If you intend to continue your adventures in the Mass Effect universe next year with Mass Effect: Andromeda, don’t expect the fourth game in the series to carry over any choices you made in the original trilogy, especially where the ending to 3 is concerned.
Speaking to Eurogamer (via VideoGamer), BioWare boss Aaron Flynn and creative director Mac Walters told the site that, while Andromeda will take into account the events that you experienced in the first three games and “remain intact in the canon of the universe,” they want to present it in a way that “allows a new story to begin,” and so opted not to acknowledge the final choice players made with Commander Shepard.
We acknowledged it in the endings of Mass Effect 3 and I think that’s where we want to leave it for now.
We want this to be a new story and it would be very hard to say it’s a new story but also that you need to understand how [the past trilogy] ended.
We’ve done it in such a way that allows all of those decisions you made to remain intact in the canon of the universe, but also allows a new story to begin.
With that said though, BioWare says that they won’t be ignoring everything that’s come before, stating that “It’s important for us to have elements from the Trilogy for fans to have in the background. Ultimately this is intended to be a fresh story, but we want to have things for people to find and go ‘oh, I remember that character’.”
Mass Effect: Andromeda is currently slated for an early 2017 release on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. Expect a more concrete launch window in the coming months.
