A Mass Effect on Pirates, Smugglers, and Space Battles – Sounds Good, But BioWare Canceled It
It was to be called Mass Effect: Corsair, with a ‘Han Solo’ protagonist, and planned for Nintendo DS.
The first Mass Effect plunged us fully into one of the deepest science fiction universes video games have ever given us. All this under the command of Commander Shepard, trying to save the galaxy from an ancient threat. And this point of view was maintained throughout the three main installments that you have available with Mass Effect: Legendary Edition . But apparently there were times when BioWare had ambitious plans to expand its universe through spinoffs. This is Mass Effect: Corsair , the Nintendo DS game that BioWare had in development, but never saw the light of day .
You would have a ship and you would be independent, a character a la ‘Han Solo’Mark DarrahIn a video interview with MinnMax, transcribed by GameSpot, veteran Mark Darrah explains that this Mass Effect spinoff would have taken us across the galaxy as some kind of space pirate or smuggler: “You would have a ship and you would be independent, more like a character to ‘Han Solo’ than a spectrum. Would you travel around, shipments recogerías, explorarías … could explore and sell the information found on the human Alliance “. Come on, it was postulated as a kind of space sandbox further from the RPG proposal of the main games.
In fact, the ex-director of BioWare explains that this Mass Effect: Corsair was going to be set in a remote area of the galaxy, that kind of space “wild west” that so much game gives in sagas like Star Wars. As for the gameplay, his main inspiration was the game Star Control, with a first-person perspective and space battles. “Pretty much all we had was a preliminary version of the flight controls, the rest of the game we didn’t have it built , really. We were studying how to make it work with respect to the series.”
“[Corsair] didn’t quite fit into the series , because the way FTL travel works in Mass Effect is somewhat different.” In Mass Effect, travel between sectors is done by means of the ‘mass relays’ . “I think we could have made it work, and the reality is that you can usually tweak [the foundation of] a series. If everyone agrees and is willing, you can make sense of it.” In the end, Mass Effect: Corsair ended up canceled due to financial issues , plain and simple.
I think we could have made it workMark DarrahA game like this would have required the most expensive DS cartridge of all possible to distribute, explains Darrah. Also, since DS games were priced lower than desktop games, the profit margin would have been minimal. Finally, EA’s forecasts estimated only about 50,000 copies sold for the game, which is why the project was canceled.
Still, the idea of a Mass Effect as a space smuggler , exploring the galaxy and flying free, seems so appealing that it would be a shame if BioWare didn’t pick it up for the future. For now, the studio is working on a new Mass Effect game , and also on that long-awaited Dragon Age 4 , both shrouded in mystery.
