News

We've known for some time that Bioware is working on a new entry in the Mass Effect saga, following the huge success of last year's Mass Effect 3, but please don't call the new game Mass Effect 4. That's the message from a new post on the Bioware forums that offers a few hints as to what shape the new game might take.

"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 Yanick Roy, head of Bioware's Edmonton studio which is handling the new title, having cut its teeth on the side quests and multiplayer of Mass Effect 3.

"If you had three games centred 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," Roy added. "You likely would have to recognise 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."

Roy also suggested that choices made in the existing trilogy will be acknowledged, but "likely won't be what this new story will focus on". He also reassured fans that while the story won't be connected to the saga of Commander Shepard, it would still feature all the alien races and lore that fans love. "What makes it Mass Effect is indeed the alien races, the technology, the lore, history, etc," he posted. "You can safely expect those in the next Mass Effect."

Mass Effect 3 is out now for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. There's also a boxset of all three games, which features the original 2008 game on PS3 for the first time.