Mass Effect fans, let us bow our heads in remembrance of the series that brought us so much joy over the years. A mere five months after Mass Effect: Andromeda first floundered onto our console and computer screens, it would appear to be dead. BioWare has officially hammered the last nail into its coffin.
While the multiplayer experience will still continue for an unknown amount of time, the single-player is decidedly finito. You still want to know what happened to the Quarian ark? You’ll just have to check out BioWare’s comics or novels. Andromeda and her Pathfinder are gone with the wind.
It’s a bittersweet mourning, since Mass Effect: Andromeda suffered some intense criticism when it first came out. The animations were awful. It’s almost impossible to unsee Ryder’s combination crab/“I’ve got diarrhea” run. The dead eyes in the animations were vastly improved through subsequent updates, but it’s difficult to cleanse the Internet of all the atrocious gifs from launch day.
There is also the fact that many reviews for the game are still incredibly middle of the road. It’s easily the worst received entry in the Mass Effect series. And yet, it’s still sad to say goodbye to the game.
Mass Effect: Andromeda might have been fairly awful or generously average (depending on who you ask), but it’s death also marks the end of an era.
The failure of Mass Effect: Andromeda brings us to BioWare’s conclusion of the series. Many will look back on it as a failed attempt to make more money off a previously golden series.
Teens and young adults going to school to become game developers will look back on this debacle. It’ll be the moment in a prominent video game company’s history when things went horribly wrong.
Fans of the Mass Effect series need to come to terms with the fact that this is most likely the end. And that’s a hard pill to swallow. One failed game is really all it takes sometimes. BioWare is surely feeling the pain right along with the rest of us, both commercially and personally.
The team working on Mass Effect: Andromeda clearly had lofty plans and wanted the series to succeed with this newest entry. They’ve all been reallocated to work on Star Wars Battlefront II, and I personally hope they do well there.
It sounds like Mass Effect will live on in other forms of media, like comic books and novels. That doesn’t make it any less sad to say goodbye to the video games.
The untimely end of the Mass Effectseries can only be BioWare’s fault. Their decision to conclude single-player content so abruptly will undoubtedly finish the series for the future.
Fans had hopes and dreams for its continuation, which were soundly dashed when Andromeda was released.
This decision made a mere five months after release seemed hurried, and fans will likely agree. The only way Mass Effect could continue in the future is if some other developer and publisher has their chance to take a stab at it.
Hopefully, that day comes some time off into the future. But for now,
I think I speak for all of us when I say we need some time to lick our wounds. We won’t get over the death of our once favorite series quickly. It takes time to go through the stages of grief.
And when it comes to favorite video game franchises, that time is quite possibly much longer. Let’s have a moment of silence for Mass Effectand all its characters as we lay it to rest on this day of terrible sorrow.
