age: Dreadwolf and Mass Effect Next: BioWare have not had a really big hit since the release of Dragon Age: Inquisition nine years ago, and the company has since been haemorrhaging fans, critical acclaim and its creative firepower.

Mess Effect: A Nitpicker's to the Universe That Fell Apart by Shamus Young

In 2007, BioWare released their science fiction roleplaying video game Mass Effect, the first in a proposed trilogy. The game sold well and was critically acclaimed, for its intricate worldbuilding, great characters and solid storytelling. However, its gameplay was not as well-received, and after BioWare were acquired by uber-publishers Electronic Arts, there was a marked shift in the development of the second and third games in the series. The intricate worldbuilding and strong story focus were diminished, and instead there was more focus and emphasis on action set-pieces, stronger combat and character side-stories. These changes were well-received by many (Mass Effect 2 and 3 outsold the first game comprehensively) but some noted a significant decline in the plot logic as the series as it progressed, culminating in what is still one of the most controversial endings in video game history.

Video game critic Shamus Young (who sadly passed away a few weeks ago) spent a lot of his time on his Twenty-Sided blog critiquing the role of storytelling in video games, and how storytelling, worldbuilding and characterisation are integrated with gameplay. Many games de-emphasise their stories, using them as bare excuses for why you as the player now have to go and kill people or monsters. But roleplaying games like the Mass Effect series live by their stories, since they provide the impetus for what you do and why you are doing it. Sometimes, your character has to make major decisions that impact on the fate of thousands or millions of people, and your understanding of the world determine what decisions you make.

Young's analysis of the Mass Effect series starts with the acknowledgement that the first game in the series was unusual in how well it set up and executed its story, establishing a cast of memorable, colorful characters (Garrus, Wrex, Tali, Liara, Joker and David Anderson are as fine as collection of space adventure friends as you could ever ask far, and Saren and Sovereign as worthy foes) and how it built its space opera world with surprising skill. Mass Effect's worldbuilding is nothing too original - it's about 75% Babylon 5 mixed with 25% of Battlestar Galactica and given a lot of Star Trek-flavoured mixers - but it is executed with superb flair. The races, background history and lore are created and laid out with accomplished skill, and then integrated into the game itself. The genophage isn't just a historical curiosity, but a ongoing, horrendous crisis for the Krogan people and how your character views it may determine whether Wrex is a valued ally or a bitter (and very quickly, dead) foe, or if the entire Krogan race joins the fight against the Reapers or not. The Quarian-Geth conflict isn't an irrelevant footnote from 300 years ago, but a real, ongoing struggle with the fates of millions of sentient beings swinging in the balance.

It's this integration of story, character and worldbuilding with the actual gameplay and story which is Mass Effect's greatest triumph, and Young, argues, an increasingly major problem in the games that follow. Mass Effect 2, infamously, took a hard left turn from where Mass Effect left off and devoted most of its length to a huge side-quest rather than following the storyline from the first game more organically. In the process, Mass Effect 2 made a lot of very strange decisions that, from a story and worldbuilding perspective, verge on the nonsensical (Shepard agreeing to join forces with ultra-violent terrorist organisation Cerberus despite fighting them several times in the prior game; the Illusive Man's plan for dealing with the Collectors not making any sense unless he's already read the game script). What saved Mass Effect 2, and indeed made it many people's favourite game in the series, is the enormously enjoyable "recruiting the Dirty Dozen" mission structure, the superior combat and the excellent characters, and the time the game spends on allowing you to get to know and befriend them, and how the nurturing of these relationships impacts on the "suicide mission" at the end of the game.

Mass Effect 3 is thus left having to get the main story back on track after Mass Effect 2 ignored it, but the process of having to effectively be both Acts II and III of the trilogy in one game, of having to deal with a lot of loose threads from Mass Effect 2 and the fact that Mass Effect 3 had to work both if you'd killed off the entire cast of the second game or not, meant that Mass Effect 3 was under a lot of strain that led to further, compounded story errors. These included: Cerberus being the main enemy for much of the game rather than the Reapers and having apparently inexhaustible resources; a villain in the game coming out of nowhere; the Crucible super-weapon not really getting a lot of development; and the ending being somewhat illogical (and only marginally improved by post-release DLC) and anticlimactic.

Throughout the book, Young notes that these problems are not actually major problems for a huge number of people. The story that the trilogy tells is solid when seen from a distance, the characters are exceptional and many, many individual quests (especially the character-focused side-quests, the Citadel DLC and the major subplots involving the genophage and the Geth/Quarian conflict) are superb. The combat gameplay improves game on game, and the third game introduced a compelling multiplayer mode. Each game tried something new, even if it didn't always work.

However, Young does convincingly argue that the trilogy is uneven when it comes to its storytelling and worldbuilding, and the cut corners and left-field turns the plot makes in the latter two games are systemic problems that frustratingly undo a lot of really good work the first game accomplishes. For example, the first game has two excellent villains (Sovereign and his stooge, Saren) with well-established goals and motivations, and the game has the flexibility for you to help Saren realise he's made a huge mistake and try to make amends. Neither ME2 or ME3 has very good villains at all: the Illusive Man just makes a lot of vague speeches; Kai Leng shows up out of nowhere like a lame cockroach ninja, does nothing and dies; Harbinger likes to "TAKE CONTROL" of enemy puppets in such a way that you've already killed them long before he's a threat; the Catalyst Intelligence (aka Supremely Punchable Starboy) is Captain Vagueness; and even the Archon from Mass Effect: Andromeda is a ranting nobody, less threatening than a 13-year-old on Xbox Live who's fired up on aggression and too much Coca Cola.

Young also spends only a brief period on the ending to the trilogy, noting the commonly-cited issues with it. He's more interested in identifying where the problems emerged earlier on in the story and how they evolved to the point where the trilogy possibly couldn't end in any other way than this kind of disappointment (but does make a few heroic attempts to suggest improvements).

The book intelligently deconstructs the trilogy's storytelling and worldbuilding - and even dives into Andromeda in a lengthy coda - but Young is wary of drawing easy conclusions. He notes that the trilogy's hard left turn coincides with EA buying BioWare and it would be incredibly easy to blame EA's more corporate, profit-seeking culture, and in particular the way that it rushed BioWare on developing the second and third games, for the issues that cropped up. But he doesn't think that's the whole problem. Some fans have also cited Drew Karpyshyn departing between Mass Effect 2 and 3 as an issue, but Young also identifies problems in the two games Karpyshyn worked on and very well-executed areas in the two games he did not write, so that's not the entire story either (Karpyshyn's recent AMA where he himself refuted the argument that he was a details and worldbuilding guy, praising others at BioWare for focusing on those areas, is interesting in that regard). Young even defends some changes, noting that the original plan for dark energy to be the main problem in the setting wasn't very well established in the first two games, whilst the AI-organic conflict had at least been present since the first game through the confrontation with the AI on Luna and the Geth/Quarian story elements, and was better integrated into the background.

