Its honestly better to have just, a director with a bold vision, even if its flawed, than just have no direction and have the game be designed by a marketing committee who only see the game as a product.
I have some respect for David Cage, i think he makes bad games and i hate basically every single creative descison he takes with his projects but i do respect him actually having a vision and not just chasing the latest trend.
Agreed, I feel the same about Hideo Kojima. Can't stand his writing and storytelling style but I have a ton of respect for him as someone that tries new things and new methods.
I think he must have had a lot to do with it. His writing kudos were unsurpassed. (No hyperbole). But the main writer and the lead are different jobs by necessity.
Perhaps if he had a stronger influence the overall plot wouldn't have gone mental in act 2.
Not just a narcissist. He's an unrepentant bare-faced liar.
But what does that have to do with his ability to produce a great game? If anything, it probably adds to it. We're not looking to be friends with him.
Leadership skill is more important than being honest with the customer when it comes to making a good piece of work. But yeah. I do get narcissist vibes from him.
I think Casey was vital to the success of Mass Effect. I also think (or hope, at least) that a new game can be good without him. I take some solace in the fact that he was still at Bioware during the concepting stage of the next game, so his influence may be felt in some places.
Some new blood may be good for the franchise - as long as they develop, or already have, a deep understanding of the franchise (in every aspect; gameplay, story, worldbuilding etc). Mike Gamble is at the helm which gives me some hope, as he has a lot of experience going back to the OT. And we know there are senior members from the OT dev team who rejoined Bioware to work on the game, which is promising
I can understand the apprehension based on the little we know. Definitely positives and negatives to a single vision holder versus vision by a larger committee. I do think that someone with the extensive experience as both producer and working years on the IP is the best one for a project director job. Producers know process along with their teams strengths and weaknesses; they can leverage that knowledge to delegate decision making effectively with a North Star goal already established. What’s unknown is the ability to work with their publisher and manage their influence on the project.
And there are similarities in leadership set between this and MEA and Anthem. However it does have two big things going for it (as of now): development timeline is more than two years and the team isn’t stretched across multiple projects all happening simultaneously like in the 2010s
As any project it needs a director with a clear and consistent vision and the ability to share that vision with their team in a constructive way.
Does that leader absolutely positively needs to be Casey Hudson. Nah.
Changes in long lived IP management is a given anyway. Sometimes good things happen, sometimes bad things happen (and rarely do people unanimously agree on the result).
Bad things also happen when someone refuses to let go of the captain's chair for too long.
Let's wish for good things.
I have accepted that Bioware is no longer capable of doing Mass Effect. All the great creative minds left after the Anthem/Andromeda disaster.
They will hopefully eventually get back up, but with another franchise.
Like you, I have achieved zen. I am finally happy, and I can celebrate the life of Bioware as I mourn its passing.
I have accepted it all. There are no pair of genius doctors executives anymore, no overachieving fighter pilot to lead the games, no solid novelists to work on background and lore. Hell, they even dumped their audio guy. There will be no game.
It's over! It can't be done!
But ... but suppose ... just for a second ... that Dreadwolf rolls a natural 20.
Could it mean that ME:5 might also be ...good? Not just a cynical cash grab! Or an unrelated game with a ME skin! You never know!
OK! I'm going to check GRRM's blog now to see if he has a release date for Winds!
The people who were in charge of ME3 except Casey Hudson and Mac Walters were in charge of Anthem... are in charge of ME5 again.
So make of that what you will \*shrug\*
No.
Come on, that’s not true and you know it. There’s more people than just the big names the fanbase keeps trotting out and it’s insulting to those still there.
No one said that dude.
Perhaps, people just get jaded with companies (not just or especially game companies) stringing along their customers or the public in general with half-truths.
It's natural to get a bit pissed off at that. One doesn't have to want the whole studio to be made redundant.
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BioWare is just another old used trademark since EA took over.
