Elfgore said:
I'm sure EA made the push for online content, both of which I hear are solid for the games.
ME3's multiplayer component was a hell of a lot better than it had any right being, and it's a shame it wasn't fleshed out more and expanded further than just being a glorified horde mode. I found DA:I's multiplayer honestly quite boring especially with the tacked-on crafting/loot crate/RNG garbage, and I never played ME:A so can't speak on it from personal experience.
All of which is a real shame, because I felt BW was really onto something with the ME series' multiplayer and could have done some really cool things to incorporate the "games as service" model with major narrative payoff, not that EA would have allowed them to do it as it would have not been a fast track to short-term profit.
I had a way longer post about this based on how it might look in a hypothetical ME prequel trilogy, but here are the bare bones.
Imagine a ME prequel trilogy that start with the PC as a wet-behind-the-ears officer stationed on Shanxi during the First Contact War, that actually follows two decades of the PC's life, ending with the siege of Torfan. The main body of the game involves the PC being disillusioned by Shanxi, going on to retire from the Alliance military to lead a mercenary company, and getting involved in a Cerberus plot to destabilize the military in the Skyllian Verge to provoke open war between the Alliance and Batarian Hegemony.
While the single player is the story, the multiplayer component is the source of intermittent game play, and ongoing play in the post-story state as supported by periodic content releases. The multiplayer component incorporates a background simulation that is the sum total of all player activity, Chromehounds or Elite Dangerous style, and represents the state of the conflict in the Verge overall. That, in turn, influences the single player component by changing mission payouts, weapon upgrades and unlocks, side mission availability, and even changing paragon/renegade dialogue and interrupt thresholds.
So, let's say one of the single player story missions is to attack and destroy a well-defended Batarian pirate outpost on a moon. If the "war score" is high enough and the PC has enough resources at their disposal, they could assault it frontally and just soak the losses. If not, or the player isn't willing to risk a frontal assault, you could order a side mission to infiltrate the base and knock out its power generators as a prelude to the main assault, or send a fire team to occupy a nearby location and set up artillery for fire support during the main assault; those would be played through as multi player missions, but the assets sent on those MP missions wouldn't be available for the main assault. Or, if the "war score" is low or the player lacks resources and assets, they could contract "other merc groups" to assist in the assault for a cut of the payout, which would allow for playthrough of the SP mission in an MP environment.
Of course, major choices and dialog would still take place in SP, and MP side missions would have narrative content controlled in the same way as TOR handles instances. When it comes to the dialog and choices, let's say the outpost assault succeeds and the player breaks through the defenses; from there the player can try to resolve the mission in multiple ways based upon paragon/renegade points and war score.
Let's say war score is high and the PC has lots of paragon/renegade points, this allows the player to convince the leader to spare their crew's lives and surrender peacefully (paragon), or execute the leader to intimidate their subordinates into surrendering (renegade). If war score is low but the PC has lots of paragon/renegade points, they can do something like disable the outpost's air purifiers to force them to surrender (paragon) or let them suffocate (renegade). If war score is high but the PC lacks paragon/renegade points, the pirates realize they're outmatched, mutiny, and attempt to retreat; the player can allow them to go (paragon) or kill them as they're retreating (renegade). If war score and paragon/renegade is low, the pirates don't surrender and the player is forced to fight their way through the outpost.
You could even integrate PvP matches in this framework. Let's say the PC gets an opportunity for a lucrative colony defense contract (a series of side missions); they can either choose to out-bid competing merc groups for the contract (skipping MP), or stage a war game (an MP mission) to compete directly for the contract at a higher payout. Either way the side missions are unlocked, but what changes are the potential payout for completing them. Or, the PC could set up war games with other merc groups for training purposes. From there, we could even have a clan system in the form of allied merc groups that assist one another in joint missions.
And, as the trilogy goes on and the Cerberus plot and proxy war is unveiled, the PC has to choose later on whether to work with Cerberus, Alliance loyalists, or even the Council, and each faction has their own background simulation. Which introduces more straightforward PvP missions where, for example, Alliance-aligned fire teams fight Cerberus-aligned fire teams.
There's a ton of potential there and it's a space where gamers and dev/publishers could really have their cake and eat it too, but the state of the industry right now is such it wouldn't happen, sadly.
