Following the shuttering of legendary RPG developer BioWare, accompanied by the cancellation of the next Mass Effect, members of the community have banded together to try to save the franchise, with the #SaveMassEffect online petition now surpassing 200,000 signatures.
Within its first weekend, the petition has garnered 203,892 verified signatures at the time of writing, stemming from not just fans and members of the Mass Effect community, but also prominent franchise figures such as the actors who portrayed Commander Shepard, Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale.
Hale, who played the female version of Shepard for the first three games in the franchise, took to social media over the weekend to express her support for the franchise. “I like to think about a world where the fans come together to create a Kickstarter, and then a couple of investors join them, and then a really cool game company joins them,” she said in a video. “Then a collective is formed to bring Mass Effect back to life for the community, for the creatives, for all of us, and it’s amazing.
Joining her was Meer, who portrayed male Shepard, who echoed her thoughts via his own social media video, where he told fans to “hold the line” and go sign the petition. “I just saw my friend, Jennifer Hale, post about an idea, and I think it’s a pretty good one,” he said. “Save Mass Effect. Hold the line. I should go, and you should go… sign that petition.”
It isn’t just members of the Mass Effect community who are rising to help save the franchise, but other gaming studios and communities too, with prominent examples being Owlcat Games, developer of the upcoming RPG The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, which takes many inspirations from the Mass Effect formula, alongside members of the Destiny community.
For now, it seems the fans aren’t backing down in their efforts to stop Mass Effect from being shelved forever. It remains to be seen if their efforts will have any effect, considering how this is EA we are talking about, after all, but hopefully the franchise, or elements of it, can still be saved by third-party studios, so Commander Shepard’s legacy can live on in a brand-new IP, similar to the aforementioned The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, or Archetype Entertainment’s Exodus.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
Si Jia
