BioWare doesn’t want fans to refer to the next Mass Effect game as Mass Effect 4 because that would imply that it is a continuation of Commander Shepard’s story.

“To call the next game Mass Effect 4 or ME4 is doing it a disservice and seems to cause a lot of confusion here,” said BioWare community manager Chris Priestly. “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.”

The next Mass Effect game is currently in development at BioWare Edmonton, which worked on Mass Effect 2 and 3‘s side-quests. “Thinking of the next Mass Effect game as Mass Effect 4 would imply a certain linearity, a straight evolution of the gameplay and story of the first three games,” said BioWare Edmonton boss Yanick Roy.

“That doesn’t mean that events of the first three games and the choices you made won’t get recognized, but they likely won’t be what this new story will focus on,” he continued. “If you had three games centered around a group of key soldiers in the US army during World War I and then decided to make a game about another group of people during the Second World War, the games could have many points in common and feel true to one another.”

“You likely would have to recognize how the events of the first war influenced the ones of the second, but you would not necessarily think of it as a sequel. Again, the analogy is not great, but what I’m trying to say is that the ME universe is so rich that we are not limited to a single track when coming up with a new story.”

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