Mass Effect: Andromeda left the Milky Way behind to take fans to a whole new galaxy. In the end, however, the game proved disappointing to many fans of the franchise. This appears to have motivated BioWare to return to more familiar locations and characters in Mass Effect 4.

There were many reasons that Mass Effect: Andromeda was not met with the same success as the original trilogy. The game released with many bugs, for example, particularly when it came to animation and character models. However, there was one big part of the game's storytelling and worldbuilding which also fell short. Mass Effect 4 will need to avoid one key mistake made in Andromeda.

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Mass Effect: Andromeda took players to the Heleus Cluster of the Andromeda galaxy, an area filled with planets fit for earth-like life. Despite this, however, the game only introduced one main new alien race, the Angara. The Angaran companion Jaal in turn proved to be one of Andromeda's most successful companions.

This isn't a coincidence. The original Mass Effect threw players into a version of the Milky Way where humans had only just been introduced to the galactic community several decades prior. Turians, Quarians, Asari, Krogan, and many other alien races were all completely new to players.

To learn more about the Roman-like Turians and their militaristic culture, players had to get to know Turian companion Garrus Vakarian. To learn more about the nomadic Quarians, they had to get to know Tali. To learn about the long-lived Asari they had to learn about Liara T'Soni, and to learn more about the warlike Krogan they had to get to know Wrex. In short, the wide variety of unfamiliar alien races also directly motivated players to form personal relationships with many of the characters in their crew.

In contrast many player found Mass Effect 1's two human companions - Kaiden Alenko and Ashley Williams - less interesting. In some ways this was less the fault of the characters' writing and more to do with their humanity itself. While Kaiden could provide some insight into life as Biotic, neither Kaiden nor Ashley could provide the same window into the Mass Effect universe that the player's alien squadmates could.

By Mass Effect: Andromeda, players were far less motivated to get to know their Salarian, Krogan, Asari, and Turian squadmates. These characters simply couldn't provide the same insight into the RPG's universe that their counterparts could in the original Mass Effect trilogy. Jaal, on the other hand, offered players a chance to learn more about his species and the Heleus Cluster as a whole. It wasn't just that players had a greater motivation to get to know Jaal than their other companions. In many ways Jaal simply had more to say.

The trailer for Mass Effect 4 which was released at the Game Awards 2020 hinted that the game could take place across both the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy. The teaser begins with a shot of both galaxies, which BioWare's Project Director Michael Gamble described as "intentional." Similarly, the "mudskipper" image BioWare released showed the silhouette of a character who appears to be an Angara.

Mass Effect 4 can't just rely on the the alien races introduced in the series so far. The original Mass Effect released all the way back in 2007, and since then fans of the games have learned enough about the varying races of the Mass Effect universe that having a squad filled with pre-established species would be almost the same as having an entirely human squad in Mass Effect 1.

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Mass Effect 4 needs to introduce new alien races and create companion characters who provide insight into those races. It could also include some of the more marginalized species from the series so far - like the Hanar or the Volus - as squadmates as well. If it doesn't diversify its roster of aliens Mass Effect 4 risks missing out on part of what made getting to know the squadmates in the original trilogy so interesting.

Of course, the original Mass Effect squadmates were far more than just windows into their races. Nonetheless, they helped put a recognizable face to those unfamiliar species. It's practically impossible for most Mass Effect fans to think of the Turians without thinking of Garrus, or the Quarians without thinking of Tali. This connection also helped make the stakes of these races feel all the more real. When making some of the toughest decisions in Mass Effect, it helped for players to know characters who had personal connections to those conflicts.

When it came creating peace between the Geth and the Quarians, players were more emotionally invested because of companions Legion and Tali. When it came to curing the Genophage, the player's Krogan companions and Salarian scientist Mordin Solus made that question feel like it had real emotional stakes as opposed to entirely fictional political ones. In contrast, the lack of a Batarian companion made the deaths of 300,000 Batarians in Mass Effect 2's Arrival DLC seem far more distant, and ultimately rendered it no more than a footnote in the story of the original trilogy.

Mass Effect 4 appears to be bringing back Liara T'Soni. Based on her recovery of a piece of N7 armor in the trailer BioWare may be bringing back Commander Shepard too. If the series is going to generate the same interest as it did when it first released, however, it's going to need to look forward rather than backwards. Whether players take on the role of Shepard again or not, they'll need to meet new alien races and have new alien companions.

Fortunately the apparent connection between the Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy that the trailer suggests gives Mass Effect 4 the opportunity to introduce a huge amount of new alien races. Players only explored a single cluster in Andromeda so far, and the rest of that galaxy could allow many new aliens and their cultures to pour through into the Milky Way. If Mass Effect 4 is going to succeed it will need to be bold and original. Exploring new parts of the universe may be exciting, but without meeting new cultures and characters the next game will risk feeling like it's retreading old ground.

Mass Effect 4 is currently in development.

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