Looking forward now to Mass Effect 5, the rumored sequel that some fans hope will revitalize the series, BioWare may want to look at a different series for new features. Specifically, it should look at the way the Dragon Age series handles character creation in order to fully integrate the player into its fantasy world.
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Choosing Your Race in Dragon Age
During the opening character creation, the Dragon Age series gives the player the opportunity to choose between a number of races, with there even being the possibility of a new race in Dragon Age 4. While Dragon Age 2 removes this feature due to time restrictions, it did originally appear in both Dragon Age Origins and Inquisition with a notable impact on the gameplay experience based on which race the player chooses. Not only is the story effected by how different characters interact with different races, certain classes either change availability or proficiency depending on that decision.
Race is fully integrated into the Dragon Age series, completely realistic with animosity developing between them and holding their own advantages if the player chooses one over the other. Allowing the Dragon Age protagonists to be any race they choose also adds a level of replayability, as the story can be impacted by that starting decision as much as it can be effected by individual dialogue choices. However, this unfortunately hasn’t been the case for Mass Effect that has only given players companions from alien races, but rarely lets the player control them.
Mass Effect Alien Races
The aliens races make up some of the best companions in Mass Effect, from everyone’s favorite Turian security guard Garrus, to Krogans like Grunt and Wrex. However, thanks in part to the way that the original trilogy followed the story of the human Commander Shepard, players have never been able to play as any race other than human during the major story segments of the series. Mass Effect Andromeda had the chance to change this with the introduction of a brand new protagonist, but decided to stick with a human controlled character.
Even without getting to play as the alien races, players have still become enthralled with the different species hanging out in the Citadel, likely due to each characters unique stories and Commander Shepard’s notorious alien romancing. Then, looking at how the different aliens act in combat, especially when they’re fighting against the player, it seems like playing as a different race could open up whole new ways to play. This is actually explored more in Mass Effect’s multiplayer modes that first appeared in the third installment and continued in Andromeda.
Multiplayer Playable Characters
If any aspect of the game shows off exactly why Mass Effect needs to engage with this idea, its the multiplayer mode that actually gives players a taste of what it feels like to control alien races. Starting in Mass Effect 3, players could play as Turian, Krogan, or Drell soldiers, among the various other races in the series, and jump into firefights with other players. Without even getting into how huge it was for BioWare to actually attempt stepping away from the best story moments of Mass Effect to attempt developing a multiplayer, this mode was incredible for showing how much alien races varied in combat.
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Each race behaved differently when fighting, from Drells using somersaults to dodge incoming attacks, to Krogans being able to charge through enemies without relying on biotics. A lot of the mechanics are reminiscent of Hero-Shooters, like Team Fortress 2 or more recently Overwatch and Valorant, where each character fills a different role that works best when the team composition is precisely balanced. It’s no wonder that the multiplayer is often cited as one of the main reasons fans want to see a new Mass Effect, even after being disappointed with Andromeda.
Bring Multiplayer Combat into Singleplayer
The combat abilities of some of these others races is something that could revolutionize the current Mass Effect method of giving the player waist high cover and putting a group of enemies on the other side of the room. Mass Effect Andromeda’s updated combat was already a massive improvement on previous iterations, by allowing players to freely switch between specializations to match any situation. To that same degree Mass Effect 5 should strive to push the combat even further by including specialized races that all fight with different tactics and abilities in the main game.
As impressive as the Mass Effect multiplayer might be, it is also somewhat hollow and not all players are likely to jump into it and stay long enough to try out every race the game has to offer. So all this praise that the different alien abilities and combat styles that the game mode is receiving will likely land on deaf ears for a number of players who just want to play through a Mass Effect story, not go online. It’s one of the most well developed mechanics that the game has, but it’s utilization understates exactly what it could do for players in singleplayer, both in a sense of combat and lore.
More Interactive Lore
It’s no secret that BioWare excels at storytelling, seen in both the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises, but also notably in games going as far back as Knights of the Old Republic. However, while the lore of Mass Effect is one of the deepest in sci-fi, the ability to interact with that deep lore is limited in ways that only Dragon Age 2 suffered from. If the game really wants to give players an idea of what these alien races are like, then it should let them play as those races and feel it for themselves.
Video games have a unique ability to put players in the shows of characters that they otherwise couldn’t relate to, due to differences in race, gender, or age. Taking Dragon Age as an example, playing as an elf, especially a city elf, makes hearing slurs like “dagger-ear” cut deeper when they’re spoken to a character that the player is inhabiting as opposed to hearing it spoken to a companion like Fenris. Similarly, watching the protagonist be delighted by some race specific item, or meal, or interaction really ingrains that feeling into the player, making for a deeper understanding between the game and the audience.
Mass Effect 5 is reportedly in development.
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