What I also appreciated about the book was Young's constant proposal of solutions to fix the problems, often within the context of adjusting dialogue in given scenes rather than completely rewriting entire plots (or even games). Way back in the 1990s, a guy named Phil Farrand wrote a series of books called The Nitpicker's Guide, focusing on the Star Trek franchise. In those books he noted that plot holes, weird moments of characterisation and bits where it felt like someone had forgotten a fundamental bit of lore were often things that could be fixed very, very easily with small tweaks rather than sweeping changes and Young often puts that into practice here. He even proposes direct rewrites to important scenes that cleans up motivations and background information.

For a book with such a negative-sounding title, Young approaches the subject with a degree of positivity, informed by his love of the story, the setting and the characters. The only time I felt a degree of negativity overload setting in was during his coverage of Andromeda, where his clear loathing of the game's antagonist feels like it overwhelmed the more positive elements of the game. I also feel his coverage of Andromeda was a bit off the mark in some ways: Young claims that colonialism is not particularly part of the game when in fact you spent a fair bit of the game mediating disputes between the Andromeda Initiative colonists, the rebels who've broken away from them and the alien Angara who are a bit narked off about a hundred thousand people showing upon their doorstep, saying they are friends but can they please have their food and resources and a place to live?

Still, Young makes some excellent points throughout the book on the interface between storytelling, worldbuilding, characters and gameplay, and constantly pays tribute to the Mass Effect series in how well it handles these elements in many areas, only to lose the plot in others. There's a strong vibe here of how a franchise started off with brilliant writing and worldbuilding and gradually degraded in those areas, perhaps not matched by any other video game series (although Fallout fans, I suspect, might want a word).

Mess Effect: A Nitpicker's Guide to the Universe That Fell Apart (****) is a long but mostly engrossing read on an interesting and underrated subject, that of the importance of details and consistency in video game storytelling. You can get the book on-demand from Amazon (which also supports his family) or read the original blog series on his website.

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Mass Effect: Andromeda

The year 2819. 634 years ago, the Andromeda Initiative launched five space arks and a huge mobile space station towards the Andromeda Galaxy. 100,000 settlers from a dozen races were placed in cryo-suspension and a cutting-edge FTL telescope identified half a dozen "Golden Worlds" in the Heleus Cluster for colonisation. However, something has gone wrong. The golden worlds are now desolate and ravaged by radiation or ice or heat. Strange ruins guarded by robots can be found on many planets, and a hostile alien race, the Kett, have invaded and seem to be determined to subjugate the cluster and its native race, the Angara. Low on fuel, food and supplies, the Andromeda Initiative has to work hard just to survive. The human Pathfinder, Ryder, is given their own ship and a tough crew to help the expedition survive. There is no going back.

Andromeda is the fourth game in the Mass Effect series and, as the lack of numeration hints, also a soft reboot of the franchise. The original Mass Effect trilogy told one story that over hundreds of choices made over three games until different players could have wildly different outcomes to their versions of Commander Shepard's battle against the Reapers. As a result, to avoid "canonising" any of these choices, Andromeda moves the action 2.5 million light-years away to our nearest big galactic neighbour. Plenty of familiar races, technology and terms show up, but no familiar characters. It was definitely a bold solution to the problem.

Andromeda also shifts gears in terms of format and genre. The first three games were linear action-RPGs, dramatically increasing the action quotient and dialling back the RPG systems as the trilogy went along. Andromeda reverses that move, having more RPG, customisation and advancement systems than any game in the series to date. It also takes a leaf out of the original Mass Effect (2007) by focusing on exploration as a key mechanic, although a much simplified version of the search for resources mechanic from the second and third games is also present. There is also much more of an open-world feel to the game this time around, complete with large, expansive maps with lots of side-quests to undertake and collectibles to find.

The changes were controversial with fans, who felt that the success of the Mass Effect series is rooted in linear storytelling, focused characterisation and a relatively constrained playing time (each game in the Mass Effect trilogy clocks in at around 30 hours). Making Andromeda into an open-world game taking comfortably more than twice that long to complete was always going to be divisive, not helped by Andromeda certainly not having the sharp writing of the series at its best. The game also suffers from having to dial down the huge events and epic storytelling from Mass Effect 3 (2012) and start building a new narrative from scratch. After the huge events of Mass Effect 3, Andromeda feels small again which some took as a good thing (you can't really beat Mass Effect 3 for scale, and it'd be foolish to try) but others took as a sign of a lack of ambition.

Structurally, the game starts out as normal for BioWare: an early, linear section acts as a tutorial and also an introduction to the story and characters. You play either Scott or Sara Ryder, the twin children of Alec Ryder. Alec is a Pathfinder, a special exploration/reconnaissance specialist whose skills are boosted by the presence of an AI in his brain, named SAM. After choosing which twin to play, the other one is unceremoniously boosted into a cryo-tray malfunction coma, which feels like a bit of a wasted potential (the option to play both twins in co-op would have been welcome). Anyway, Ryder Jnr. quickly inherits their father's super-AI and becomes the new Pathfinder.

Once the initial linear section is over, the game opens up and you have the option of taking on new quests on the Nexus - the mobile space station that serves as this game's answer to the Citadel - and then shooting off into space on the Tempest, the game's equivalent of the Normandy. The Tempest is a much smaller but, it has to be said, far more swish spaceship and it's genuinely more fun to explore, hang out and shoot the breeze with your companion characters (who have far, far more to say than their original trilogy counterparts) before carrying out missions. You can explore the map of the Heleus Cluster, scanning planets from orbit for resources and supplies, and also land at will on five planets. In the biggest shift in format for the series, each one of these five planets is an absolutely enormous map across which you can explore in the Nomad, this game's equivalent of the Mako.

Each planet is suffering from some kind of problem: Eos's magnetosphere appears to have been damaged, allowing harmful radiation to reach the surface. Havarl is a toxic jungle which is becoming less able to support life. Voeld is a frigid, frozen wasteland. Kadara's water supply is poisoned. Elaaden is a baking desert. These problems inhibit your ability to move around freely, restricting you to the Nomad and occasional jaunts outside. However, and most fortuitously, you quickly discover that an ancient alien race was in the process of terraforming the cluster and they have left behind huge engines hidden below the surface of each planet. Thanks to your SAM interface, you can activate these engines and bring each planet back to habitability. When you do so, the environmental problems clear up and you can found colonies on each planet.

Of course, you are not alone. Early on you meet the Kett, a hostile alien race which sees other species purely as resources that can be consumed, barely at the level of animals. This allows you to murderate the Kett on sight without guilt (always handy in a game built around lots and lots of combat), although to be fair the Kett do get some more development later on in the game that makes them both more hateful as enemies but also opens the possibility of negotiation, at least with some factions. The Kett are definitely not on the threat level of the Reapers, and are actually less advanced than the Milky Way interlopers, not having biotics or mass effect technology. Their guns hit hard, though, and they certainly have numbers on their side. They also come in a lot of varieties, with each type requiring different tactics to deal with.

