User blog comment:Elseweyr/Mass Effect Book Club -- Special Edition: Foundation/@comment-4953843-20140329034922/@comment-6104626-20140330194254

So, the way these things like this generally go in the game industry is: when you're working on the Big Hit Game you have a monster staff of writers and producers, and it wouldn't even be unheard of on a team of that size to have a full time "loremaster" dedicated to issues of canon and continuity. However once you're onto "derivative works", you're talking about a much smaller staff, just a few people and maybe only one "writer". So even if one of them happens to be the "Lead Writer for Mass Effect 3", he's now without his support staff. He can always email one of them a question if he thinks of a question (presumably they're just across the hall working on Dragon Age 3), but that's only when he remembers that something's a question. He was probably never the continuity specialist himself. So anyway, it's all totally understandable in the economics/process of it all, even if lamentable from a fan point of view. It's why (as a fan of the videogame series) I always sort of wish that things like the comic series just didn't exist -- since I know they can hardly ever rise to being as tight as the "real" (game) world. I understand why fans want them and why game studios make them, but there's always a place inside me that's kind of "dang". There HAS been one substantial exception (IMHO) to this trend, and that was the Drew Karpyshyn novels (Revelation, Ascension, Retribution).