User blog comment:James12708/Bioware Hasn't written themselves into a corner/@comment-4950455-20121109062047/@comment-4950455-20121109082923

Again, I'm not convinced Mass Effect "4" actually needs to top things in the first place.

Using the Star Wars analogy again, Allston's Starfighters of Adumar takes place mainly at a single planet and has no higher stakes then whether that single planet and its useful-but-hardly-essential resources joins the Republic or the Empire. And yet it's widely considered one of the best EU books.

Given the nature of the Mass Effect universe, and Bioware's explicit intention of doing something different with the new game, I don't see any reason why introducing a smaller-scale conflict would be a bad thing.