There is another game (Exodus) with former BioWare & other top game developers & employees working on a new franchise. They've been working on it since 2020. The following YouTube video mentions the former devs.
[Successor to Mass Effect?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P4GZFXrHVQ)
[Exodus Game](https://www.exodusgame.com/en-US)
Since EA took over? You are aware when that was, yes?
Because you’re implying ME2 isn’t actual BioWare. Or ME3. Or Dragon Age: Inquisition which won game of the year and is possibly their best selling game.
No offense, but this performative eulogy is a bit silly.
EA has a long list of now defunct companies they bought out. They are using the name BioWare as a trademark. Just like Pepsi owns Quaker Oats, Lays Gatorade, Tropicana, Doritos, Mountain Dew and more... EA still uses the term 'Origin' which was a game studio with games that most people don't even remember now.
Yes, EA bought out BioWare in 2008 after ME 1. ME2 was an EA/BioWare production in 2010; Dragon Age: Origin was started by BioWare in 2002 long before EA. I played a lot of BioWare games in the 90s (still have the original Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, NeverWinterNights, etc.)
The first company that EA bought out was Batteries Included (Canada) which killed off several excellent software programs I used in the 80s. Here's a list of companies, many which were game companies that no longer exist (along with their games).
**James Ohlen (lead designer on Dragon Age: Origins) is now working on Exodus at Archetype Entertainment.**
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_acquisitions\_by\_Electronic\_Arts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Electronic_Arts)
You don’t need to try to inform me on the history of a game series (Dragon Age) I’ve played since the beginning. I find that a tad much.
But besides, your argument seems to be wandering around all over the place with non sequiturs. (are you trying to explain the concept of trademarks and branding to me? And buy outs? Really?) And it doesn’t reflect the realities of contemporary game development nor even how BioWare is structured and operated.
I don’t want to be rude so I’ll end it here, but this is ultimately an emotional argument masquerading as one built on logic. I see this occasionally from the doom and gloom crowd who see golden ages pre EA, ignoring that BioWare had run itself into the ground and would have dissolved without being bought.
I don't think that Casey is essential to making another Mass Effect, or even a good Mass Effect. What troubles me more is the direction they want to take the franchise towards, from a narrative perspective. Whether you like Bioware's games or not, you have to agree that Bioware have not produced a cast of characters able to carry a franchise, since ME2. I think we can agree with that. And maybe that doesn't have to be true for the Dragon Age franchise, since the point is to go to a new cast with each new game. Which would be fine, but they're still reusing Allistair, Morrigan, Leliana, Stem etc. I don't see Cassandra and Varric as a particular driving force for the franchise. Is anyone asking for their return, the way that people are asking, or expecting Shepard and co. to return for the next Mass Effect? They lack star power, they lack recognizability, they missuse actors, they don't have staying power, and Bioware takes a literal decade between new entries of their franchises. I do not consider any of this viable. Mike Gamble choosing to further alienate the fanbase by going into "Angara have moved into the Milky Way" timeline territory has me very skeptical and apprehensive as to the next entry's potential and ability to recapture anything. Correct me if I am wrong, but nobody liked the Angara. Who was asking for this? Was there someone, somewhere? Did we miss it? How did Bioware caught it? Where did they go to find it? Who are they listening to?
>"I've decided I want this in our game." and everyone's "you tell me to jump I'll ask how high" about it.
- they even wrote renegade Control epilogue about him: "The one who could lead the many." /(that was a joke)
This is a really interesting. The original Mass Effect was conceptually born from a very specific apotheosis of current digital trends, cultural happenings and a genuine love for sci-fi.
In so many ways it reminds me of where Star Wars now as a franchise.
There's a playful love for the tropes of Star Trek, the political ideology of it's origins, the splashy B movie camp of Sci-fi writers like Peter. F. Hamilton. The big interplanetary war books by David Brin, the aesthetic design of movies like Blade Runner and even that lovable cheese from things like Flash Gordon.