More friendly are the Angara, the native inhabitants of the cluster. The Kett are the only aliens they've ever met, so unsurprisingly it takes quite a while for you to win them over as potential allies (after gaining an Angaran representative as an ally on your team). This is where Andromeda gets interesting. A game about 100,000 people showing up without warning and setting up home is effectively a story about colonisation and colonialism, a tricky subject to get right. Andromeda constantly brings up the subject, with Ryder at one point admitting to their new Angaran friend that whenever two civilisations meet in an unprepared manner, one usually ends up subsumed by the other. The legitimate Angaran concerns over whether the Milky Way newcomers are allies to help out against the Kett or potential rivals for limited resources in the cluster are given a fair bit of weight, and at different points in the story you gain and  lose Angaran allies because of how the Initiative is comporting itself as it settles the planets. The game doesn't go too far down this road, as ultimately this is a game about shooting bad aliens and being friends with the good aliens, but it's good to see the subject being tackled at all.

The game's main storyline unfolds as the Initiative settles the cluster, fights off Kett attacks and manages some tricky diplomacy with the Angara. The storyline and structure encourages you to mix in main story missions with a ton of side-missions, such as helping the colonies get off the ground, tracking down supplies and trying to reconcile various "outcasts" from the Initiative who have gone rogue. You also have to find the missing other arks and track down resources like food and fuel for the organisation. There are also tough administrative choices on the Nexus, with issues like needing to bring more people out of stasis to work at solving these problems, but also in a way that doesn't exhaust current resources. You also have a personal mission to follow, as it turns out that your father had various secrets about why the Andromeda Initiative was founded and launched, and his own hidden objectives he kept from everyone else.

If that wasn't enough, the six squad-mates you pick up through the game also each have their own backstory and attendant loyalty quests to attend you. Completing these quests unlocks another tier of skills they can access in battle. You also have to manage the Initiative's APEX security squads, recruiting troops and send them off to perform missions you are too busy to deal with, as well as researching new technology to help you in Heleus. At certain points in the game you can also wake up new Initiative crew from cryo-sleep and assign them to science, military or commercial projects.

There is a lot going on in this game, far more than in any prior Mass Effect game (although you can see the descendants of Mass Effect 2's loyalty missions and Mass Effect 3's War Assets systems here). Sometimes it is exhausting and overwhelming, but a lot of it is pretty good and makes you genuinely feel like a plugged-in, senior member of a space exploration team. Trudging in from a lengthy ground combat mission on the desert moon of Elaaden to check in on how your APEX teams are doing and then invest your research points in some better armour and then assign a new science team which has just woken up from stasis can feel pretty good.

There is a thin line between "keeping you busy" and "burying you in filler makework," though and Andromeda strays across that line a few times (to be fair, not anywhere near as often as its structural predecessor, Dragon Age: Inquisition). Missions like tracking down 15 plants to scan or 15 new minerals to analyse are too tedious, and the game's immensely involved system for researching and building armour and weapon upgrades is both impressive and almost useless, since you will usually acquire comparable equipment from enemies in the field or from shops. Once you've used the terraforming vaults to save the planet Eos, you instantly know how to unlock the three Remnant ruin sites and attendant vault on each of the other planets, and it's a fairly repetitive task to undertake (with the exact same boss fight to follow). There also a few too many missions, particularly at the end of the game, which require you to visit three or four of the planets in rapid succession, which can feel like you're battling through a series of never-ending loading screens.

Andromeda also lacks the sharp writing of the best of the trilogy. Infamously, one of your crewmates is religious and when she asks you about your beliefs, your only options are to profess total ignorance of what religion is (!), immediately profess belief in a deity yourself or castigate her for believing in fairy stories. This lacks the more nuanced approach in some of the earlier games, and is fairly typical of the dialogue through the game. There is also a fair amount of implausibility about the size, scope and cost of the Initiative project (which was never mentioned once in the OG trilogy, even though it turns out several of the original characters knew about it), although to be fair the game does try to explain this later on.

Your cast of companion characters are also solid, but a little undercooked. South London geezer Liam is more fun than the bland human companions of the OG trilogy, but still doesn't really give you any reason to take him on missions. Cora is a fine human biotic soldier whose major defining character trait is that she served with an elite squad of Asari commandos, something she will shoehorn into every other conversation. She's also (very briefly) narked off because she was in training to become Pathfinder, but you usurped her position thanks to your convenient Head AI. Any potentially interesting character conflict is dealt with in about five minutes. You also have an Asari archaeologist, Peebee, whom the writers try very hard to differentiate from Liara by making her an attention-deficit, reckless, manic pixie girl (she does improve immensely over the game's length, but that first impression is yikes). There's a grizzled Krogan warrior, Drack, who starts off as a clone of OG grizzled Krogan warrior Wrex. Fortunately, Drack differentiates himself due to his sheer age and his family connections (his granddaughter Kesh is an important side-character) and ends up becoming a solid crewmate. Turian smuggler Vetra is also good fun, but the game's MVP in terms of characters is Jaal, the Angaran representative who joins your team and whose sense of humour and bewildered research into the Milky Way races is a constant source of comedy and sometimes pathos. Overall, they're a good cast but lack the punch and finer writing of the OG crew from the trilogy.

However, the game wins back a lot of goodwill through combat. Combat was very stiff in the first Mas Effect game, improved in the second and became fairly solid in the third, but never spectacular. Andromeda takes advantage of the more advanced engine and the larger areas where you will be fighting. One of the game's big selling-points is that you have a jet pack which you can use for combat and exploration, and it has to be said that it is fantastic. You can rocket up to vantage points, jump out of melee range of non-ranged enemies and execute a sharp dodge to get out of a sniper's firing line. You can level up dozens of abilities rather than just four or five and switch between them in the field. The game's frankly ludicrously huge selection of weapons and armour means you can tailor your character's combat abilities and specialities in fine detail. Simply put, Andromeda has easily the best combat in the series to date and the best mechanics and systems for tailoring your character in the way you see fit.

Andromeda is a game that sometimes feels like an embarrassment of riches and sometimes a rich source of embarrassment. The sheer volume of content should in theory mean you'll never get bored, but in practice you can find yourself tracking down just one more plant to scan at 2am and wonder what the hell you're doing. The companion characters are potentially fascinating, but their dialogue sometimes feels undercooked. The game has an immense array of systems to engage with, but they're not all worth the time. The game has fantastic combat, but the enemy can feel under-developed and not enough of a challenge. The theme of colonisation is potentially brilliant, but the story only periodically engages with it. The planets are huge and beautiful, but also full of repetitive content.

