Mass Effect 5 has a huge task ahead of it if it’s going to live up to the original Mass Effect trilogy. BioWare has already announced that the game is in early production stages and will release some time after Dragon Age 4.
Mass Effect: Andromeda took place far after the end of Mass Effect 3 and in a different galaxy in order to avoid committing to a single canonical ending to Shepherd’s story. However, after the disappointment of Andromeda, here are a few key reasons that Mass Effect 5 should be a prequel, taking place before the original trilogy begins.
Keeping Mass Effect Feeling Fresh
One of the best things about the first Mass Effect game is, naturally, that the entire universe of Mass Effect is being seen by the play for the very first time. This has a deceptively vital influence on the rest of the game’s success. The player is more likely to form relationships with alien characters like Tali, Garrus, Liara, and Wrex as they are some of the few personal windows they have through which to gain insight about the various alien races of the Systems Alliance.
One side effect of this is that the human characters like Ashley and Kaiden are some of the least liked of the Mass Effect companions. This is likely in part because the player has less incentive to try and learn to understand their perspective on the world. This caused a problem for Mass Effect: Andromeda as well, with familiar alien companions no longer inviting the same curiosity.
Jaal Ama Darav was by far the best received companion in Mass Effect: Andromeda, and was also the only squadmate of a new alien race introduced as well as the only Andromeda Galaxy native. Players were more likely to want to learn more about Jaal, allowing his character to shine through as well as making him feel central to the game world.
In order to recapture the magic of the original Mass Effect in a game set after the main events of the original trilogy, BioWare would likely have to throw characters into an almost completely new environment full of new species and planets to explore, where the squadmate relationships are built on the back of this initial curiosity. However, to do so would also risk sidelining some of the most iconic alien races in Mass Effect so far.
Mass Effect 5 and the Mass Effect Timeline
Mass Effect 5 could avoid this problem by being a prequel to the original games. In the Mass Effect timeline, the Mass Relays and faster-than-light travel are discovered between 2148 and 2149 CE. Shepherd is born in 2154 and the events of the first Mass Effect begin in 2183, just 35 years after the discovery of the Prothean technology which marks the first major divergence from our own timeline.
The early years of human FTL travel and the species' introduction to the galactic community could be a very interesting setting for Mass Effect 5. Not only would it be able to be set in the Mass Effect universe without conflicting with the end of Mass Effect 3, but the period has been established to be a time of unprecedented development and discovery that could help recapture the curiosity that the original games inspired.
Of course to do so Mass Effect 5 will need to provide plenty of original experiences and take advantage of that spirit of exploration, introducing races that have not been seen in Mass Effect before where it doesn’t conflict with the existing lore. BioWare has a huge task ahead of it if the studio is going to continue its flagship sci-fi series while keeping the games a compelling experience that feel fresh over a decade after the franchise began.
Mass Effect 5Â is in development.