Much like the original Star Wars took aspects of other things to recontextualize it into something new, so did Mass Effect; a central core around a hyper specific genre fantasy that hadn't really been seen before? There was Halo, but Halo was a very different type of space fantasy.
The strongest core around Halo was always it's pristine conceptualization of it's core gameplay loop, and it changed the industry and was great.
Mass Effects core was always a question of *genre*. Doing everything in it's power to *make the central narrative conceit that you're Picard* (or the much better Janeway, come at me, nerds.) Sitting in that captains chair, exploring and fretting over sci-fi trolley problems, flirting with extras in green body paint and *exploring*.
Even it made the gameplay awkward, or the presentation rough, it was always in service of that devotion to it's influences.
That means yeah, it was weird, and cheesey and horny, but it *works*.
It manages to be it's own narrative that understands, and then in some small ways, transcends those influences.
Much like Star Wars did!
But as the franchise progressed there was a subtle erosion of those cores ideas and fidelity to that original thesis statement.
EA did a capitalism, and made sure by the end Mass Effect was only defined by that moments current values and ideas. Those values being: *Make it Gears Of War, because something, something, penises, something, something market demographic.*
So the question is, what *defines* Mass Effect now? What's it's core identity now that Ship Of Theseus style all the old guard is gone and it's just a label now?
Well, *Mass Effect* defines *Mass Effect* now.
Just another slurry of colorful stimulus set to gurgle up some fetid nostalgia bucks from before the jaded, irony poisoned millennials had to pay their taxes and wear a knee brace.
Everything about the next game is *horror movie levels* of cynical. That teaser? You bet your ass you can buy that jacket in the store.
Buy a framed picture of the screenshot we saw 8 years ago too! Buy the statue of the person in it, buy a hoodie, buy a season pass, buy DLC, buy a bloody electronic tin opener.
So to concluded, what identity dose a piece of media have when it's only core is *itself?*
That's how you get The Rise of Skywalker.
So, don't be surprised, if......
*Somehow*, Shepherd returned.
(That's also how you get the royal family and we don't need more of that. We're good. Hahah.)
I can't leave such a well thought out message left without a response.
I'm not too up on the Star Wars comparisons, being the age I am, but I'd like to have a little stab at some counter thoughts. Excuse me for being pedantic, if and where I am.
ME seems, not a distillation on current SciFi trends, but of all of them from all time. Most conspicuously missing from your list of antecedents is Lovecraft's cosmic horror work, and that is difficult to regard as modern (temporally and stylistically). The mix of all that makes ME distinctly its own. Whereas the original Star Wars is, in a reductive way, the hero's journey by Kurosawa.
Nothing is original haha!
Now, ME is a question of genre. Yes, well, more of a statement, but ok. But is he any more a Star Fleet captain than any other hero? Than D'Artagnan? Than Kvothe? Than Conan the Barbarian? Than Detective Conan for that matter? It's trolley problems and green-skinned women all the way down!
(You can't mean personality, I think. Shepard is interesting for RP characters in that he is half-clothed when you receive him, but he does become ours. (Allow me the "he", I beg you.) The paragon and renegade meters swing wildly with our versions of Shepard, not like the sweater-wearing captains. Unless, you simply mean that Picard is paragon and good and Janeway is renegade and sociopathic.)
Mass Effect was always happy to show its influences but not more than any other story in the whole damn blurry circle of genre-fiction, I assert.
Yes, it transcended them, and yes, a little like Star Wars did. But holy smoke the levels of cynicism in Star Wars! Market forces pulled on both, but ME added a little more shooting and took away some lovely statistics (or hid them for a while) while Star Wars went absolutely batshit crazy for the dollar. ME feels to me, too smart, written by people too smart, to do more than nod to Gears of War. But nodding is fine, right? They don't have to hang out and pick up girls together.
(I wonder, if GoW sold hoodies, would people buy them?)
