Mass Effect 3 “Closing up major storylines. We wrap it up here” says lead writer

Lead writer Mac Walters has been talking Mass Effect sequels, or not as the case may be. Interviewed in this month’s Official PlayStation Magazine UK Mass Effect 3 feature, when asked about continuing the ‘trilogy’ and Mass Effect 4 he replied, “There’s definitely nothing we’ve purposely left open because we really wanted to wrap it up here. Does that mean there’s not other things out there that we’ve missed, or just other opportunities that we couldn’t cover or do something with in the future?’ Sure. It’s a massive universe.”

He likens the size and future potential of the Mass Effect universe to an MMO but makes it clear that’s not in the offering. “I hate to say it because I know it’ll get picked up and taken out of context but that’s why so many people go ‘why don’t you make an MMO?’ Because, you know, look at the universe: it’s so big, why not put it in something that big.”

The size, however, is “Just the nature of what we’ve created”  he adds explaining, “We’ve created this massive space, this huge galaxy filled with all these great aliens and stories and everything.” If there is a sequel (of course there is) Walters says it won’t come from any current plot arcs. “While we’re closing up the major storylines, what about that guy we met on ME1? Maybe he’s off saving the galaxy in his own part of the universe?”

One interesting proposition is that further Mass Effects could grow from things cut from the previous three games. “There’s a lot of characters who just don’t make it for whatever reason, it’s the whole cutting room floor thing. There’s so many characters that we create that we’d love to do stuff with. Or iterations on characters. A lot of times there’s a character you want to take in a certain direction, and for whatever reason it just doesn’t work. And then it’s a kind of ninety degree shift of what they actually came out like, and it’s like yeah but there’s still a really good story to be told with the character like the one I originally had. There’s again countless opportunities to tell stories there. We’re writers, it’s what we love doing. And we’re nerdy writers too – we love to create millions of characters and save the universe with them.”