If you can work through or avoid the more disposable content of the game, its story eventually becomes quite interesting (especially as the events of the original trilogy do turn out to have more bearing on Andromeda than you first think), its combat is always great and compelling, and the game sells the wish-fulfilment fantasy of you being a space captain (more Janeway than Kirk) quite well.

Mass Effect: Andromeda (***½) can't hold a candle to the original trilogy's stronger story and characters, but by pivoting to focus on exploration and more freedom, it carves out its own identity. Somewhat underrated and well worth a look, the game is available now on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

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Mass Effect: Legendary Edition

2183. Twenty-five years have passed since humanity discovered it was not alone in the universe. The Milky Way is dominated by the Citadel Council, a multi-species authority that seeks to limit conflict and war and promote peace and trade. One soldier now stands ready to become the first human Spectre, an elite agent with the authority to destroy threats to galactic peace. But their first mission uncovers evidence of a rogue element in the Spectre ranks, and evidence that a powerful, ancient threat is returning to the galaxy after fifty thousand years. With the Council not ready to face this truth, it falls to Commander Shepard to recruit a crew of like-minded allies and expose this new threat.

Yeah, get used to seeing these, Shepard.

If video games are about fulfilling fantasies, BioWare's Mass Effect trilogy offers one of the most compelling in the history of the medium: you are Commander Shepard, Space Adventurer. Your surname is set in stone but otherwise you can determine your Shepard's gender, appearance, abilities, sexuality and personality. You then guide your Shepard through a lengthy quest to save the galaxy, but it's up to you how you do it. You can be the ultimate hero, a paragon of honour and justice, or you can be a brutal, sarcastic antihero. Or maybe you just wing it as the fancy takes you. Depending on your deeds and words, entire civilisations will be destroyed, trusted friends may be betrayed or left for dead, and the fate of trillions of lives hang in the balance.

Most RPGs released since the trilogy have been open-world games, offering freedom in allowing you to travel across a vast landscape and mix and match quests and activities, but none have offered narrative freedom and control in this manner. You can see why, as well. It's very hard to pull off, and even BioWare themselves have shied away from trying to do it again. Their Dragon Age series has offered some of the same ideas of narrative control, but constantly changing protagonists and drastically changing locations between games has minimised the same kind of impact.

Where you command your ship from, and spend a lot of time searching for new worlds to visit in your bouncy tank.

The Mass Effect trilogy is really one immense game split into three for length and pacing reasons, and the Legendary Edition of the trilogy combines them for the first time into one cohesive package. Every bit of DLC is also included (one optional expansion for the first game excepted, which almost everyone ignored first time around anyway) and all three games have been given graphical spruce-ups and had their load times drastically improved. The first game has also had its combat revamped to better match the latter two games in the series. The result is now the best way to experience the trilogy, certainly for newcomers, and seasoned hands will find a more streamlined experience as well.

Martin Sheen plays the main human antagonist and has a blast in the process.

The trilogy's most vital feature is that you get to create your character and take them through all three games, carrying all their decisions with them to make for one epic story. The trilogy is ostensibly made up of roleplaying games, although it ends up being more of an RPG-shooter hybrid. All three games are separated into non-combat areas, where you can pick up missions, engage in dialogue and diplomacy and usually some shopping, and mission levels, which are linear maps where you usually make your way to an objective and shoot very large numbers of people along the way. The most important stuff usually happens in the non-combat zones, where you can guide Shepard through conversations using a radial dial and picking your responses. You can also gain "Paragon" and "Renegade" responses by picking kind or aggressive replies respectively. Increase your Paragon and/or Renegade scores and you can unlock special replies, which can sometimes allow you to avoid combat by defusing situations or intimidating an opponent into backing down. This is usually where you'll decide what kind of Shepard you can be, either a hero or an antihero (you can't really be a villain) or some kind of middle ground, although those trying to have their cake and eat it may find they're locked out of the special replies on both ends of the spectrum.

"Earth!?! Where are we?"

Combat sees you deploy Shepard and two companions and fight in third-person. Combat is inspired by the Gears of War series, with lots of conveniently-placed, chest-high walls to hide behind and fire off shots at the enemy. Combat in the first game is fairly forgettable, improves sharply in the second game and reaches its best in the final title. You can focus on your own fight and let AI handle your companions, or you can pause and give them orders mid-combat. The three games do handle difficulty differently, so I found that Mass Effect 2 could sometimes be challenging on Normal whilst Mass Effect 3 could occasionally feel a bit too easy even on Nightmare, so tweaking difficulty levels to find the right balance is key. However, given the important stuff happens in the dialogue scenes, combat can occasionally feel like a chore. Dropping the difficulty all the way to the easiest level makes combat trivial and allows you to get on with the story.

And it's the worldbuilding, story and characters where Mass Effect shines. Mass Effect is nothing too original - imagine 1990s SF TV classic Babylon 5 mashed up with the 2003 Battlestar Galactica and you're about 90% of the way there - but it almost gleefully mixes and matches its inspirations to create something very enjoyable, if occasionally familiar. The alien races are all memorable and have their interesting foibles and cultural tics, like the third-person-referring Hanar or grumpy space dwarf Voluses, or the Elcor, whose lack of facial expressions and monotonous voices means they have to patiently explain their current emotional state at the start of every sentence. The backstory, painting humanity as newcomers on the galactic stage who are still a bit paranoid about aliens but who are also rising fast in power and influence, angering older galactic civilisations, is also rich and interesting.

Tali, kickass space engineer and one of your best friends in the series.

The in-game story is also excellent, with you initially chasing down a rogue Spectre who has allied to a renegade race of mechanoids. The stakes get bigger and busier, and you eventually have to sacrifice a trusted friend and pull a gun on another when your relationship goes south. Eventually you discover the real threat, a Cthulhu-esque nightmare of techno-horrors from beyond the dawn of time, and have to fend off their first incursion into the galaxy with a massive space battle and a desperate battle up a burning skyscraper...and that's all in just the first game!

The story ranges far and wide across the galaxy, although players are often baffled by the turn it takes in Mass Effect 2. Trying to avoid spoilers, but suffice to say that there is a two-year gap between the events of the first two games and Shepard's warnings of the return of the Reapers have been disregarded by the Council, forcing them to join forces with a human separatist organisation with a dubious moral past but who have the massive resources needed to take the fight to a new enemy, the Collectors. The game feels like a huge side-quest from the main story arc, but it's also immaculately structured, with Shepard having to assemble a (more or less literal) Dirty Dozen of specialists in various fields, win their trust and then mount an all-out assault on the Collector home base. The brilliance of Mass Effect 2 is how closely it focuses on your relationship with the various characters: mess up your recruitment jobs and you may find some candidates will not help you, or may stab you in the back, or are so disillusioned with you that they will be killed in the final battle. Mass Effect 2 is distinctly odd when looked at in the grand context of the trilogy but it's a brilliant game in its own right.

One of the problems with facing cosmic techno-horrors from the beyond the dawn of time is that every other side-villain in the trilogy comes across as a time-wasting prat. This guy takes that to another level.