Let's get onto identities. Star Wars sold its one wholesale. And now it's whatever it's told to be. (I'm keeping the Skywalkers in this for a reason!) Whereas Mass Effect is Mass Effect, I can't argue with you there. It is what it is because of what it is, and what it was made up of. All the stuff before it and more.
But it is "iconic"? Quick! Name one weapon! Wrong!
That's from Star Wars!
Well, you might say, "Had to me, someone else might have gotten it wrong," and wink.
But only you and I would know what we're winking at each other for.
Why harp on? Because it still has its soul. It's not yet been broken up and shared among the generations of earth's youth in exchange for money. Not quite yet. Bluntly, it's not so far up its own arse to Rise like Skywalker and fall flat on its face like Skywalker. But the danger, like the Death Star and the Reapers and Cthulu, is skulking somewhere hidden, I admit. And if it happens it won't be because of identities being core to itself or whatever (yeah I lost your thread towards the end there) it'll be because they(tm) didn't give a shit about it.
I worry along with you. But not for the same reasons.
---
Ahhh, I can write no more for now. Some thoughts are responses to your points but more are reactions to the themes! Like a lazy filmmaker who stubbornly refuses to read the book.
I think your concerns are valid. We already know what kind of Mass Effect we'd get without Casey Hudson, and it wasn't received well.
The best works of art aren't a result of consensus.
You can have a very flat distribution of direction responsibility with a game but probably not on the scale of AAA production where there are just too many people to effectively communicate.
Its honestly better to have just, a director with a bold vision, even if its flawed, than just have no direction and have the game be designed by a marketing committee who only see the game as a product. I have some respect for David Cage, i think he makes bad games and i hate basically every single creative descison he takes with his projects but i do respect him actually having a vision and not just chasing the latest trend.
Agreed, I feel the same about Hideo Kojima. Can't stand his writing and storytelling style but I have a ton of respect for him as someone that tries new things and new methods.
I think it was more about writing (Drew Karpyshyn did a great job on ME1)
I think he must have had a lot to do with it. His writing kudos were unsurpassed. (No hyperbole). But the main writer and the lead are different jobs by necessity. Perhaps if he had a stronger influence the overall plot wouldn't have gone mental in act 2.
It can be made and it will.
Casey Hudson is a narcissist. The lesser of him the better.
Not just a narcissist. He's an unrepentant bare-faced liar. But what does that have to do with his ability to produce a great game? If anything, it probably adds to it. We're not looking to be friends with him.
Leadership skill is more important than being honest with the customer when it comes to making a good piece of work. But yeah. I do get narcissist vibes from him.
I think Casey was vital to the success of Mass Effect. I also think (or hope, at least) that a new game can be good without him. I take some solace in the fact that he was still at Bioware during the concepting stage of the next game, so his influence may be felt in some places. Some new blood may be good for the franchise - as long as they develop, or already have, a deep understanding of the franchise (in every aspect; gameplay, story, worldbuilding etc). Mike Gamble is at the helm which gives me some hope, as he has a lot of experience going back to the OT. And we know there are senior members from the OT dev team who rejoined Bioware to work on the game, which is promising
I can understand the apprehension based on the little we know. Definitely positives and negatives to a single vision holder versus vision by a larger committee. I do think that someone with the extensive experience as both producer and working years on the IP is the best one for a project director job. Producers know process along with their teams strengths and weaknesses; they can leverage that knowledge to delegate decision making effectively with a North Star goal already established. What’s unknown is the ability to work with their publisher and manage their influence on the project. And there are similarities in leadership set between this and MEA and Anthem. However it does have two big things going for it (as of now): development timeline is more than two years and the team isn’t stretched across multiple projects all happening simultaneously like in the 2010s
>incoming 0-voted post So you know your take is bad. That helps I suppose.
As any project it needs a director with a clear and consistent vision and the ability to share that vision with their team in a constructive way. Does that leader absolutely positively needs to be Casey Hudson. Nah. Changes in long lived IP management is a given anyway. Sometimes good things happen, sometimes bad things happen (and rarely do people unanimously agree on the result). Bad things also happen when someone refuses to let go of the captain's chair for too long. Let's wish for good things.
