Mass Effect Universe: Are We Missing Out?

And that’s just the best part of the entire fight scene.

Last time I tried to play the original Mass Effect I couldn’t figure out how to make the darn ship move, and I never had a chance to go back to it. Maybe someday we’ll learn the fate of Germain Shepard, but that’s not what we’re here for today.

With the announcement that EA was shutting down BioWare, a move critics saw coming after Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Anthem were just the biggest flops in a descending level of quality even before the cultural nonsense, it’s not surprising that people in the creative areas wanted to show off what they were forced to give up. Work on something long enough, and whatever you think of the IP you want to show off what all the time and effort went into, even if just to add it to the resume.

Yesterday was the announcement, and today was an alleged trailer leak for a fifth game in the series, after the disappointing ending of the third game for some players based on their decisions in the trilogy and the utter mess that was Mass Effect: Andromeda. Mass Effect Universe could have been a working title or a definitive title for a game that took the series away from the military to a new concept. The trailer doesn’t tell us much about the story, just the concept. That’s of course if the trailer is legit and not someone taking advantage of something they were working on and trying to pull a prank on the internet. We’ve seen plenty of those. Still, it’s worth looking into on the chance that this is a leak by a staffer upset he or she (or whatever) is about to lose their job before all their work at least tried to pay off.

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BW’s Daily Video> BioWare Joins The Legacy Game Company Shut Downs

NOTE: contains cursing and commentary

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BioWare has been in trouble possibly since fans of the Mass Effect franchise were already disappointed with the ending of the third game, deciding some of the endings took agency out of choices made in the trilogy. Andromeda suffered from poor quality control. The number of good games started collapsing from there, especially after the sociopolitical stuff got involved and the good creators were let go for fresh blood, rather than let the seniors train the youngers and let them go make other games or be there when the old creators retired or went elsewhere. I’m all for new ideas, but let’s not forget who made the old ones work enough that you have a place to try new ideas.

Did We Need A Star Wars/Marvel Crossover?

How do you make a bad idea worse? Add Kevin Smith, apparently.

This is the guy who added rape to Black Cat, gave us Masters Of The Universe: Revelations, is obsessed with his take on Batman, and seems to be locked into his particular brand of humor. I was never really a fan of his, but he was mostly harmless until recently, Black Cat aside. Putting someone who admits to not liking He-Man on a He-Man series was Mattel’s fault.

I’m not even sure whey they felt we needed a crossover between the Marvel superheroes and the Star Wars galaxy, but it doesn’t have to be a rulebreaker. While it sounds like something out of Super-Team Family, Star TREK crossed over with X-Men, and so has Doctor Who. Then above preview came up for Star Wars/Marvel: Hope Assembles from the X-Twitter feed of Discussing Film and…nobody’s complaining about David Marquez’s art. It’s quite good. It’s a preview so there’s a lot we don’t know about the story. The dialog, however…

Oh, we’re in for a bad time.

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BW’s Daily Video> Dreamworks VS Disney

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The Current State Of Physical Gaming In 2026

I’m usually focused on the end product, in this case the game’s story, rather than how we get it. However, every now and then we’re forced to talk about the delivery system because if we can’t receive the story we can’t interact with it. The entertainment industry has always had an issue with home video, for example, because you buy it once and unless it gets destroyed or a new format shows up they never get your money again. On TV or returning to theaters, and now on demand and live streaming, they still get licensing rights to get money from.

Video games oddly never had that problem until recently, when they were being owned by Hollywood companies or subscribing to their mindset. Video games in arcades and various food establishments (our local Cumberland Farms had a Centipede game) and bars at a quarter a game were still either rented through a third party company or just bought from the game manufacturer. They weren’t getting any more money once it was sold than the company I bought my basic pinball machine from. So the move to home video just cut one middleman out of the field because gamers were still going to stores to get them, and the stores had to buy the cartridges and CDs. It’s only in recent years where that wasn’t enough.

So you had downloadable content (DLC) for bonuses like extra levels and in-game items, which was fine. Then you got loot boxes, items that almost felt required to play a game, especially MMOs that already had a monthly fee going to keep the servers active. Now you have companies who want to get rid of physical copies altogether as another method of getting your money on a regular basis even if you aren’t paying for an online experience. Sony is already plotting to get rid of physical media. As a guy with a declutter side project, I still defend physical media because you buy it, you should own it even when it’s not for sale. Otherwise you just paid for a rental. This led to the Stop Killing Games movement, that has been fighting for physical game and “you buy it, you own it” around the world. And it looks like they finally have an ally in the US government. They could use one in the EU.

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BW’s Daily Video> Why Marvel Studios & Sony Ruined Jean Grey

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Chapter By Chapter> Star Trek: The IDIC Epidemic chapter 18

Chapter By Chapter (usually) features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as a read-along book club.

In our last chapter, Kevin and Korsal may be about to receive some good news from the Enterprise…if they live long enough. Meanwhile, some idiot breaks medical protocol, and I think I remember who the idiot was. The answer will not surprise you, but I’m not going to spoil it here.

We’re going to be hitting the halfway mark, and it’s good that the regular cast is finally going to be involved with events. They’re who we’ve come to see and so far their absence, in spite of how good the story and characters have been thus far, has been notable. It would be fine if the story were set somewhere in the larger Star Trek universe of the classic timeline. There have been good official and unofficial stories with that idea in mind. That’s not how the book was sold, so they were missed. Now they will be part of the story and that’s a good thing.

With the intro padded out (thank you, article series blurb), let’s get reading the next chapter and see if our new favorite Klingons get rescued, and what they’re about to walk into.

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