So I guess they showed a lot more of the next Mass Effect game at Bioware's panel at SDCC this past week. They also talked a lot about it too. It will be focused on exploring planets and to help with that they've announced that the Mako will make a return in a major way.

There's some early footage of the new Mako roaming a planet in this news bit from the Escapist.

http://youtu.be/MzueBbcXqRk

What do you guys think? I'm super excited myself! :)

I really love the idea of Mass Effect returning to a more exploration focused experience like Mass Effect 1. As long as the Mako's handling is vastly improved and the actual worlds we'll be exploring are more than barren patches of land, I am all for it.

As long as the worlds we'll be exploring aren't barren wastelands with a couple of enemies to kill, I'm all for it.

I can't imagine them doing that, though, so I'm excited. Hopefully its not too far off.

I hope they don't give us another mission that's at the top an ice mountain that take 30 minutes to drive up.

Hopefully it doesn't control like shit and it actually has some fun and interesting levels to go through this time.

I honestly never had a problem with the way the Mako controlled. I just thought the various planets you explored were absurd in how steep all the ridges were. It just wasn't believable terrain, to me.

Like, changes in elevation are one thing, but there were just so many weird spires like you'd see in the American southwest deserts (which require a specific number of factors, and even then are somewhat rare), or there were frequent just vertical cliff faces like everywhere that just geologically made little sense. It just felt really gamey the way they didn't want you to just be able to drive in any direction, and wanted to have you have to go around all of those dumb tiny mountain ranges that were on every single planet you ever explored.

So next time, don't tell the environment artists to just go fucking nuts on the elevation slider in the terrain editor. Or at least make up a dumb story reason where the Mako keeps landing in the most mountainous area possible on each planet.

The problem was the ANNOYING world design where the handling didn't help at all. But this is standard fair for old Bioware where they would bolt on some secondary "action" bits when it wasn't necessary. It boils down to either Bioware need to improve the design and purpose of having those MAKO sections or abandon it.

I love the implication that the mako is somehow the thing that we've all been waiting to make a return. Because it's not like that was probably the single worst aspect of the original Mass Effect or something.

@arbitrarywater: We'll have to see how it rivals Arkham Knight's Batmobile in the things-the-devs-think-fans-will-go-crazy-for-despite-nobody-ever-asking-for-them category.

I'm happy that they're apparently focusing more on exploration, but the Mako is in no way a necessary part of that.

Sweet, love the Mako.

here is hoping it is not as shit as it was before because man fuck that thing.

I loved the way the Mako controlled. I just hated the missions designed around it.

I hope they can take what was great about ME1 and ME2 and put it together into a great game. The only thing they need to take from ME3 is the improved combat, because that have improved from game to game.

@dagas: I could not stand the combat in 3 way to fucking easy with no way to even make it challenging at all. 2 had the best combat by far when all the enemies had shields it was amazing you had to use your full team to survive best game ever.

What they showed in that video looked fantastic.

There were probably about a dozen things I disliked about ME1 more than the Mako. (And I'd take the Mako over the Hammerhead any day.)

And really, I think it's just about what the Mako represents for the direction the game is headed rather than its actual history. They could have named the vehicle anything.

It's cool that they are letting us in on early concepts and prototypes of the game. I like that there could be an increased focus on exploration. But... I'm surprised at how they are touting the word "Mako" around as if it wasn't one of the worst vehicles in all of games in ME1.

I still remember jamming the Mako in some sort of metal piping, and then laughing my ass off as it vibrated and wobbled in its attempts to free itself. I stopped laughing when I realized I couldn't get out, and the last autosave was at the start of the planet.

So, fuck the Mako, I guess. Here's hoping this one isn't as garbage.

I never had any problems with the original Mako. Sometimes it was a pain in the ass, but generally it was fine. The customization option for the new one sounds awesome. Hopefully they will make the new Mako as meaningful as the ship was in AC4.

In the end it comes down to this ... if they manage to make the Mako handle good AND the exploration part is interesting this could be awesome. If the exploration is just "drive in a straight line from A to B" or the planets are just a wasteland with nothing interesting in it it gets kind of pointless.

They somehow have to pull off something close to No Mans Sky tbh.

I'm excited! I liked the Mako sections in ME1 most of the time and even the couple of times they frustrated me I still liked the idea of them.

Plus I just think that new vehicle looks really slick.

I never had a problem with the Mako, or anything else in ME1. I always felt a slowly increasing sense of sadness inside me when I played 2 and 3. So, hey if this means that they'll actually listen to the people who liked the first game then I'm all for it, but I'll still play a wait and see approach to it.

