Former Mass Effect Writer Shares Where ME3 Could've Gone

EDMONTON, Canada. June 19 - Mass Effect 3 could have ended differently, Drew Karpyshyn ex-BioWare developer and lead writer of the first two installments of the series told VGS in an interview.

What could have been was a focus on Dark Energy - a subject that was alluded to by characters in Mass Effect 2, but never touched on again.

Karpyshyn left the studio before Mass Effect 2 was finalized and replaced by Mass Effect 3 lead writer Mac Walters.

The Dark Energy plot was "something that wasn't super fleshed out", according to Karpyshyn, but the former Mass Effect writer had a summary of how it might've played out.

"Dark Energy was something that only organics could access because of various techno-science magic reasons we hadn't decided on yet. Maybe using this Dark Energy was having a ripple effect on the space-time continuum.

"Maybe the Reapers kept wiping out organic life because organics keep evolving to the state where they would use biotics and dark energy and that caused an entropic effect that would hasten the end of the universe. Being immortal beings, that's something they wouldn't want to see.

"Then we thought, let's take it to the next level. Maybe the Reapers are looking at a way to stop this. Maybe there's an inevitable descent into the opposite of the Big Bang (the Big Crunch) and the Reapers realise that the only way they can stop it is by using biotics, but since they can't use biotics they have to keep rebuilding society - as they try and find the perfect group to use biotics for this purpose. The asari were close but they weren't quite right, the Protheans were close as well.

"Again it's very vague and not fleshed out, it was something we considered but we ended up going in a different direction."

Karpyshyn believes that whether it be Walters's ME3 narrative or his own proposed plotline, there would always be people displeased with whatever conclusion was chosen.

"I find it funny that fans end up hearing a couple things they like about it and in their minds they add in all the details they specifically want," he explained. "It's like vapourware - vapourware is always perfect, anytime someone talks about the new greatest game. It's perfect until it comes out. I'm a little weary about going into too much detail because, whatever we came up with, it probably wouldn't be what people want it to be."

Karpyshyn shared a few other potential ideas that were what Karpyshyn described as a "little bit wacky and a little bit crazy". One of which was that "Shepard could be an alien but didn't know it". The idea however, was too close to Knights of the Old Republic character Revan and was ultimately discarded. Another was that "maybeS hepard gets his essence transferred into some kind of machine, becoming a cyborg and becoming a bridge between synthetics and organics - which is a theme that does play up in the game," Karpyshyn said. "At one point we thought, maybe that's how he survives into Mass Effect 2."

SOURCE: VGS