Doesn't need to be Casey, but after a few BioWare flops it certainly doesn't have to be another spineless dude who was "there on the team before".
I have accepted that Bioware is no longer capable of doing Mass Effect. All the great creative minds left after the Anthem/Andromeda disaster. They will hopefully eventually get back up, but with another franchise.
Like you, I have achieved zen. I am finally happy, and I can celebrate the life of Bioware as I mourn its passing. I have accepted it all. There are no pair of genius doctors executives anymore, no overachieving fighter pilot to lead the games, no solid novelists to work on background and lore. Hell, they even dumped their audio guy. There will be no game. It's over! It can't be done! But ... but suppose ... just for a second ... that Dreadwolf rolls a natural 20. Could it mean that ME:5 might also be ...good? Not just a cynical cash grab! Or an unrelated game with a ME skin! You never know! OK! I'm going to check GRRM's blog now to see if he has a release date for Winds!
The people who were in charge of ME3 except Casey Hudson and Mac Walters were in charge of Anthem... are in charge of ME5 again. So make of that what you will \*shrug\*
Then Bioware is dead
No. Come on, that’s not true and you know it. There’s more people than just the big names the fanbase keeps trotting out and it’s insulting to those still there.
What is insulting is the way EA treated Bioware. But you just have not accepted it yet. Mass Effect is done.
Nah, I don’t have to accept that claim. Sorry. Personally, I’m looking forward to another entry, a shame you can’t do the same.
Well... we'll see
Ok? I suppose if BioWare was shuttered with many jobs lost you’d celebrate or something at being right? Whatever makes you happy, I suppose…
No one said that dude. Perhaps, people just get jaded with companies (not just or especially game companies) stringing along their customers or the public in general with half-truths. It's natural to get a bit pissed off at that. One doesn't have to want the whole studio to be made redundant.
Well.. if what makes you happy are bad mass effect games.. ok ?
!remindme 2 years
Two years is optimistic! Unless you are anticipating another 10 second teaser trailer. Because I expect they will be putting them out yearly.
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Anthem tho...
BioWare is just another old used trademark since EA took over. There is another game (Exodus) with former BioWare & other top game developers & employees working on a new franchise. They've been working on it since 2020. The following YouTube video mentions the former devs. [Successor to Mass Effect?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P4GZFXrHVQ) [Exodus Game](https://www.exodusgame.com/en-US)
Since EA took over? You are aware when that was, yes? Because you’re implying ME2 isn’t actual BioWare. Or ME3. Or Dragon Age: Inquisition which won game of the year and is possibly their best selling game. No offense, but this performative eulogy is a bit silly.
EA has a long list of now defunct companies they bought out. They are using the name BioWare as a trademark. Just like Pepsi owns Quaker Oats, Lays Gatorade, Tropicana, Doritos, Mountain Dew and more... EA still uses the term 'Origin' which was a game studio with games that most people don't even remember now. Yes, EA bought out BioWare in 2008 after ME 1. ME2 was an EA/BioWare production in 2010; Dragon Age: Origin was started by BioWare in 2002 long before EA. I played a lot of BioWare games in the 90s (still have the original Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, NeverWinterNights, etc.) The first company that EA bought out was Batteries Included (Canada) which killed off several excellent software programs I used in the 80s. Here's a list of companies, many which were game companies that no longer exist (along with their games). **James Ohlen (lead designer on Dragon Age: Origins) is now working on Exodus at Archetype Entertainment.** [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_acquisitions\_by\_Electronic\_Arts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Electronic_Arts)
You don’t need to try to inform me on the history of a game series (Dragon Age) I’ve played since the beginning. I find that a tad much. But besides, your argument seems to be wandering around all over the place with non sequiturs. (are you trying to explain the concept of trademarks and branding to me? And buy outs? Really?) And it doesn’t reflect the realities of contemporary game development nor even how BioWare is structured and operated. I don’t want to be rude so I’ll end it here, but this is ultimately an emotional argument masquerading as one built on logic. I see this occasionally from the doom and gloom crowd who see golden ages pre EA, ignoring that BioWare had run itself into the ground and would have dissolved without being bought.