Mass Effect 3 then becomes an all-out war story, with you right in the middle of a desperate battle for survival with entire planets falling and burning, and a desperate resistance being organised against ridiculous odds. This may sound familiar, but really, Mass Effect 3 does an almost unmatched job of putting you in a ludicrously overwhelming situation and forcing you to make very tough decisions on which the fate of the galaxy will depend. It's enough to almost make you forgive the infamously divisive ending, which tries to bring the preceding ~95 hours of great storytelling to a satisfying close and can't quite manage it. It works and more or less fits the themes of the trilogy, but it also does feel like some of the unknowable mystery set up by the first game has been dissipated by lengthy exposition scenes in the third.

The Mass Effect's trilogy's ace card is its cast of characters. BioWare had superb casts of fun characters in earlier games, all the way back to Minsc and Boo in the venerable Baldur's Gate, but it was in Mass Effect where they really nailed it. Almost every character is excellently-written, superbly-acted (Mass Effect may have cumulatively the greatest voice cast and vocal performances of any video game series, ever) and given motivations and backstory that allow you to understand where they're coming from. A few characters are a bit on the bland side - Ashley, Kaidan, Vega, Jacob - and a couple don't feel like they really fit into a Paragon-based crew (Zaeed) or a Renegade-based one (about half the rest), but overall they're a great bunch. And of course Tali, Garrus, Wrex, Liara and Javik are among the best, most entertaining AI companions you could wish for in any game. There's also a few who might annoy at first or don't appear to do much, but gradually reveals themselves to be great picks (Jack, Samara, EDI, Grunt). Forging friendships or even romances with these characters, or encouraging hook-ups between their ranks, is amusing.

It's never revealed how much Shepard is paid for their troubles, but it's clearly not enough as this side-hustling advertising gig indicates.

So far, so good. But there are some issues. The first is that having all three games and their DLC in the same package creates some weird pacing problems, particularly in how you access the expansion missions. Arrival should really only be done after the final mission in Mass Effect 2 (it acts as a bridge to Mass Effect 3), but it's possible to trigger the mission a lot earlier and it fits very awkwardly into the timeline if you do that. Similarly, the Citadel expansion to Mass Effect 3 should be done as late in the game as possible to ensure you get to recruit the largest possible cast of characters from all three games for a reunion, but the lighthearted, comedic tone of the expansion fits awkwardly alongside the increasingly grimdark-AF atmosphere as the trilogy moves towards it conclusion.

There's also a lot of stuff that the games don't tell you that a newcomer should really know, like how regularly touring the ship between missions can unlock new conversations with your companion characters and open up opportunities to gain Renegade or Paragon points, or unlock new missions or "war assets" for use later on in Mass Effect 3 (Legendary Edition carries forwards more decisions from the first two games to help you in the third).

If you immediately got this Baldur's Gate reference, you are automatically a person of taste and refinement. Well done.

There's also the fact that although BioWare tinkered with how the OG Mass Effect works, they don't bring it fully in line with the other two games. Mass Effect is an RPG with a shooter combat mode, whilst Mass Effect 2 and 3 are much more shooters with RPG conversations. The difference is that Mass Effect has non-combat skills and more areas where combat and conversations mix, whilst the other two games only have very modest skill trees and much more clearly delineate their non-combat and combat areas. Mass Effect feels a bit out of keeping with the other two games and not fully integrated into how most of the series works, so the unified experience of playing all three games remains uneven (although less on this time around).

There's also the issue with minigames. Mass Effect 1 and 2 have laborious minigames for lockpicking and hacking, which are both tedious and should be dumped. Mass Effect 3 swaps them out for it simply taking a while and having to make sure nobody's shooting at you at the time. All three games also have an exploration mechanic which they handle differently. Mass Effect 1 has you driving around planets in the Mako, an inexplicably bouncy tank, looking for minerals and (very rarely) shooting bad guys. There's also identikit buildings - seriously, it's worse than Dragon Age II - you can sometimes clear out of enemies and loot. Exploring all these optional planets takes forever (literally 50% or more of Mass Effect 1's total playtime if you're going for an exhaustive run) and isn't much fun.

You will be doing this a lot.

Mass Effect 2 ups the ante with mineral scanning, which means you sit in orbit around planets and move the mouse around looking for minerals. It sounds and plays very dull, but is important to build up minerals for the final battle in the last game. Again, if you go for an exhaustive, 100% playthrough you will probably spend at least five hours accruing far more resources then you will ever need.

Mass Effect 3 has a much faster and more modest scanning game where you go looking for war assets to use against the Reapers. It's a bit more hit and miss, but it's fun to track down missing fighter squadrons or a damaged cruiser which can they rejoin the fleet for the final battle.

By the third game, even villains are stopping to tell Shepard how awesome they are before trying to kill them.

Another issue is that some storylines have not aged gracefully. Various cliches like genius autistic characters (who are then subjected to abuse and torture), wish-fulfilment hot alien space babes (some of the costume choices in the game were corny when the games came out, let alone now) and villains who are villains because villains rear their head from time to time and will make you roll your eyes as often. The games do improve immensely over this, sometimes fast enough for the third game to mock some of the decisions from the first.

Frozen Prothean soldier Javik is a very late addition to the crew (only appearing in the third game) but a superb one, with his bewildered disbelief at the state of the galaxy thanks to "primitive races" of his time being a constant source of comedy.

The biggest weakness of the trilogy is probably how it is divided into distinct "roleplaying" and "shooting" modes. The meat of the game is in the roleplaying sections and the shooting can sometimes feel rote and phoned in, a simple way of adding "more gameplay" to the series. The more hardcore RPG fan, especially those familiar with BioWare's earlier Knights of the Old Republic SF RPG, will bemoan the way tactical, squad-based combat has transformed into real-time twitch shooting. The games sometimes awkwardly move between the two modes and it can be odd seeing a Paragon Shepard extolling the value of all life and then five seconds later is gunning down forty enemies in rapid succession, gaining achievements for the number of people they massacre and set on fire. At its weakest, the trilogy can feel like a very-well written and characterised adventure game that is broken up by an shooting gallery minigame. Combat does improve across the three games, although the ability to split "run," "cover" and "use" into three different commands would make things even better.

It takes a while, but eventually Mass Effect delivers some outstanding CGI space battles.

If you've never played the Mass Effect trilogy before, then Mass Effect: Legendary Edition (****½) is an easy sell. One of the greatest video game stories ever told with one of the single finest casts of characters in video game history, with some genuine weight and consequence to your decisions. The workmanlike combat and tedious minigames can be borne for the sake of just spending time in this excellent world, and the negatives do generally clear up as the trilogy continues. If you're already a hardened Mass Effect fan, than Legendary Edition clears up some inconsistencies, puts all three games in a handy launcher, smooths out the process of carrying your character and decisions through all three titles and adds graphical and control improvements that make the experience just more enjoyable. Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is available now on PC, PlayStation and Xbox.

