mass effect

[Hushful]

You get my point though. It, unfortunately, is not an isolated incident. ME2 was the best one for me. It felt less rushed, more polished, and just a better game in general than its predecessor or successor.

Edit: Them going back to the Contact War would be cool. Or they have the Protheans and countless eons before now, go back to when the Reapers were first made or something.

[LazDude2012]

Yeah, but that assumes you picked the "War Hero" background for your Shepard. I always did, but either way, they have to make assumptions. They have a fairly well encapsulated canon. The options, as I see them, are:

1. MMO: Mass Effect Online. (please no)

2. Use a different character entirely for a prequel, or even explore someone else's story through the timeline already established. (What happens while Shepard is dead between ME1 and ME2? Or during his/her house arrest between ME2 and ME3?) Heck, I'd love to see Anderson's story.

3. Quit while they're ahead and make a new IP. (However, EA's not known for being innovative)

4. Create ME4 on the premise of the indoctrination theory. Not going to happen, most likely, but it is a valid path for Bioware to go down.

5. Create a strategy game played from the perspective of Cerberus or the geth, where you control waves of enemies and try to overcome Shepard and his party. (Pretty cool idea if I do say so myself)

EDIT: Hushful's Prothean idea is awesome. Or even, the civilisation before them.

[Hushful]

Well, let's be real for a second about a prequel. They have established that the Reapers come every 50,000 yrs like clockwork. The kid at the end says this has been going on for eons. Most people already know, eon = one million years. They have *plenty* of time to play around in. They could work backwards every time to the previous Reaper invasions all the way back to the beginning when the penultimate precursor race created the Reapers and set them on their path.

[LazDude2012]

Indeed. That would be awesome, although, we already know the Reapers won. So, bit of a letdown.

[Hushful]

Except for they may not have "won" per-say so much as "The Originals" (TM Hushful 2012 ) made them to preserve themselves and to keep the cycle of synthetic over taking life from happening again... even though that is exactly WTF happens every time...

[LazDude2012]

In large part because of the Reapers! Yay, stupid (EA boardroom style) logic!

[Xylord]

Indeed. That would be awesome, although, we already know the Reapers won. So, bit of a letdown.

So what? This kind of story CAN work, and is an excellent concept actually. I remember Halo : Reach. Right from the beginning, you KNOW you're going to fail, you WILL die, all your companions WILL die. But HOW did you "fail"? And what if the "fail" is so extraordinarily epic, it's so much sadder, but also so much more intense than any happy Hollywood happy-ending could have been? I actually think that's the best idea up to now. Sadly, EA is known for sucking terribly at everything and for infecting all the stuff they touch with this disease. So I shall not hold too many hopes on this.

Edit : I can imagine an awesome last-stand scene of you, some epic ancient legendary powerful hero fighting off endless waves of reaper with the sole power of your ancient technology, only to be overwhelmed as your world falls into apocalypse, as well as the completion of the plan toward the creation of the crucible, or something like that.