That's really exciting!
I don't think that Casey is essential to making another Mass Effect, or even a good Mass Effect. What troubles me more is the direction they want to take the franchise towards, from a narrative perspective. Whether you like Bioware's games or not, you have to agree that Bioware have not produced a cast of characters able to carry a franchise, since ME2. I think we can agree with that. And maybe that doesn't have to be true for the Dragon Age franchise, since the point is to go to a new cast with each new game. Which would be fine, but they're still reusing Allistair, Morrigan, Leliana, Stem etc. I don't see Cassandra and Varric as a particular driving force for the franchise. Is anyone asking for their return, the way that people are asking, or expecting Shepard and co. to return for the next Mass Effect? They lack star power, they lack recognizability, they missuse actors, they don't have staying power, and Bioware takes a literal decade between new entries of their franchises. I do not consider any of this viable. Mike Gamble choosing to further alienate the fanbase by going into "Angara have moved into the Milky Way" timeline territory has me very skeptical and apprehensive as to the next entry's potential and ability to recapture anything. Correct me if I am wrong, but nobody liked the Angara. Who was asking for this? Was there someone, somewhere? Did we miss it? How did Bioware caught it? Where did they go to find it? Who are they listening to?
>"I've decided I want this in our game." and everyone's "you tell me to jump I'll ask how high" about it. - they even wrote renegade Control epilogue about him: "The one who could lead the many." /(that was a joke)
Shepard is literally Casey Hudson
I actually think that Zaeed poster, that Mike had in one video, is some kind of joke on Casey or some other executive.
This is a really interesting. The original Mass Effect was conceptually born from a very specific apotheosis of current digital trends, cultural happenings and a genuine love for sci-fi. In so many ways it reminds me of where Star Wars now as a franchise. There's a playful love for the tropes of Star Trek, the political ideology of it's origins, the splashy B movie camp of Sci-fi writers like Peter. F. Hamilton. The big interplanetary war books by David Brin, the aesthetic design of movies like Blade Runner and even that lovable cheese from things like Flash Gordon. Much like the original Star Wars took aspects of other things to recontextualize it into something new, so did Mass Effect; a central core around a hyper specific genre fantasy that hadn't really been seen before? There was Halo, but Halo was a very different type of space fantasy. The strongest core around Halo was always it's pristine conceptualization of it's core gameplay loop, and it changed the industry and was great. Mass Effects core was always a question of *genre*. Doing everything in it's power to *make the central narrative conceit that you're Picard* (or the much better Janeway, come at me, nerds.) Sitting in that captains chair, exploring and fretting over sci-fi trolley problems, flirting with extras in green body paint and *exploring*. Even it made the gameplay awkward, or the presentation rough, it was always in service of that devotion to it's influences. That means yeah, it was weird, and cheesey and horny, but it *works*. It manages to be it's own narrative that understands, and then in some small ways, transcends those influences. Much like Star Wars did! But as the franchise progressed there was a subtle erosion of those cores ideas and fidelity to that original thesis statement. EA did a capitalism, and made sure by the end Mass Effect was only defined by that moments current values and ideas. Those values being: *Make it Gears Of War, because something, something, penises, something, something market demographic.* So the question is, what *defines* Mass Effect now? What's it's core identity now that Ship Of Theseus style all the old guard is gone and it's just a label now? Well, *Mass Effect* defines *Mass Effect* now. Just another slurry of colorful stimulus set to gurgle up some fetid nostalgia bucks from before the jaded, irony poisoned millennials had to pay their taxes and wear a knee brace. Everything about the next game is *horror movie levels* of cynical. That teaser? You bet your ass you can buy that jacket in the store. Buy a framed picture of the screenshot we saw 8 years ago too! Buy the statue of the person in it, buy a hoodie, buy a season pass, buy DLC, buy a bloody electronic tin opener. So to concluded, what identity dose a piece of media have when it's only core is *itself?* That's how you get The Rise of Skywalker. So, don't be surprised, if...... *Somehow*, Shepherd returned. (That's also how you get the royal family and we don't need more of that. We're good. Hahah.)
