What I'd want for a new Mass Effect Game. (Patreon)

First, quick update.  Working 50 hours a week: good for fatigue.  Lousy for writing.  I'll put up homeland sausage tonight.

But I was reading about the bungling of Mass Effect Andromeda and I was thinking "What would I do with the ME franchise?"

So here's how I'd like to do it:  It's 50 years after the Reapers and the galaxy is a bit of a mess.  Shepard might have stopped the Reapers, but the Commander wasn't around to try and put the galaxy back together again.  The council is all but a joke now with the Citadel wrecked, and without the threat of universal annihilation, the old grudges are coming out.  The Alliance is at odds with independent corporations and organizations.  The Krogan suspect that the Salarians either didn't cure the genophage, or invented a whole new one and want to just wipe out the Salarians once and for all, despite the female tribe called for peace, damn it.  The Taurians are torn between rebuilding their military might or taking care of a starving and desperate populace.  The Asari are on the verge of a civil war between the 'pure breeds' and the 'mixed breeds'.  The Quarians have enslaved the Geth, or the Geth have enslaved the Quarians.  No one's really sure since they've isolated their home world and gone completely isolationist.  Omega ensures the Terminus systems are a mass of anarchy.

And there are new threats too.  After all, the Reapers had the effect of pushing a 'reset' button on the galaxy every 100,000 years or so.  This prevented races from developing technology that could have posed a risk to themselves or the galaxy at large.  After all, when the reapers passed, life could still evolve.  What happens when a threat shows up that threatens all life in the galaxy, from the advanced to the microbial?

So the player starts off as just a hard to see blob in some rainy night, checking a card and then going into a building.  There's a flash and a holographic display comes to life.  It's of a human woman and she addresses you as 'Captain'.

What follows is character creation.  First, she thanks you for this meeting to discuss your debts.  She introduces herself as Oriana Lawson, and that she leads the Persephone Organization.  She apologizes that her visual array is malfunctioning, QEM's being in rare supply, and asks if you could upload a visual.  Now the player can select their race and sex.  Yes, you don't have to play as a Human.  You can be Asari, Krogan, Taurian, Salarian, Quarian, or a Geth Pariah.

You then do a brief interview where your background is laid out: Poor, wealthy, military, criminal, or spiritual childhood.  Military, economic, spiritual, or scientific upbringing.  Then how you got your ship.  Was it stolen, borrowed with illegal funds, owned by a defunct shipping corporation, or built and assembled from war debris?  Managing a ship is very expensive, and she remarks that you've racked up an impressive amount of debts.  She's willing to take them on for you, and annul them if you assist her and the Persephone Organization in a mission to extract one of her agents from the remains of the Batarian Homeworld.  If not, then she wishes you well.

When the player leaves, we can now see them clearly.  They have to walk down an alley to the transport.  This is the action tutorial.  You have to shoot some critters, then you have to use tech to get through a locked door, and then you have to use biotics to survive a gunfight as a gang war breaks out between you and your destination.

Now this is something else that's new: you have access to combat, tech, or biotics at the start rather than being shoehorned into a class that doesn't matter much beyond skill sets.  Wanna use assault rifles with a biotic barrier letting you just mow down the enemy?  Sounds good to me.  Want to use tech to temporarily cloak yourself while you get in close to cut a throat silently?  sounds good to me too.  Skills are tiered with special attacks and abilities becoming available as you level them.  Since there's only so much experience in the game, you can only fill out so much rather than try and get everything.

There's also a fourth tree: racial abilities.  These are for things like Krogan regeneration, Asari biotic ability, Salarian reflexes, etc.  Race is a more neutral buffer, but it also affects how some NPC's react to you.  If you don't buff them, you're seen as not much of an example of your species.

So now you need to get through this gang fight.  Well, you can shoot your way through, if you want, or you can navigate around and avoid it.  Once an enemy is far enough behind you, they 'despawn' and you get exp as if you'd killed them.  Then you either run into one of the gang leaders or one of the private security officers shooting into the gang hide out.  Either one challenges the player, then asks for assistance.

