Editing Bioware (section)

===Mass Effect===
A cosmic horror story-space opera with much potential; handled properly from start to finish, it could have been to video games what Star Wars is to movies and Star Trek is to television (and is, depending on who you ask). But despite being a flagship franchise of Bioware, the series ended up being a microcosm of the company's gradual rise and fall. 

The core trilogy was released between 2007 and 2012 for Xbox 360, PC and PS3 (Mass Effect 1 was originally an Xbox console exclusive and came to PS3 in a digital release in 2011 to conincide with Mass Effect 2's own PS3 port), with a re-release called Legendary Edition coming out in 2021 for PS4, PC and Xbox One. 

====Mass Effect 1====
The first game in the series was excellent, with top-notch characters, setting and story. The player character is Commander [insert custom name here] Shepard who can be customized to hell and back. Humanity is new to the scene and wants more of a say in the galactic community; [[Skub|some aliens support this, others think humanity is too greedy/selfish/domineering/impatient/etc]]. Shepard is undergoing assessment for joining a group of galactic peacekeepers called the Spectres(Think FBI agents IN SPAACE), when a race of robots attacks, prompting a galaxy-wide adventure where the player gets to experience a whole new sci-fi setting, fight aliens, slavers and monsters and bang someone on your loveboat, the Normandy. There is MUCH more to the situation than meets the eye (the mission where we see the entire story shift from an action Space Opera to a [[Yog-Sothothery|Cosmic Horror Story]] is EXCELLENTLY DONE). 

For 2007, this installment was pretty gosh darn good; visually it's a bit rough by 2020s standards (so took on the most updates in the Legendary edition), and the gameplay is not what you'd call polished (you can run around shooting in the Citadel and NPC's ignore you and your shots, even as enter a massive gun battle in the market), but it's good fun still: guns have cooldowns rather than ammo, biotics are offensive wizardry, and there is "tech" which is sneaky engineer/thief stereotype stuff. A good bunch of the biotic powers can be wildly powerful and do really weird but cool things and there's a lot of powers available to most classes. It's often lauded as the most RPG-like of the Mass Effects, though it doesn't have too much in the way of choice - it's more of a "gain points to get more powerful" than a "customize your playstyle"-kind of RPG. Roleplaying-wise the game is a little weird at times, but very lovable - many characters do the "telling-you-what-you-already-would-know" thing a lot, but since it was the first introduction to the setting, it's justified. The characters are well-established, but arguably doesn't really become great until the next two games.

Many side-missions were a bit barebones. It also got two DLCs. The first one "Bring Down The Sky" was free, coming with a major bug-patch; and was fine, introducing the Batarian villain race. The second one "Pinnacle Station" was not free and was terrible.

BUT, for the time, this overall game is awesome, and introduced the world to the wonderful Mass Effect setting.  The remaster added nicer graphics, more character customization, more lighting (cue lens flare memes) and shorter elevator rides, and it comes with BDtS. Although it didn't include Pinnacle Station, which was just as well; and it made Mirandabros all buttmad that the camera wasn't focused on her (admittedly top tier) booty so much. (truth be told the Miranda Lawson Butt is a meme and separate facebook account so it was the correct decision- some of the gamers are married)

Also famous for the nearly-indestructible-flying-almost-impossible-to-control-never-run-out-of-ammo-but-only-hits-shit-15%-of-the-time-and-then-gives-you-no-XP armored exploration vehicle of absolute, undiluted [[awesome]] madladdery, the MAKO.

====Mass Effect 2====
Mass Effect 2 was a great game, arguably the best of the series (according to fans and critics alike). The game is more focused in scope and less open-world like, with tighter if-a-little-rudimentary combat and more emphasis on the characters in your team than the entire world. ME2 is a bit more cinematic in comparison to 1 and spends more time presenting the setting to the player. Also notable for being fucking ''huge'', being released on TWO DISCS, which was becoming increasingly rare at the time of release.

There was quite a change of scope of the story: You are fucking dead, your spaceship blown up by a then-unknown enemy. 