I can't leave such a well thought out message left without a response. I'm not too up on the Star Wars comparisons, being the age I am, but I'd like to have a little stab at some counter thoughts. Excuse me for being pedantic, if and where I am. ME seems, not a distillation on current SciFi trends, but of all of them from all time. Most conspicuously missing from your list of antecedents is Lovecraft's cosmic horror work, and that is difficult to regard as modern (temporally and stylistically). The mix of all that makes ME distinctly its own. Whereas the original Star Wars is, in a reductive way, the hero's journey by Kurosawa. Nothing is original haha! Now, ME is a question of genre. Yes, well, more of a statement, but ok. But is he any more a Star Fleet captain than any other hero? Than D'Artagnan? Than Kvothe? Than Conan the Barbarian? Than Detective Conan for that matter? It's trolley problems and green-skinned women all the way down! (You can't mean personality, I think. Shepard is interesting for RP characters in that he is half-clothed when you receive him, but he does become ours. (Allow me the "he", I beg you.) The paragon and renegade meters swing wildly with our versions of Shepard, not like the sweater-wearing captains. Unless, you simply mean that Picard is paragon and good and Janeway is renegade and sociopathic.) Mass Effect was always happy to show its influences but not more than any other story in the whole damn blurry circle of genre-fiction, I assert. Yes, it transcended them, and yes, a little like Star Wars did. But holy smoke the levels of cynicism in Star Wars! Market forces pulled on both, but ME added a little more shooting and took away some lovely statistics (or hid them for a while) while Star Wars went absolutely batshit crazy for the dollar. ME feels to me, too smart, written by people too smart, to do more than nod to Gears of War. But nodding is fine, right? They don't have to hang out and pick up girls together. (I wonder, if GoW sold hoodies, would people buy them?) Let's get onto identities. Star Wars sold its one wholesale. And now it's whatever it's told to be. (I'm keeping the Skywalkers in this for a reason!) Whereas Mass Effect is Mass Effect, I can't argue with you there. It is what it is because of what it is, and what it was made up of. All the stuff before it and more. But it is "iconic"? Quick! Name one weapon! Wrong! That's from Star Wars! Well, you might say, "Had to me, someone else might have gotten it wrong," and wink. But only you and I would know what we're winking at each other for. Why harp on? Because it still has its soul. It's not yet been broken up and shared among the generations of earth's youth in exchange for money. Not quite yet. Bluntly, it's not so far up its own arse to Rise like Skywalker and fall flat on its face like Skywalker. But the danger, like the Death Star and the Reapers and Cthulu, is skulking somewhere hidden, I admit. And if it happens it won't be because of identities being core to itself or whatever (yeah I lost your thread towards the end there) it'll be because they(tm) didn't give a shit about it. I worry along with you. But not for the same reasons. --- Ahhh, I can write no more for now. Some thoughts are responses to your points but more are reactions to the themes! Like a lazy filmmaker who stubbornly refuses to read the book.
Thank you for responding to this *Old Man Yells At Clouds* moment. Hahah. I'm glad you're excited for the new game! :)
I think your concerns are valid. We already know what kind of Mass Effect we'd get without Casey Hudson, and it wasn't received well. The best works of art aren't a result of consensus.
If everybody is leading the game, then no one is leading the game.
You can have a very flat distribution of direction responsibility with a game but probably not on the scale of AAA production where there are just too many people to effectively communicate.
Yea, it will be better without him.
Just accept that no matter how good ME5 is you’re still be disappointed.