No doubt, there’s a lot riding on BioWare to get Dragon Age 4 and Mass Effect 4 right. The company lost a lot of goodwill over past releases, but Mass Effect: Legendary Edition did a lot to bring some of that back. Following it up with Mass Effect 4 is going to be hard, but the few teases that fans have gotten so far aren’t going unnoticed. The hype is unreal for Mass Effect 4, and that means BioWare has to go all-in to try to match that.
The good news is that BioWare doesn’t seem to be putting all its eggs in one basket, so to speak. While a lot of the recent bits of information have been geared toward the Milky Way, it’s worth reiterating that the first teaser featuring a shot of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies was described as “intentional.” What that means remains to be seen, but it seems likely that both will be important to the new game—how, when, and where are all important questions. Yet, not ignoring Andromeda is going to be a boon for the game.
Mass Effect 4: Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies
With so many unknown elements, it’s hard to speculate why the two galaxy shot was intentional and what that means for the game’s eventual release. Perhaps the most on-the-nose deduction is that the story involves, somehow, both galaxies. Given it takes 600 years for the Pathfinders to get to Andromeda, it’s hard to imagine answers to any of these questions, yet the Mass Effect canonizing the Destroy Ending could make for plausible connections.
If the denizens of the Milky Way are able to study and understand the destroyed, left-behind Reaper tech, they could perhaps build a way to travel beyond the Milky Way faster, somehow establishing a pseudo-reliable way of bringing both into play. At the same time, it would also suggest a serious threat escalation.
Threat escalation in stories like Mass Effect is a dangerous thing, but it could be good if done right. Many games, animes, and stories will feature villains and enemies who are more powerful and dangerous than the last, which can at times underserve the strength of the initial enemies. Nothing can top the Reapers, or should, in Mass Effect, but something posing a threat to both the Milky Way and Andromeda could lead to a story with threat escalation without escalating the cause of the threat beyond the Reapers.
And that, while seeing images of Geth, Liara, and more, is incredibly enticing. It’s uncertain how Shepard and Ryder could remotely impact or affect this new Mass Effect, it’s uncertain of what the threats are or how the Milky Way and Andromeda come into play, but what is certain is that by utilizing both galaxies, the storytelling potential is off the charts.
Mass Effect 4 is in development.