Your body is recovered by the human supremacist rogue black ops (or alt-right group, depending who you ask) Cerberus, and gets rebuilt over the course of two years a la 6 Million Dollar Man.

Now Shepard must assemble an elite team of the galaxy's best mercenaries, criminals, and specialists to stop a race of aliens called the Collectors abducting entire humans colonies.  All while Cerberus gives you a new spaceship, are financing your mission and are certainly not planning to betray you when you're no longer useful. "Main" missions take a backseat to recruitment and "loyalty" missions where you acquire and secure the loyalty of your team-mates, respectively (some of whom you can still bang on your loveboat).  There's even some series-essential lore and plot-changing decisions locked away in specific recruitment and loyalty missions (in particular, Tali's missions are absolutely vital regarding the geth and the geth-quarian conflict, and also set up a plot arc for a galaxy-wide threat that could upstage even the Reapers... [[Fail|which got retconned out in the third game]]). The side quests, loyalty statuses and resource gathering are so important that now if you fuck up all three (and you can easily since money is very limited, and there are no warnings) you can die permanently at the very end unable to export the save to the third game.

This makes for a character-focused story that goes at the player's own pace and takes you to previously unseen, seedy parts of the galaxy. Your enemies are more often than not mercenary organizations than evil robots this time, and you tangle with the criminal underworld just as much as you do the Collector threat. Speaking of pace, the game has a surprise countdown that triggers a very nasty mission to give your ass a kick to get a move on. Twice. The plot and pace in the second game is seen "the best" for a reason.

Combat and RPG mechanics took a very harsh swerve; resources and weapons are ''extremely'' limited. There is more focus on straight shooting-and-cover-camping than game breaking Biotic powers with Doom 3 grade unflinching mechanical strafefest of 6 gorillion exchanged bullets by both sides. There are new "tech" powers such as a secondary synthetic solid light coating that doubles shields and acts as a SECOND armor but explodes and hurts everyone once shields are down. While somewhat disliked at the time, it was at least less janky than ME1 and easier to get the grasp of. The RPG system also took a grievous hit, but in the grand scheme of things, the new system boiled down what the old system was to what it actually provided - simply progression, with a choice of specialization at the end.

The DLC was very split; the major ones are spectacularly good and are generally considered some of the best for the entire trilogy (Lair of the Shadow Broker - where you help Liara rescue a friend who saved you while fighting to take down the Shadow Broker and their allies), while the smaller ones reek a bit too much of EA-style pay-money-for-guns-and-cosmetics bullshit (Firewalker Pack). Major [[rage]] ensued when one of the "DLCs" (a full extra party member) proved to be ''actually on the discs'', indicating that it was functional at release but intentionally suppressed from the player unless you paid extra for it - in other words, [[EA|a blatant fucking cash grab]]. Luckily all the good shit is included in the remaster.

====Mass Effect 3====
Mass Effect 3 is the most divisive of the three games and was host to some pretty impressive [[Skub|nerd-protests]], but was overall a decent experience with a trip at the finish line. The game starts with the BBEG, the Reapers invading the galaxy in full force, leaving it to Shepard to do the impossible (again) and find a way to stop them before they purge the current galactic civilizations. So Shepard takes the space pimp ride into the galaxy(again) and gathers critical items to stop the Reapers in a giant project while saving essential people and equipment from Reaper blockades a-la Han Solo/John Wick on steroids. (and Eezo)

The game expanded the previously streamlined combat and developed it to a fine point, and the game took another face-lift graphically, though shortened firefight distances render sniper rifles unnecessary, unlike ME2. The story was overall decently received with a lot of YMMV discussion about how it was handled. Some did not like how some of the plotlines from earlier games were handled, how they were ended and whether or not they even mattered in the first place. Character development takes a bit of a back-seat now that Shepard has been on-board therapist for his entire crew since ME1 and 2 - and somewhat surprisingly, the one who gets the most focus is Shepard themselves, who visibly grows closer and closer to his/her breaking point. The grimdark atmosphere is also appreciated, as the Galaxy-wide war for survival darkens every locale and populace, refugees stream into the Citadel and people start becoming desperate, raging against the dying of the light.