So now here's how reputation works: three axis.  "Law abiding vrs Anarchistic", "Benevolent vrs Malevolent.", and "Selfless vrs Selfish."  Now you never see these.  They build up gradually over time depending on your actions.  Kill the Gangers?  +1 Lawful.  For money?  +1 selfish.  For fun?  +1 Malevolent.  Kill the cops?  +1 Anarchistic.  To help the Gangers escape?  +1 Benevolent.  Negotiate a cease fire?  +1 Lawful, +1 benevolent.  Kill everyone?  +2 Malevolent.  Or you can just not get involved and have no change what-so-ever as you get on your ship.

You get on your ship and it's... well... it's no Normandy.  In fact, it looks like it should be junked.  Barely flies.  holes in the walls.  Exposed wiring.  Something thick dripping from a broken hose.  You're greeted by a Taurian XO of the opposite gender who wants to know if you brought them some credits.  Otherwise the crew is going to walk.  Like, now.  When you say you did, the XO recommends you tell your 'officers' that, even if they've only been your officers for six months.

You meet your gunnery Sargent, your engineer, your morale officer, and your quartermaster.  All of them aren't happy, but depending on your reputation, and the fact that they're getting paid, they'll stick with you for a little while longer.  Once you've explored enough, and it's clear that a lot of the ship is unusable, you talk to the XO again who suggests that it would be easier getting to the old Batarian Homeworld if they used some of those credits for some kind of cargo.  Guns.  Medical supplies.  Drugs.  Food.  Something.  Might even net a profit.  Another choice.  Another reputation tick.

En route to the homeworld, you're stopped by 'authorities' of the 'new Hegemon'.  They're really just pirates looking for a shake down.  Deal with them as you want.  Then you get to the homeworld and you see what Earth would have looked like if the Reapers had won.  The planet is a smashed mess, with the survivors barely able to make ends meet.  You land in what serves as a star port and decide what to do with your cargo.  Depending on who you sell it too, and what you brought, determines how much money you get.  Of course you can just give the cargo away, but that's not very profitable...

After learned what kind of a mess things are, you have to go out to find the Persephonian researcher.  Pick 2 officers to accompany you.  Also quite a few little subquests to do.  But then you reach a threshold where something is wrong.  The beasts that attacked you before are now sickly and mutated.  The people go from gangers to mad batarian mutants.  Then you get to the research site.  You discover that the Batarians were using a derlict reaper for research.  Clearly, something has gone very, very wrong.  When you find the researcher, she's locked herself in a clean room, and warns you not to crack your suit.  The facility is swarming with some kind of contagion.  Her suit is cracked, so if you're going to get her out, you'll need to find a clean suit, disinfectant, and enough power to cycle the airlock.  When you find all three, being attacked by nasties along the way, you get the researcher out.

Then you are accosted by an asari and a krogan lead mercenary team.  "Oh dear.  Witnesses.  Kill them, love."  And the fight is on to get out of the facility before the krogan and mooks overwhelm.  The player can shoot the Krogan enough to make it fall back, and there are defunct drones that can be activated to help.  However, before you get out, the Krogan raises a great big rifle and blasts the captain in the back.  Down he goes into a batch of nastyness.  He's hauled out and dragged out through the sewers.  The researcher says she's tried to decontaminate it as best she can, but you'll need a medical bay to know if you're okay.

You get back to the spaceport only to find out that the Alliance is there and mandating a quarantine of the Batarian Homeworld.  You can turn in the hub as you try to work out how you're going to break the blockade.  You also learn that the 'nice researcher' is also a wanted terrorist.  "Terrorism is such an exaggeration." she assures you.  If you try and turn her over she warns, "Okay, but if you do, the only place you'll end up is a quarantine pod while alliance doctors watch you rot from the inside out."  The batarian locals say this is a common shakedown.

Now you have a few options.  You could offer to take a load of refugees off the world on your ship and hope the Alliance won't blow apart a ship full of innocents.  You can try to bribe the Alliance officer.   You can try to convince them to go report the lab's existence to their superiors.  Regardless, your gunnery Sargent recommends that you at least upgrade some part of your ship with materials salvaged from the lab.  Of course you get off.  The researcher becomes your medical officer and confirms the worst: you have been infected.  She doesn't believe you're contageous.  The effects on Bataria were due to a reaper blowing open the containment, but you are infected and the effects aren't pretty.  Luckily, you've done a favor for Orisana Lawson, and Persephone Organization are willing to help you track down those two mercs and find out what this stuff is, what it can do, and if they can cure you.

Anyway, back to homelands.