Mass Effect 4 has the opportunity to do right by the franchise that gained traction in 2007 and never looked back. It's one of the few sci-fi properties that began in gaming and stayed the course to be one of the most revered around, and while Mass Effect: Andromeda was a step back, it was a valiant effort to expand the horizons of the BioWare series. The future seems to be a little more familiar, though, as the reveal trailer of the fourth mainline game centered around Liara. It's an intriguing idea, but little is known about the plans for the story beyond the glimpse that was shown a while ago.
This gives Mass Effect 4 the luxury of going in a number of directions with the story, characters, and setting. The franchise is known for tense combat encounters, lovable crew mates, and interesting world-building, and this can be achieved in more ways than one. Like House of the Dragon to Game of Thrones, it may be best for Mass Effect to shrink its scale and focus on a more political, internal tale instead of reaching for the stars. Exploring the inner workings of secondary villain Cerberus could be the best method of restoring the lofty reputation of BioWare's crowning sci-fi achievement.
Cerberus Provokes a Smaller, More Intense Story
Not every science fiction story has to be grand in scale to be gripping in atmosphere and storytelling. The Star Wars prequels faltered despite taking viewers all over the galaxy, and Rogue One shrunk the scope drastically, resulting in a more intimate and tense story even though long-standing fans of the IP could have predicted the outcome of the characters before the film even began. Like this, there is plenty of opportunity to tell a fantastic story without taking advantage of a star cluster's worth of places to explore, and Cerberus' human-centric, closed-minded philosophy could provoke a smaller scale for Mass Effect 4.
Learning about how Cerberus operates, why it thinks the way it does, and who its major players are could all be good starting points for a great sci-fi story, and one that is different from the swathe of franchises that have come before. Focusing on one of the many strands of world-building that other Mass Effect games don't have the time to give more context to would make Mass Effect 4 feel like a legitimate chapter of the overarching story, but not one that is necessarily critical to enjoying what came before.
Mass Effect 4 Has to Be Familiar Yet Innovative
One of the problems that Mass Effect: Andromeda had was its lack of connection to the previous games. The original Mass Effect Trilogy is beloved, and the next game has to straddle the difficult line between satisfying existing fans with a story that feels complimentary to what came before while not disrupting the trilogy too significantly. Creating a story too reliant on what the first three did would be a risk, because should it fail to impress, it could alter people's perception of the good games in the franchise and taint an otherwise fantastic legacy.
Cerberus are an essential part of Mass Effect lore, but little is truly known about its inner workings past what is said by Miranda and Jacob and the vague hints given by the Illusive Man. To place the protagonist of Mass Effect 4 in the trenches of Cerberus would not only give far more context to the organization, which offers many potential narrative threads to explore, but it would also ensure that Mass Effect 4 feels inherently connected to the first three games in a way that doesn't interrupt or corrupt what they did should the new entry not live up to expectations. There is still much players don't know about Cerberus, and shedding light on its evil ways or even bravely attempting to give it a redemption story could be viable options for BioWare's next sci-fi epic.
Mass Effect 4 is in development.