A multiplayer mode was added, which, while originally controversial, turned out to be pretty fun and challenging.

Most of the problems with the third game were because most of the development team for the first two games (including several of the writers and head writer Drew Karpyshyn) quit partway through developing the second game or did not return to work on the third game. Their reasons for this were internal strife with Bioware as [[EA|they were subsumed into EA, conflicts of interest and disagreement over the direction they wanted the story to go]]. 

But all of this is not what you wanna hear about. You wanna hear about the ending, one of the most divisive events in modern gaming history. Without going into too much detail, the ending(s) for the game were immediately seen as some of the worst writing in a game to date, casually ignored most of the choices prior in the trilogy (something the devs had promised wouldn't happen) and left a ship-load of unanswered questions. The result was a several-month long campaign to have the ending changed, which eventually led to Bioware releasing a DLC that added to the original endings. It was well-received but many felt it still did not do the games justice - but at the very least it was free. DLCs for the game are considered a mixed bag - Some are quite mediocre (like Omega), while others are considered better than the base game (Citadel-with money grindable VR Combat Arena none the less!) and [[DERP|brought the strongest weapon in the shape of a silenced pistol]].  On that note, two story-essential arcs were initially rendered DLC ("From Ashes" where the last Prothean is found and "Leviathan" where THE source of Reapers, the oldest race in the universe is finally met, explaining the whole Reaper Cycle and its logic), but they were later integrated into the main game at no extra charge.

A bit of a whimper to end on, but no end to a good journey has ever been perfect.

====Mass Effect: Andromeda====
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This is literally [[Chaos Spawn|what happens if Mass Effect had a child with the Immaterial God of Autism while consuming lead-laced mushrooms, then said spawn got raised by an SJW]]. Expand at your own risk.
 
tl;dr: It's like Halo with the Mass Effect name plastered on but without subtlety, good writing, or functional animation.
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After years attempting to essentially build ''No Man's Sky'' inside the Frostbite engine, the old devs got shuffled away, new devs were brought in, handed a pile of assets, and ordered to slap something together and shove it out under the door in a year and a half to recoup costs. Naturally, this went about as well as the last time they tried it. 

Mass Effect: Andromeda is an intergalactic travel/space soap opera plot shoehorned into the story of the original trilogy released in 2017. You play as a member of the Ryder family, made (in)famous by Alec Ryder, a former war hero and Pathfinder for humanity who was blacklisted from the military for making the illegal AI SAM. There is also his deceased (spoiler - actually terminally ill and cryogenically frozen) wife and his adult children, who are male/female twins the player chooses from for the player character. Alec and a group of rich individuals pooled money and resources to build Ark ships and a knock-off the Citadel called the Nexus to go colonize the Andromeda galaxy (also to escape the Reapers, but that's classified in-universe. At the meta level, even though there are closer galaxies, the devs chose Andromeda because it's the most well-known galaxy besides the Milky Way). During the six century journey, massive amounts of [[Not As Planned]] occur - everyone arrived at different times, the multi-species quarian ark went M.I.A. and humanity arrived last with the human Ark sustaining damage and the non-PC twin rendered comatose. The Earth analog planet chosen for humanity to settle turned out to be uninhabitable for humans; while exploring it you make contact with hostile aliens and after an accident Alec dies saving the player character, who gets SAM implanted in their head and becomes humanity's new Pathfinder.