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Amazon developing a MASS EFFECT television series

Amazon Prime Television are developing a television series based on the popular science fiction video game series, Mass Effect.

The news came as Amazon celebrated the launch of their new Wheel of Time television series. The first three episodes, which dropped last Friday, have exceeded Amazon's launch expectations and become Amazon's highest-rated debut series of 2021, and one of their biggest of all time, in the same bracket as anti-superhero drama The Boys and the highly acclaimed comedy series The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel. A second season is already more than halfway through shooting and reports indicate that a third season has been at least "amberlit," with contingency planning underway before Amazon decides to pull the trigger on that order.

Mass Effect is a popular video game series consisting of a trilogy and a stand-alone sequel game, all developed by BioWare (also known for their Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age franchises). The trilogy - Mass Effect (2007), Mass Effect 2 (2010) and Mass Effect 3 (2012) - was released on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. A "Legendary Edition" of the three games was released this year on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, to some success and acclaim. Microsoft published the original game whilst the two sequels and subsequent re-releases were handled by Electronic Arts. Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017), which was supposed to start a new storyline set in a completely different galaxy, was not successful and EA and BioWare have since pivoted to make Mass Effect 5, which reportedly will lean harder on the original trilogy's characters and factions.

Set in the late 22nd Century, Mass Effect is set several decades after first contact between Earth and a community of alien civilisations who control most of the Milky Way. This community is represented by the Citadel Council, a sort-of United Nations in space who are based on the Citadel, a colossal city-space station which acts as a trade and diplomatic hub between the various species. Despite their newcomer status on the galactic scene, humans are petitioning hard for greater prestige and power on the Council, to the annoyance of alien races who've been waiting centuries for promotion to the higher ranks. Key to Earth's hopes is Shepard, a skilled human agent who has become the first of their species to join the Spectres, an elite special forces division which reports directly to the Council. Shepard's investigation of an attack by the cybernetic Geth leads them to uncover evidence of a massive threat to all life in the galaxy, and their attempts to convince other races of the threat before it arrives.

The trilogy was highly praised on release for its writing, characterisation and action, as well as the slowly-growing sense of dread that built until the third game turned fully apocalyptic. The trilogy was also acclaimed for the accumulating weight of meaty decisions the player could make, which could leave individual characters dead or alive, and even entire civilisations destroyed, hostile or allied. However, the ending of the third game was considered underwhelming on original release, resulting in enough of a fuss that the ending was revised in later patches. Despite this, the trilogy retained enough goodwill to make last year's "Legendary Edition" a reasonable success. To date, the franchise has sold almost 20 million copies across all formats.

Rumours of a movie or TV version have circulated for years, with different options on the table. It sounds like Amazon's current plan is the most serious yet. It is unclear if Amazon would directly adapt the trilogy to the screen or develop a new story in the same universe, but the trilogy's storytelling and character focus would make a direct transition more viable than it is for many other games. Amazon would have to make some interesting casting choices, including which gender of actor for Commander Shepard to pick (players could choose their gender in the trilogy, with different vocal performances from Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale).

It's worth noting that Witcher, Enola Holmes and Superman actor Henry Cavill was recently pictured with potential script pages for a Mass Effect project. A noted fan of the video game trilogy, it was assumed he had gotten a voiceover part for Mass Effect 5, but it might be he's also been put in mind for a role on the Amazon project, his other commitments allowing.

Amazon are also developing a Fallout TV series with the Westworld creative team. Meanwhile, Electronic Arts and BioWare are continuing to develop Mass Effect 5 for an estimated 2023-25 release window.

More news on this project if and when it develops,

Henry Cavill teases involvement in new MASS EFFECT project

Actor Henry Cavill has teased that he is working on a Mass Effect project.

The actor took a shot of him reading a blurry page of text whilst in the makeup chair for the second season of The Witcher. Fans quickly unblurred the text and discovered that he was reading a plot summary of Mass Effect 3 from Wikipedia.

Several possibilities arise. The first and most likely is that Cavill is voicing a character in Mass Effect 5. BioWare recently confirmed that the game is in development, and Cavill as a video game fan in general and a known connoisseur of CRPGs would likely be up for a role.

The second is that a Mass Effect TV show or film is under discussion and Cavill is in talks for a role. Although a Mass Effect live-action project has been rumoured for a while, there hasn't been any firm announcements since a film proposal with Legendary Pictures and Warner Brothers petered out in the early 2010s. Although normally you'd expect a show or film to enter development and then talk to actors, sometimes the process goes the other way, so teams can go to studios with an actor with known star power already attached.

If that is the case, it'd be interesting to know whom Cavill would play. One would hope that a Mass Effect film or show would go with the games' gender-neutral casting, and allow both male and female actors to audition for the central role of Shepard (one alternative would be to ape the games by filming all scenes with both and allowing viewers to choose which version to watch, but that could be weird and expensive). Still, a Mass Effect film or TV series with Cavill as Shepard wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. I think I'd prefer him in another role though.

Whatever the case, hopefully we'll find out soon what's going on.

BioWare release trailer for MASS EFFECT: LEGENDARY EDITION

BioWare have released a new trailer for their upcoming remake of the original Mass Effect trilogy.

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition comprises the original three games - Mass Effect (2007), Mass Effect 2 (2010) and Mass Effect 3 (2012) - and all of their DLC, big and small. The games' graphics have been remastered in 4K with new lighting effects (including quite a lot more lens flare) and there has been work done to smooth out the inconsistencies between the first game and the other two. You will also now be able to create a character and guide them through all three games, and some of the oddities of the first game (like how inventory and character advancement is handled, and the notoriously flaky driving sections) have been smoothed out and made more like the other two games.

There have been improvements to character customisation, with characters given a greater variety in hairstyle options, and the "default" female Shepard from Mass Effect 3 will now be available to play from the start of the saga.

However, in a more controversial move, BioWare have removed multiplayer from the Legendary Edition version of Mass Effect 3, noting that the work involved to update it would have been counter-productive and may have split the still-surprisingly-popular multiplayer scene for the original version of the game. Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017) is also not included and the collection will reportedly launch as a full price modern game, to the fury of some fans (particularly people who own prior versions of the games, or bought all three on original release at full price each).

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition launches on 14 May on PC, PlayStation 5 and X-Box Series X. BioWare are currently working on a fifth Mass Effect game, but little is known about it at the moment.

BioWare release teaser trailer for DRAGON AGE IV and a return to the Milky Way for MASS EFFECT 5

BioWare and EA have released teaser trailers for new games in the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series.

The Dragon Age IV teaser hints that the game is still set in the mage-realm of Tevinter and will focus - once again - on a new hero arising to stand against the forces of evil, backed by familiar characters like Varric. The trailer ends with the name "Dragon Age," hopefully just a placeholder and not an indication that BioWare are going to rename the game just Dragon Age to confuse people. The game has been in development for some years, although the team was co-opted to help finish both Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem. The game now appears to be in full development at BioWare, but no release timeframe has been given.

