Should Commander Shepard Be In ‘Mass Effect 4’?
Mass Effect was widely considered one of the greatest video games of its era back when it was released. The story of one human soldier traveling the galaxy in an almost hopeless effort to stop a race of machines from wiping out all intelligent life in the universe was praised for its writing, graphics, characters, and end… Okay, not that last one.
It’s not hard to see why the ending was controversial. One of the best things about the trilogy was that each of your actions had consequences that carried over between games. You had to think carefully about what you wanted to do if you wanted the story of the game to play out in a certain way. The ending was controversial because it just… threw all that out the window. It didn’t matter what choices you’d made during the three games, who you saved, whether you were a paragon or complete jerk, which factions you decided to side with… none of it. It all boiled down to “which color terminal would you like to press the buttons on?” Weak. With the monumental expectations, it would be a gigantic task to create an ending that most people were happy with, but almost anything would have been better.
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in 2017, we got Mass Effect: Andromeda which took place in the same universe but didn’t have the same reception as the other three games.
In any case, it was recently announced that there would be a direct follow-up to the original trilogy with a true Mass Effect 4. So far all we have is a teaser trailer, so we don’t have a ton of information to work with. On top of the usual vague images and sounds that accompany pretty much all game teaser trailers, we have an appearance from somebody who is most likely fan favorite character Dr. Liara T’Soni finding a piece of armor with an N7 insignia on it, the same insignia that Commander (pick the name. In my last playthrough, I chose Nymeria) Shepard wore on her armor.
For this piece, we’ll go with Shepard as a female, largely due to Jennifer Hale’s masterful performance.
Of course, that doesn’t mean anything concrete. Liara smiles when she finds the piece of armor, and she and Shepard were generally pretty close throughout the games with the possibility of being romantic partners (depending on your choices) so it isn’t a wild idea that she’s spent the past however many years looking for Shepard if Shepard disappeared somehow.
That begs the main question of this piece, though: should Shepard actually be in the game?
Not that it’s a bad idea in principle, of course. Commander Shepard is widely considered to be one of the greatest video game characters of all time. The main point of interest is how the galaxy will view her after the events of the third game, and I worry that the full potential won’t be explored.
Now, if the game is set a few hundred years after the events of the third game, it’s not completely ridiculous that Liara would make an appearance, given that Asari lived for around a thousand years, and during the events of the original games, she’s not even two hundred. If the game has Shepard or any references to her, how that’s explored will be critical. Given everything that happened in the original trilogy, Shepard wouldn’t just be hailed as a hero, by countless beings in the galaxy, she would be deified, especially if the game takes place a few hundred years after the events of the third game, where most of the people who actually knew her are gone, and her story is built up in the minds of the people in the galaxy. She would be the most important person in the history of every intelligent species in the galaxy since, without her, there is no intelligent species in the galaxy.
She destroyed the race of machines that wiped out legendary civilizations, like the Protheans, and countless ones before them.
Religion as a concept isn’t completely unheard of in the Mass Effect universe. In a conversation with Ashley Williams, Ashley reveals that she’s a Christian, many Geth worship the Reapers, and so forth. Many people throughout the galaxy would see Shepard as an almost Christ-like figure, given everything that she did.
On the flip side, you could even have a Satan-esque character for the people worshiping Shepard in the Illusive Man, though it’s unlikely that they’d know too much about him unless word was spread by Shepard’s companions.
That’s only if the game takes place hundreds of years after the third game, and, frankly, it’s a concept that I think could be fascinating if explored correctly. By that point, Shepard will have either died taking down the Reapers (thereby adding to the Christ-like perception of her) or she’ll have died in some other manner, with Liara as the only remaining person who knows Shepard as a person. Playing a game with Liara as the protagonist, navigating a universe inhabited by many people who literally worship her companion/lover, would be a unique and fascinating avenue for a video game to explore.
Or the game could take place, say, fifteen years after the events of the first, or, at least, recently enough that there are a ton of people who knew Shepard in life if Shepard isn’t still alive. Most endings of the third game have Shepard dying, but if you have enough readiness, there is a short cutscene at the end of the game showing that Shepard is still alive. The question from there is what the stakes would be.
On one hand, it would be silly to go to the Reapers again. It would weaken the end of the third game even more than it already has been. So Shepard made one of three choices, and in the end, it didn’t even matter because they came back anyway. Oh. Lame. On the other, if there is a new threat, there’s no way that it can be as big as the Reapers. What could be a bigger threat than machines bent on destroying all intelligent life in the universe?
Looking at the trailer, though, it does appear that Bioware will be returning to the Reapers, as one of the sounds in the trailer reminds me an awful lot of the sound that Reapers make.
Overall, I think the more interesting avenue is having the game set a few hundred years after the events of the third game. Liara living in a galaxy that worships Shepard would be an exciting new avenue to explore, and whatever threat could be more personal to Liara in the same way that the Reapers were Shepard’s obsession. It would help solve the problem of the stakes not being as interesting. So, should Shepard be in the fourth game? Not as a character, but her presence should be felt. Either way, we probably won’t find out for a year or two. It will hopefully be interesting either way.
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