Throughout the story, the Milky Way races deal with all the socio-political and mental baggage they brought with them from the Milky Way while trying to establish new homeworlds. Along the way, the Initiative meets and interacts with alien races or their technology native to Andromeda. The first are [[Halo|Forerunner]]-expies called the Jaardan who don't appear in the game, but built artificial planets and may have left behind a [[Eye of Terror|semi-solid energy cloud]] that attacks anything near it, is attracted to certain types of technology [[Grimdark|and can shatter planets]]. The second are overemotional furless lizard-cat people with genetic memory called the angara, who struggle to trust aliens after their first contact (with the following race) went badly. The third are the hostile aliens encountered earlier; [[Doctor Who|Dalek]]/[[Halo|Covenant Empire]]-expies called the kett, rocky-looking aliens who worship a scientific genetic assimilation process around which they built an expansionist, eugenicist cult. They're one-dimensionally [[Stupid Evil]] and their leader the [[Archon|Archon]] is the game's [[BBEG]], the ultimate example of the kett's poor writing and arguably Bioware's most poorly-written antagonist.  Unlike evil races of games' past (such as Mass Effect's geth and Dragon Age's Darkspawn), the kett aren't really analyzed or given anything more.  No seriously, think about this; the Darkspawn were based around the concept of being a "living plague" and "bad guys (the player) wouldn't feel bad about killing", and they had more characterization and deeper lore than the kett.

The characters are almost all two-dimensionally nasty (such as practically every kett), lacking (such as Addison) or divisive (such as Peebee). Even the rare exceptions (such as Vetra) are watered-down versions of characters from the original trilogy, and were it not for that lack of good characters, the soap opera feel might have been forgiven. The few interesting characters barely get fleshed out, such as Bain Massani, son of the bounty hunter Zaeed Massani from the original trilogy's second game DLC, and a few characters from the original trilogy make hard-to-find cameos. Some interesting plot threads with characters and factions are hinted at, such as the disappearance of the quarian Ark ship (later resolved in a novel) and how not all kett support The Archon, but few get resolved and even fewer get resolved well. 

The voice acting varies from good to terrible, though the latter outweighs the former along with several poorly written lines; such as the infamous "my face is tired", "I think I really pissed that one off. Maybe because I shot him in the face!" and "...I swear, we're the galactic good guys". There are also many glitches, bugs and instances of sloppy animations such as infamously bad facial expressions and running. Good animation is there (good luck finding it under all the derp though) and the environments while lacking in uniqueness are visually appealing and very open. The combat engine was functional and it probably would have made a good multiplayer, but that's arguably a kiss of death for a CRPG series. And since this is a Bioware game written after 2014, the writers made the mistake of pandering to woke culture and identity politics, especially since at least two key members of the dev team, including a leading writer, were avowed [[SJW]]s - but as was typical of the 'checklist' approach to representation, Bioware bungled shit up, [https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/03/underwhelming-gay-romance-options-in-mass-effect-andromeda-disappoints-many-fans/ people complained] and they responded with [http://blog.bioware.com/2017/06/06/mass-effect-andromeda-patch-1-08-notes/ even more tone-deaf pandering].

As far as actual gameplay goes, Andromeda is halfway decent, though quite uninspiring and mediocre at times. One of the few positives is that it takes a more open-world approach similar to the first Mass Effect, as opposed to the less appealing corridor-heavy sequels. The crafting system from the third game returns, along with a mining system that allows wider item access to party members. The combat is fairly solid, if lacking the usual ME polish, with a good amount of depth added by a short-range jump pack and the inclusion of previous classes' abilities and passive skills based on the specialization tree chosen. Even without the controversy, neither gameplay nor story is strong enough to carry each other, and far from up to the usual Bioware standard where it matters.

In closing, the game devs tried to push and capitalize on progressive narratives in a ham-fisted way, neglected to tend to the actual game, and failed miserably on both ends. In addition, the game was ''so'' widely panned that [http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/mass-effect-andromeda-is-officially-so-bad-it-killed-a-studio it caused EA to liquidate the game's development studio, not even 6 months after its release] and [http://mashable.com/2017/08/19/mass-effect-andromeda-story-dlc-officially-cancelled/#nrgDvEJVpmqH caused EA and Bioware to discontinue all support for the single player campaign and focus on multiplayer]. EA, already in the midst of subsuming Bioware, has pretty much given up on its lifeless corpse ''not even half a year after release'' due to the game being so subpar and fierce backlash from fans and critics alike.
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====Mass Effect 4====

Announced at the 2020 Game Awards alongside news of the Legendary Edition remasters. Little is known about the game other than the hint that the character Liara is involved, but given the string of failures Bioware has had in more recent years, this may well be a Hail Mary pass to keep the company alive.