While I was able to enjoy the worlds in the first game it be terrible if they don't improve it. Like let people drive around a colony, jungles, forests, etc.

I think I liked the Mako better than scanning, so that's okay.

The Mako would have been a good part of ME1 if there had been 1/2 as many Mako sequences and 2x the density of interesting things to find on the planet surfaces.

YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES

Fuck the Mako, it was the worst part of that game. Nothing could have made me less excited. That's almost not hyperbole.

That's cool I never really had a problem with the Mako and that could hopefully mean a good amount of worlds to explore with it.

I loved the Mako in the original Mass Effect, so I'm happy to see it return.

Now let's hope they actually get some decent writing in there, and this could be good.

Noooooooo...

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

CELEBRATE ALRIGHT

I always thought that removing it was one of the stupidest things they ever did with the franchise - they should have fixed (or improved) it. Looks like that's what they finally did.

Who doesn't love landing on distant desolate planets and explore them at will in an all-terrain vehicle?

I dunno, that looks like a new Mako to me. I want the original, clunky Mako!

I hope they make the Mako stuff a seperate game where y'all can pick up audio logs and Turian insignias while getting stuck on geometry to your heart's content. They may even let you palette swap the color of the sky yourself.

What if you played as the Mako?

Guys, what if, and stay with me here, but what if it was a Mass Effect vehicle kart racer? The Mako, the Hammerhead, those other things. Think about it.

@snail: So all-terrain that it has thrusters to just fly over it. Just don't let the corner of a wheel touch anything that looks like lava, or it will instantly cease to function.

YAY you just reminded me why I NEVER want to play Mass Effect 1 again.

The Mako was hot garbage but the planets themselves were even hotter garbage. That's what they really need to improve.

The mako, its handling and exploration were pretty sweet. However some of the planets were a mission to traverse with madhouse peaks. That said though I always felt ME1 was the best of the three so any sort of return to the that played and felt atmosphere wise is okay by me.

Bring on the Thresher Maws!

Sure it sounds great in theory, but appreciation of the Mako has to be the most horse blinded opinion in video games, since that thing was atrocious. If it doesn't suck, great.

I really want some form of episodic Star Trek like one shot episodes, think the citadel DLC where things are a little off kilter.

Yay for more Mass Effect! :)

I never got the mako hate. Though I quickly learned you shouldn't drive that shit straight into battle, you should park it far away and use the turret view to snipe mother fuckers from impossible to return fire distances.

The sections of the game the mako it was apart of were easy as heck and everything else you used it for was optional. Don't even remember dying in it, but for a few times with the thresher mall. The Mako was hardly the worst part of Mass effect 1, that would be the framerate. Either way, Mass effect 1 was amazing in that it set up an entire universe, and did it brilliantly.

Oh god, the scanning … *buries head in hands*

I loved the original Mako with its ludicrous jumping nonsense and OP cannon.

The Mako controlled like ass. I don't think anyone would deny that. However the Mako doesn't just represent vehicular based missions, it means something else. When people talk about missing the Mako, they're talking about finding an uncharted world and touching down to see what's there. Sometimes there was a mission, sometimes there was just some loot, and sometimes there wasn't much of anything at all. Whatever the case was, the planet was open enough for you to drive around and take in the sights with nothing but the howling wind whistling through the atmosphere.

When people say "I loved the Mako" that's really what they're talking about. ME1 was the only game in the trilogy that made you feel like you were exploring the galaxy. You were discovering things, people, and planets. That's why I always wanted more of it in ME2 and ME3 personally. This idea that I was standing on the surface of a planet that nobody else had seen or landed on before. It just made the universe feel huge.

In any event, I'm glad that they're returning to this kind of philosophy.

I'm flabbergasted by some the replies above. The Mako was awful. The missions for it were awful, it controlled awful, aiming was awful and how it ate up your resources to keep alive was awful. Everything about it was poorly executed. Now, the idea of a land craft was not bad and here's hoping Bioware learned a lot from all of the criticism the machine received in the original game. How about adding a submarine while were at it? Something to cruise through a liquid nitrogen sea, perhaps.

@oldirtybearon: To me it just feels like some people completely lose all critical thought when it comes to exploration elements and RPG elements. These were cookie cutter landscapes, mostly completely empty except for a few collectibles and the way they gave you to navigate it felt terrible to control most of the time. To me It made the galaxy feel empty and lifeless. I much preferred the side missions centered on helping your squadmates in the latter games, missions that felt properly designed.

Is crappy gun control, terrible UI and a level-up system that made no sense back to? I really missed those things from the first mass effect.