The Mass Effect trailer features as Asari walking through a snowy wasteland with a destroyer Reaper in the background, after a camera pans across wreckage and the ruins of a Mass Relay, hinting that the game will take place after the events of Mass Effect 3 rather than following up on the other-galaxy shenanigans of Mass Effect: Andromeda. This new Mass Effect game is very early in development.

The move is hoped to restore confidence in the fanbases of both games after the heads of both franchises resigned from BioWare last week.

Heads of the MASS EFFECT and DRAGON AGE franchises quit BioWare

In a surprise move, the heads of the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises have quit BioWare and its parent company, Electronic Arts.

Casey Hudson, who is the BioWare General Manager and head of the Mass Effect IP, and Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah, are both departing the company ahead of their next releases.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition, a HD/4K remaster of the original Mass Effect trilogy, is currently scheduled for release in the first half of 2021, whilst Mass Effect 5 is in early pre-production. Dragon Age 4 is in development for a believed 2022 release.

EA and BioWare have confirmed that the franchises will continue under new management.

Hudson joined BioWare to work on MDK2 in 2000. He subsequently worked on Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000), Neverwinter Nights (2002), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003), Jade Empire (2005), Mass Effect (2007), Mass Effect 2 (2010) and Mass Effect 3 (2012). He left BioWare in 2014 and spent more than two years working for Microsoft Studios before returning to BioWare in 2017.

Darrah has worked with BioWare almost since its founding. He created the Infinity Engine's combat system for Baldur's Gate (1998), which subsequently was used in numerous other games (including Planescape: Torment and the Icewind Dale series, for Black Isle, as well as Baldur's Gate II). He also worked on Jade Empire (2005), Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (2008), Dragon Age: Origins (2009), Dragon Age II (2011), Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014), Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017) and Anthem (2019).

BioWare has been in difficulties recently, with both Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem under-performing in sales and critical acclaim compared to expectations, and the studio not delivering a bona fide hit game in six years. Their last few games have had exceptionally difficult development processes, and numerous reports about Dragon Age 4's torturous development process have surfaced.

BioWare and another formerly critically-lauded studio, Blizzard, have both been held up as examples of once-great companies that have withered and declined under corporate ownership, since the former's buy-out by Electronic Arts in 2007 and the latter's acquisition by Activision in 2008. Both studios have struggled to release games matching their pre-acquisition quality ever since, with widespread reports of corporate interference. Both companies have been hemorrhaging talent for years, with dozens of major Blizzard developers quitting the company in the last few months to found new studios.

EA and BioWare confirm MASS EFFECT remaster for 2021 and a new game for later release

Electronic Arts have confirmed that the Mass Effect video game trilogy is getting a remaster for release in Spring 2021 and a further game in the series for later release.

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition includes all three games in the original trilogy (released in 2007, 2010 and 2012) plus all their accompanying expansions and DLC in one package. The primary change to the games will be graphically: textures, shaders, models and effects will be updated to modern standards but apparently there will not be a full "remake" of the three games. This seems to reduce the chance of the three games being brought fully into line with one another so they can be played as one seamless experience (the first Mass Effect, in particular, feels a bit clunky compared to the latter two games, which are much more streamlined).

BioWare have also confirmed that they are in early development on the "next chapter" of the Mass Effect series. It's unclear if this is a full Mass Effect 5, to follow up on the underwhelming Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017), or will be more of a spinoff. BioWare are currently working on updated content for Star Wars: The Old Republic and Anthem, as well as developing a fourth game in the Dragon Age franchise.

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition will be released in the Spring of 2021 for X-Box One and PlayStation 4, with an "enhanced" version available of PC, X-Box X and PlayStation 5. 

Rumour: EA to reportedly announce MASS EFFECT remaster this weekend

Rumours are swirling that Electronic Arts is set to announce a complete remaster of BioWare's classic Mass Effect trilogy a special virtual event this weekend.

The Mass Effect series is a hybrid RPG/third-person shooter game series set in a painstakingly-detailed space opera universe. The first three games, released in 2007, 2010 and 2012, form a single epic story extending across some 65 hours of gameplay, pitting humanity and several allied races against the Reapers, an ancient race of biomechanical horrors from beyond the dawn of time. Although Mass Effect did little that was completely new - its setting borrows more than a few story and backstory plot points from 1990s space opera Babylon 5, offbeat space opera game Anachronox and BioWare's earlier game Knights of the Old Republic - it did remix standard space opera tropes in an enjoyable fashion.

The trilogy sold decently if unspectacularly, but did win critical acclaim and a legion of fans. The controversial ending to the trilogy did dent the critical appreciation of the series, but more recent reappraisals (following a series of patches and expansions altering the ending somewhat) have seen a kinder consensus emerging. An attempt to relaunch the franchise with a sequel trilogy spearheaded Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017) has had mixed results, with a highly variable critical reception and poor sales.

Reports of a Mass Effect remaster leaked a couple of years ago and a fairly steady stream of information has seeped out since then, suggesting the games will have much better graphics (PC mods have already delivered better-quality graphics for quite a few years now) and the first game in the series has been more definitively rebuilt to match the gameplay and style of the latter two. Other details are unclear, such as if it will be possible to play the three games in one seamless experience or how the third game's multiplayer features will be handled.

Other reports suggest that the remaster has been handled by a different developer working for EA, with BioWare working on saving their multiplayer shooter Anthem after a troubled launch and also working on a new Dragon Age game for release in 2022. BioWare has had a troubled few years which has seen its one-impeccable reputation severely damaged and a succession of flops (their last hit, Dragon Age: Inquisition, is now six years in the rear view mirror) leaving their long-term future in doubt if Dragon Age IV is not a success.

We'll find out if the rumours are correct on Saturday.

BioWare betting the farm on a game that no-one is excited about

Based on reports from Kotaku and Polygon, it sounds like the fate of BioWare, once one of the most critically-feted development studios in video games, is hanging by a thread. Everything may be resting on the fate of their next game, Anthem, an online shooter which, right now, has not done much to get people excited about it.

It has been clear for many years that BioWare has become a pale shadow of its former self. Like many developers before it, BioWare blazed a trail of innovative and interesting games which got noticed by the big publishers. Electronic Arts, the biggest of the big, swooped in and made BioWare an Offer They Couldn't Refuse back in 2007, buying out the company with grand promises that they wouldn't interfere with the company or its ethos. They almost immediately, of course, began interfering with the company and its ethos.

BioWare was originally founded in 1995 in Edmonton, Canada, and hit the jackpot with only its second game, the expansive and epic Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game, Baldur's Gate (1998). Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000) confirmed the first game's promise and is regularly still cited as both BioWare's best game and one of the finest CRPGs of all time. BioWare went on to release Neverwinter Nights (2002) and Knights of the Old Republic (2003), the best Star Wars video game of all time.

