Were you hoping for Commander Shepard to make a triumphant reappearance in the next Mass Effect, after that thing happened at the end of ME3 that a lot of people got quite upset about? (I seem to recall that he/she turned the island off and on again, and then it turned out everyone was dead all along.) Well consider your hopes dashed: Mass Effect 3 lead writer Mac Walters has explained to Complex that BioWare want to move the series on. "The idea is that we have agreed to tell a story that doesn't relate necessarily to any of the Shepard events at all, whatsoever".

"That's what we've been deciding for a while," Walters continued. "But throughout it all, one of the key things is that it has to be Mass Effect. It can't just feel like a spin-off. It has to feel like a Mass Effect game at its heart, at its core. Just without the Shepard character or the Shepard specific companions." Mordin, we hardly knew ye.

Walters went on to talk about Mass Effect 3's controversial ending.

"It's been 18-19 months since it came out and my thoughts on it are that we addressed it the best we could in the Extended Cut. We're obviously not going to be changing anything now. We're only going forward.

"To be fair, I get people, especially at the conventions, who will say, 'I loved it. It was heart-wrenching, but I felt it was right for my Shepard.' And to me, that's why it was the right path. But because there was no choice, it was going to be right for some people, and for others, in the middle, and other people were obviously very upset about it. In hindsight, I don't think there was anything we would have changed about that, but it is a really good lesson learned."

What else do we know about the next Mass Effect so far? Pretty much zip, other than that it will share its "core systems" with Dragon Age: Inquistion.

Thanks, Eurogamer .