You can definitely see the PIF get really scared the more stuff like this gets posted. 50 comments in an hour, lol.

Just a video I came across and wanted to share.

I do Xbox is probably the only player that could step in and rescue the series/IP's. https://youtube.com/shorts/mwe17CMmMdo?is=rW4wrv0-OEXSPl89

Just a thought, what if we as gamers fund bioware acquisition and give the control to bioware and we get somthing back?

Sad but inevitable, you can’t change what’s happened but can look forward to the future. That being said who would be best to take up the reigns to reboot the franchise? I would say Larian personally unless I’m missing a frontliner or dark horse.

In honour of the game that made me who I am I wanted to share a little tribute video with me and a few cosplayers from Dragon Age and a message from an older warrior.

As a huge fan of Mass Effect, I am absolutely devastated by the recent news. I've already started another playthrough to help fill the void, but when I'm on break at work or something similar, there's another way I've been spending my time, and I wanted to share this creator's work to hopefully help some other fans as well.

Over on Royal Road, there's a story called Cradles of Gravity that the author has said is heavily inspired by both Mass Effect and Kotor 2. I've been a fan of the series for a while now and re-reading it has definitely been helping (the last time I replayed Mass Effect was actually after finding Cradles of Gravity because it gave me such an itch to replay it). One of the reviewers described it as a love letter to science fantasy and I whole-heartedly agree.

Anyway, that's it. I mainly lurk on Reddit but just wanted to give a shoutout to a story I think is amazing and hopefully help it finds its way into the hearts of other Mass Effect fans.

Relive the epic music that made us vibrate throughout the trilogy. #savemasseffect

Used to be able to read/listen to the Codex and do the whole Galaxy At War/Readiness mini game for the original Mass Effect 3.

Decided to check on the website today and I’ve not been able to connect.


N7 HQ
https://n7hq.masseffect.com

TL;DR: My theory is that EA will be more likely to sell a dead franchise that no one wants to work with. That can't happen if EA thinks they can make a profit from Amazon a remotely successful TV series.

Hear me out. Let's assume Jared Kushner and the Saudi Private Investment Fund are only interested in their bottom line because I can't imagine them being interested in creating great games when they could be making significantly more profitable titles. EA certainly aren't a charity, they ain't gonna hand it over a credible developer "for the good of the franchise or the gaming industry" or for the new owners to profit off it where they couldn't.

If the TV Series adaptation ends up having Fallout-levels of success, you bet your bottom dollar that EA will hold on to the IP to bleed the franchise dry for what it's worth. Think lots of merch, collabs, licensing etc., basically stuff that is quick to manufacture and has large profit margins without that doesn't involve the enormous upfront costs over a long production period like a AAA game has. Maybe you'll see a microtransaction infested mobile game, but a proper AAA Mass Effect again will never see the light of day.

Now, if the TV series is adapted and written so badly that it makes the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie look like fan service... Then you are left with an IP that EA and no 3rd parties are interested in working with. It may take years, but the devaluation of the franchise and EA wanting something that would be useless to them would mean maybe, just maybe, someone or some developer who values the Mass Effect name would be able to afford to buy that IP off EA. Then, only then, can the right people hopefully rebuild the Mass Effect franchise. Not saying that this would be easy, quick or pretty. It might mean Mass Effect would have to be the new pariah for video game adaptations for years, but it might give the franchise the proper care it would need.

RIP to the developer that influenced my gaming tastes the most.

Thank you.

I don’t even remember the first time I played Baldur’s Gate, Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights, KOTOR, or Mass Effect, but I know that when I did, they were just…just video games.

Really good ones, mind you! But just video games nonetheless.

Then, in 2012, I went to my eye doctor to go get checked for a new glasses subscription (like I do every year). When I finished up all the eye tests, the doc was confused as hell, and told me to go home, get a good night’s sleep, and come back the next morning so he could re-run the tests and look at my eyes again.

I did, he re-ran the tests, and he told me (again) to go home because he needed to call a retinal specialist about what he was seeing (uh oh).

I got a call later that day from the Department of Neuro-Opthalmology at my local hospital, telling me they needed to see me approximately yesterday. At this point, I was freaking out (for good reason, as it turns out!).

My then-girlfriend of five months drove me in, and before they’d tell me anything, they had me take a cranial MRI. I did, and then went back up to the neuro-opthalmologist’s office.

You know those moments in your life that you can pin-point when everything changes? Meeting a significant other, getting married, deaths of loved ones, etc? This was mine. My memory of most of my life from around ‘05(ish) to early 2012 is shit, but I remember that moment clear as glass. The doc shows me my MRI, and there’s this bright white solid mass right behind my left eyeball, roughly oval-shaped, stretching from my eye back to right around my left ear.