At that time the company was riding high with millions of games sold and tens of millions of dollars in the bank, but it was feeling a little creatively stifled. All of its games so far had been based on pre-existing universes and worlds. BioWare couldn't really shine, they felt, unless they created their own universe. And that's what they did in 2004, moving development of Knights of the Old Republic II  and Neverwinter Nights II to their former colleagues at Interplay who had regrouped as Obsidian Entertainment and shifting course to create three brand-new worlds from scratch.

The results were Jade Empire (2005), Mass Effect (2007) and Dragon Age: Origins (2009). Jade Empire, an atmospheric beat 'em-up/RPG hybrid, is easily the most underrated game in the BioWare canon but its sales were unspectacular and plans for a sequel were shelved. Mass Effect, a shooter/RPG hybrid planned as the start of a trilogy, was a much bigger success, helping drive sales of the X-Box 360 console and convincing Electronic Arts to buy out the company. But Dragon Age: Origins was a much more ambitious game, a vast, sprawling fantasy RPG that hearkened back to the glory days of the Baldur's Gate series. Whilst Jade Empire and Mass Effect streamlined (or "dumbed down," for the less charitable) the hardcore RPG experience for consoles, Dragon Age was complex, deep and extremely long (clocking in at almost four times Mass Effect's length). Making this game was neither cheap nor fast: the game cost several tens of millions of dollars (at a time when game budgets were much lower than today) and took a startling five years to develop. Even more surprising, the game was intended to be a PC exclusive at the precise moment that PC gaming was arguably in the weakest state it has ever been in.

When Electronic Arts took over, they were less than impressed. They mandated console ports of Dragon Age, which were awkward because the game was not designed with controllers in mind, and also ordered that a sequel be put in fast turn-around on a strictly limited budget to help ameliorate the cost of the first game. They ordered that Dragon Age II drop its large and impressive (and console-straining) engine to use Mass Effect 2's engine instead, as well as its conversation wheel and other features that the Dragon Age franchise was, arguably, not a good fit for. This rolling back  (or "dumbing down," to the less charitable) of the game's design ethos saw one senior BioWare designer ragequit the company. The game was slammed by fans on release, for its small scope, tiny number of locations and overall pervading feeling of cheapness. Later retrospectives have been kinder, focusing on the very solid story and characters, but it's hard to argue that the gameplay was lacking.

Worse was to come. In 2011 BioWare released The Old Republic, an MMORPG set in the Star Wars universe. What was actually a decent multiplayer online game was roundly condemned and slated for not being a third "proper" Knights of the Old Republic single-player game. The game sold very well - by some metrics it's the second-most-successful MMORPG of all time, behind only World of WarCraft - but it later went free-to-play and the Grand Star Wars Canon shakeup of 2012 has left the game's official status in doubt (which Disney has done little to alleviate, constantly dodging the question of whether the game is canon).

In 2012 Mass Effect 3 was released, concluding BioWare's grand space opera trilogy. Although the game was very decent, its ending was enormously controversial. It didn't really make sense and removed a lot of the player agency and choice that been the cornerstone of the trilogy. Although later DLC and patches resolved some of the issues, it couldn't resolve all of them and trilogy's reputation was marred as a result (although, again, retrospectives taking into account the three games as a whole have been kinder).

In 2014 Dragon Age: Inquisition was released, and sales and criticism-wise seemed to be something of a righting of a listing ship, although not completely. The game was large and expansive, but it was also criticised for being too blatantly an attempt to cash in on the success of Bethesa's open-world RPGs, such as Skyrim and Fallout 3. BioWare games had always been focused on character and story, with optional side-stories but always an urgency to the storytelling. Inquisition was criticised for throwing this out in favour of vast zones packed with repetitive, MMORPG-style grinding and fetch quests. It was an attempt to cynically meld BioWare's signatures of great storytelling and memorable characters onto Bethesda's open world design and it was a poor fit. Worse was to come in 2015 when The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was released and did exactly what Inquisition had tried to do - a character-focused narrative in a vast, morally murky open world with tons of side-content - and did it with seemingly effortless style, humour and warmth.

Still, the game sold well and reviews were stronger than for BioWare's two proceeding games, but these positive signs were undercut when a new RPG in development behind the scenes, Shadow Realms, was suddenly cancelled. Mass Effect: Andromeda was then released in early 2017. Riven with technical problems, unengaging characters and an unexciting storyline, the game was also set in a different galaxy to the first three Mass Effect games and none of the trilogy's characters or storylines were featured. The game sold poorly, the first genuine BioWare bomb, and suddenly the future of the company seemed in doubt.

BioWare's future now rests on three games: Anthem, Dragon Age IV and an untitled Star Wars game. Dragon Age IV is still relatively early in development and internally the game has been described as a "reboot". What that means, given that the Dragon Age franchise has always been pretty loose in terms of storytelling between games and each title has (more or less) stood alone anyway, is unclear. The Star Wars title is shrouded in secrecy but its future is doubtful, given that Visceral Games were developing a story-based, single-player-focused game that was canned and it was believed that this was also going to be the focus of the Star Wars game.

Anthem, on the other hand is in an advanced stage of development and is expected to be released in about a year. But the game has singularly failed to engage much in the way of pre-release excitement. The game is an action title with limited or no RPG elements. It's an online title without the narrative depth that BioWare is famed for. With its SF, post-apocalyptic vibe, the game also rather strongly resembles the Destiny franchise from EA's arch-rivals Activision, which has itself been rather divisive (although it has sold well). Anthem may luck out and pick up players disappointed with the rival game, but there seems to be a much greater fear at BioWare that people are simply not that excited about the game. Whilst a brand-new BioWare franchise would have once had gamers salivating in expectation, now it barely merits a shrug.

If Anthem fails to resonate, it may mean the end of BioWare, a very expensive studio which has never actually produced a mega-selling game. The entire Mass Effect series, all four games, have sold only about half the number of copies of Fallout 4 or Skyrim by themselves, for example. Dragon Age has done a bit better, but it's now been comprehensively overtaken by the Witcher franchise, a series from what was once a small Polish distribution company based on a series of novels that no-one west of Paris had heard of which has now sold 30 million copies and really does have people salivating for the follow-up, an epic SF game called Cyberpunk 2077.

BioWare's passing would be a shame, as they brought back the Western RPG from the brink of extinction, paving the way for many classic games both from their catalogue and others. Without them, it's arguable if Obsidian and CD Projekt Red (whom BioWare helped launch The Witcher back in 2007) would have taken off like they did. Even Bethesda may owe BioWare a debt of gratitude: The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1997) had not been a massive success and it was partially BioWare's resurrection of the CRPG that inspired them to revisit the series with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002), whose success led to where they are today.

Still, this may be premature. Anthem may turn out to be a fine game, EA may let them actually make a great Star Wars RPG and we could still see Dragon Age IV after all. Watch this space.