Mass Effect!

The extended cut of Mass Effect 3 was released yesterday, and with it, my enthusiasm in the games has once again been restored. The new endings are how the original endings should have been in the first place. I don't necessarily agree with the direction they went, but I'm glad that they had the confidence to stick to their artistic vision of the ending. The new endings just expand on the old ones, but a lot of questions are answered. This allows BioWare to satisfy a lot of people (myself included!) and stick to what they wanted.

Is this the end of Commander Shepard's story? It's been suggested by BioWare that it is. However, that remains to be seen. I would like to say that there's incredible potential for more stories in the Mass Effect universe and I hope that they pursue these avenues.

Garrus was one of my favorite characters within the trilogy. Out of the NPCs, (non-playable characters) he was probably my second favorite (after Tali) and it's a very close second. I can easily see a Mass Effect game with him as the central character. IN FACT, I would love to see a game with Garrus as the central character. I have the perfect premise for it too:

Between the first and second Mass Effect games, he went through a big change. Left the employ of (basically) a police force for a giant space station and found his own squad and took up being a vigilante. People who have played through at least the first and second games know about this.

THAT is just one of many potential stories available in the Mass Effect universe. There's literally a whole galaxy of ideas at their disposal. Another idea that comes to my mind is the idea of the Morning War - the war between the quarians (an organic race) and their subservient geth (a synthetic race who the quarians created) that ended with the geth being victorious. They forced the quarians off their homeworld and relegated them to being nomads roaming around space.

The Morning War was 300 years ago as of the beginning of the original Mass Effect trilogy, making it take place in the late 1800s, but they could even go further back. As of the beginning of the trilogy, there have been uncountable cycles of extinction every 50,000 years or so  perpetuated by a race of sentient machines known as the Reapers.

The previous cycle was dominated by a race known as the Protheans, who were eventually eradicated by the Reapers in a centuries-long war. I would be interested to see a Mass Effect game that takes place during this war, during this cycle before the war, or during cycles even before the Protheans.

These are just a few ideas. As I said, there's quite literally a whole galaxy full of possible stories. This may be the end of Commander Shepard's story, but I certainly hope it's not the last I hear of the Mass Effect universe.