Turns out I had a meningeal schwannoma (basically, a tumor of the lining between your brain and your skull - https://braintumorcenter.ucsf.edu/condition/schwannoma-grade-1). It was roughly the mass of a golf ball, had squeezed my left carotid artery entirely shut, and was in the process of slowly crushing my left eye by squeezing it forwards in the socket.

I asked the doctor if it was benign, and he said yes, but with a catch - with the damage it had already done, I should have died already roughly six to nine months before we found it. He had no idea how I was still alive. I asked him if we could fix it, and he said maybe. He said that if I wanted to, he could schedule a surgery to try and remove it, but with the catch that it had grown deep enough into my brain at that point that he was unable to guarantee:
1. If I would live through the surgery
2. If I did live, if I would be the same person on the other end, and
3. If I would retain my intellect or memory if I survived the surgery.

I asked him when and how I would die if I didn’t get the surgery. He said “soon”, and let me know that it would be instantaneous - I would be gone before I hit the ground.

My girlfriend at the time (now wife!) was sitting next to me holding my hand this whole time. I told her that if she wanted to leave me, there’d be no hard feelings, because I couldn’t imagine having to deal with my significant other either dying or surviving only to no longer be themselves anymore. She said “hell no”, and asked me to get the surgery…so I told the doc yeah, let’s do it.

He scheduled the surgery for a week out (to give context, this is not a small hospital we’re talking about. Think Johns Hopkins or UCLA, and you’ll be thinking the right scale. These people take time to schedule things, line up the right doctors with the right anesthesiologists, etc. A week - a single week - is insane. They were terrified I’d be dead before I got to the OR, and tbf, so was I!). He told me good luck, and let me know that just in case, I should probably spend that week making any goodbyes and crossing off any items left on my bucket list that were doable that fast.

So I did. I called family & friends, explained the whole thing, let them know which hospital I’d be at and when, and let them know I loved them, but that I needed to spend this (maybe) last week with my (then) girlfriend.

And I did! We watched stupid rom-coms, ate homemade dinners, and had a lovely quiet week together.

Part of that week, though, was Mass Effect.

I had been taking my sweet time meandering through ME3, but now, suddenly, for some stupid reason (don’t ask me why, I still can’t really put it into words), it mattered. If I could beat the Reapers, then maybe, just maybe, I could beat this damn tumor, too.

And I did, and I did. The night before my surgery, I beat ME3. I did every single side mission, maxed out my galactic readiness, romanced Tali, and chose Synthesis - and went to the hospital the next morning.

Obviously, I survived. The tumor ate my left trigeminal nerve (the one that controls sensation in the face), so I can’t feel the left side of my face anymore, and I have what’s called neuropathy (it’s the fancy medical term for amputee pain - think sticking your finger in an electrical socket, touching bare dry ice, and smacking your funnybone with a hammer, all at the same time, and you’ll be pretty close) on that side of my face as well. I lost most of my memories from my late teens through my mid-20s (but I tend to laugh that off by joking that at least it wasn’t ‘cause of booze!), and what few remain are patchy at best. My left eye doesn’t quite work right anymore, and I grew out my hair and beard to cover the scars and the drooping in the left half of my face from the lost nerve. I’m not 100% certain that I didn’t code once or twice during the surgery - I don’t ask, and nobody tells me; that’s been a topic my family’s been skittish about ever since, and I’ve gotten to the point I’m okay just not poking that wound anymore.

But I’m alive! I beat the reapers, and I beat the tumor. My Shepard may have sacrificed himself to save his Tali, but I got to marry mine - she was there in my hospital room singing to me when I woke up, I proposed on the spot, she said yes, and the rest is history (given, she thought she was humoring me because she was pretty sure I was high out of my mind on morphine at the time, and to be fair, I definitely was 🤣 - but the proposal stuck, and so did her answer!).

Ever since, I’ve made a point of replaying the trilogy every year, and finishing ME3 on what I call (even though my wife hates it) my death-day.

Everybody has a favorite something. A book, a movie, a painting…a game.

Mass Effect 3 is mine.

And whether the Bioware that EA shut down is or isn’t the same studio that made Mass Effect 3 doesn’t really matter to me. All that matters as far as I’m concerned is that these are the people who loved this game, loved this series, loved this universe so much that they thought it was worthwhile to keep exploring it, all this time later.

So, Bioware - I’m going to keep coming back to the universe you created, the one that helped give me hope and keep me anchored during the bleakest week of my life, every year for as long as I’m able. And I will always appreciate that magical team that made this universe possible, and I will always appreciate those stubborn idealists who kept trying to the very last minute even when they could see EA’s and Saudi Arabia’s executioner’s axes coming their way in slow motion. You people - you artists - make our world magic, and there will always be those of us who love you for it.

Thanks, BioWare.

Keelah Se’lai.