Calling the Next Mass Effect Title 'Mass Effect 4' Would be a Disservice Says BioWare

[Shawn Zipay]

Chris Priestly from BioWare took to the BioWare Social Network today to deny the rumors and speculation that the next entry in the Mass Effect series would be called Mass Effect 4.

To call the next game Mass Effect 4 or ME4 is doing it a disservice and seems to cause a lot of confusion here. We have already said that the Commander Shepard trilogy is over and that the next game will not feature him/her. That is the only detail you have on the game. I see people saying "well, they'll have to pick a canon ending". No, because the game does not have to come after. Or before. Or off to the side. Or with characters you know. Or yaddayaddayadda. Wherever, whenever, whoever, etc will all be revealed years down the road when we actually start talking about it.

I do not call the game ME4 when I talk about it ever, bucause that makes people think of it more as "what happens after Mass Effect 3" rather than "what game happens next set in the Mass Effect Universe", which is far more accurate at this point. Obviously fans are going to speculate content, character and story until we actually reveal details in the years or months to come as you have almost no actual details, just don't get bogged down in "well how are they going to continue ME3...".

So, let's say the game isn't set before the original trilogy, nor is it set during or after, then what? Is... is it just going to be an alternate timeline deal? Are you rebooting the franchise already? Oh, God no! Not like this!

[K-16]

They will reboot and have you play as Lieutenant Edward whose customization options are restricted to Twilight-themed faces. It will now involve a survival adventure as all mass relays are destroyed and requires the player to survive the cold war between all species since everybody has different needs of sustenance (and none of the planets near Earth provide any such needs). Your only romance option is Captain Bella, and your hair changes color whenever you use biotics (with a side-effect of permanently changing to that color the more you upgrade your biotics). Totally awesome.

(Honestly, this sounds like they're trying to pull off a Final Fantasy Versus XIII or Type-0 kind of thing, but with a more consistent world than what Square-Enix did. I'm kind of pissed, because I still have questions from Mass Effect 3 that require the characters I'm familiar with, and abandoning them feels lazily incompetent to me, even though this was planned from the beginning and BioWare moving on is perfectly legit.)