Now that Dragon Age: The Veilguard is out of the way, BioWare’s full focus is now going to be on the next mainline Mass Effect instalment. The studio announced back in 2020 that it had started working on the sci-fi RPG series’ comeback, and in the aftermath of Veilguard’s launch, it has now become the studio’s next main project, especially with no Dragon Age DLC in the works. What Mass Effect 5 (or whatever it ends up being called) will bring is anyone’s guess, with little to nothing known about the game up to this point, but as with all fans of the series, we have a number of different, specific expectations that we’re hoping the game will meet. Here, that’s exactly what we’ll be going over.
FLESHED OUT CHOICE AND CONSEQUENCE MECHANICS
Player choice and branching plotlines have ever been BioWare hallmarks, but the studio doesn’t always deliver in this department. Many have expressed how de-emphasized such mechanics are in Veilguard, which, with the exception of its spectacular ending, doesn’t focus on choice and consequence mechanics nearly as much as some of BioWare’s best games. Our hope is that Mass Effect 5 will see the developer going back to its best. After all, the original Mass Effect trilogy touted some of the best, most compelling, most talked about choice and consequence sequences in games to date, so we’d sure love to see the next instalment continue that tradition.
BETTER DIALOG CHOICES
Among other things, Veilguard has criticized by many for its dialog choices, not only because often the different options presented to players are really just presenting the illusion of choice and ultimately leading down the same road, but also because, well, tonally, you can’t ever really be anything more than mildly annoyed as a character. The Mass Effect series revolutionized dialog choices with its wheel snappy writing, so it’d be a shame to see its next entry have the same issues as Dragon Age’s latest outing. Better and more effective dialog choices are going to be non-negotiable.
THE RETURN OF PARAGON AND RENEGADE
The inherently binary nature of the original trilogy’s Paragon and Renegade system has been criticized by some over the years, but you can count us in the group that’s desperate for it to return in the next Mass Effect. Being able to tailor Shephard’s personality with good and evil actions and watching the story respond and react was always a fascinating part of the Mass Effect experience, while Mass Effect 2 and 3 took things even further with Paragon and Renegade prompts, some of which made for some of the series’ most iconic moments to date. We’re desperate for Mass Effect 5 to emulate that.
BETTER WRITING
BioWare has been stumbling in the writing department for a long time now. Mass Effect: Andromeda was a miss, Anthem an even bigger one, while Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s writing also has more than its fair share of critics. While it wouldn’t be accurate to pain old BioWare as the masters of sharp writing, better writing was certainly something that we once took for granted with the studio’s games, though clearly, that’s no longer the case. We’d be surprised if Mass Effect 5 didn’t retain plenty of the corniness that BioWare and its games have always been known for, but it definitely needs to be much better and more snappily written than the studio’s recent output.
PLAYING AS ALIENS
This is something that fans have been hoping to see forever, but BioWare has yet to acquiesce. Shepard and Ryder were both human protagonists, but our hope is that Mass Effect 5 will finally let us decide which race we want to play as. Being able to play as, say, a krogan, turian, asari, or quarian, and having the story and everything in it react according to which of them you’re playing as is a dream that Mass Effect fans have had forever. Here’s hoping the next game turns it into a reality.
MEMORABLE COMPANIONS
We take this for granted with Mass Effect games, and really, with BioWare games in general, but we do, of course, have to mention this in a Mass Effect 5 wishlist. Credit where credit is due- this is one department where BioWare impresses even when it’s not at its best. Veilguard has an excellent cast of characters, while even Andromeda has its high points, even if it doesn’t really hold a candle to the original Mass Effect trilogy’s cast. Will Mass Effect 5 buck that trend? It’s fair to say that’s unlikely (or so we hope, at least).
NEW ALIEN RACES
Meeting new alien races and getting to learn everything there is to learn about their histories and cultures is always a highlight in any Mass Effect game. In fact, the relative lack of new races in Andromeda, in spite of the game being set in a new galaxy, was one of its biggest letdowns. Seemingly Mass Effect 5 is headed back to the Milky Way, but we’re hoping to see plenty of new races nonetheless. After all, there’s a lot of our galaxy that is still unexplored or uncharted in the Mass Effect universe, which means new alien races could pop up and become major players on the interstellar stage.
FOCUS ON LESSER-KNOWN OLDER RACES
Of course, it’s more or less a given that many of the series’ older, familiar alien races will be returning, and though we do obviously expect the likes of the turians, krogans, asari, and others to be major players, we would love for some of the previously less prominent races to become more important as well. From the drell and the colus to the hanar and the batarians and others, the Mass Effect universe has plenty of alien races that we know plenty but not everything about- and we’d sure like to dive deeper into their lore.
COOL NEW PLANETS
A guarantee if there ever was one- assuming all goes well, of course. Getting to explore new planets is always a big part of Mass Effect games, and we’d love for that to be a highlight in the series’ next outing. Alien worlds, wondrous sights and sounds, and perhaps even varying traversal mechanics across different planets- we’re hoping to see at least some of it, if not all of it.
NOT OPEN WORLD
Yes, we do want Mass Effect 5 to wow us with its alien worlds, but one thing we do not want is for the game to have an open world structure. That was one of Andromeda’s biggest failings, and not making the same mistake was one of the best things that The Veilguard did, even with its issues. We’d love for the next Mass Effect to employ a similar structure- though we do hope that it features much better and less repetitive linear mission design than Veilgaurd.
PAST CHOICES CARRY OVER
The Mass Effect series was once built around the idea of letting players take their momentous, galaxy-changing decisions from one game into the next. Not being able to do the same with Mass Effect 5 would be a big miss, in our opinion. Allowing players to re-make a bunch of major decisions from past instalments at the outset of a new save should be the way to go for the next game, in our book. That does mean BioWare might have to pick a canon ending for Mass Effect 3, but of course, if Mass Effect 5 is actually set in the Milky Way, it might have to do that anyway.
ANDROMEDA PLOTLINES RESOLVED
BioWare and EA deciding not to make an Andromeda sequel meant a bunch of plotlines were left unresolved, but thankfully, project director Michael Gamble has suggested that ME5 will tie those loose ends up. How that will happen and whether or not we can expect to see the Andromeda and Milky Way plots maybe even converging remains to be seen, but one way or another, resolution for all previous threads seems like something of a necessity.
ANDROMEDA-STYLE COMBAT
Mass Effect: Andromeda stumbled in a number of significant ways, but there were some areas where it was an unequivocal win. Combat, for instance, is a department where the game deserves all the props. Mass Effect 2 and 3 were no slouches with their cover-based third-person shooting either, but the level of mobility and flexibility that Andromeda brought to the table took things to a whole another level. Hopefully, the next game will be similar.
EXTENSIVE PROGRESSION AND CUSTOMIZATION
Mass Effect games have very rarely had universally beloved progression and customization mechanics- either they were too streamlined, like with Mass Effect 2, or too scattered and lacking in cohesion, like with Andromeda. Mass Effect 5 needs to strike a better balance- allow players to craft their builds with actual flexibility, with control afforded over weapons, gear, abilities, and what have you, and ensure that it doesn’t feel bloated the way it often does with RPGs of this kind.
ANOTHER EXCELLENT HUB
BioWare games deliver some of the best hub locations you’ll ever see, from the Normandy in the Mass Effect trilogy to the Skyhold in Dragon Age: Inquisition to the Lighthouse in the much more recent Veilguard. There’s little doubt in our minds that Mass Effect 5 will keep that going- or so we hope, at least.