The premise of Cursed Child was inherently bad. No matter how good a writer might be, they'd be crippled by the source material. The premise of Andromeda was fantastic: new initiative to settle a new galaxy, build new colonies, make first contact with new races while managing old feuds between factionalist species, led by a human/AI symbiotic supersoldier. There was so much potential there. Imagine a combination of Ghost in the Shell, Age of Empires, and Halo.

It was just woefully mishandled. The Pathfinder didn't do anything new. Every planet, every discovery, every part of the plot, you were the second person there. You would rescue the colonists who got there before you. You would fight the rebels who got there before you. You would scan datapads containing the answers to mysteries solved by researchers who got there before you. At every step the premise was sabotaged by the fact that the developers and writers didn't have the balls to square up to what they were pretending to do.

A fanfic author could swoop in and change that. The setting is fertile ground. There are so many potential points of divergence which could lead into something fantastic. And in all honesty, I love the Mass Effect setting but am getting tired of Shepherd and the Reapers. Andromeda has a lot of wasted potential.

 

I'm still waiting for a good Mass Effect story where Cerberus aren't cartoon villains who are evil for the sake of being evil. Joining the Citadel happened as part of the ceasefire from Shanxi, If there wasn't some referendum or something on that then I can imagine a lot of disgruntled people. Make Cerberus pro-independance, make Humanity want to be left alone and resent being dictated to by aliens. Put a story before the Reapers or ignore them. Could humanity survive alone, could the Citadel enforce their law on an people who don't want them there? The only things I've seen that are even close are just pro-human wankfests that are just uninteresting.

 

It's been more than two years now since the last reply to this thread and I've come to revive it with a query: which are the best crossover fics that haven't been already mentioned in this thread? And has there been one with Babylon 5 perhaps, ongoing or completed?

This has been spurred on by both me playing XCOM games, rewatching Babylon 5 and SG-1 for the past few months. Sadly, XCOM/ME crossover fics tend to be rather underwhelming, resulting most of the time in the curbstomp, both militarily and morality in nature, of the Citadel races. And this gets boring, because while it is interesting to read about different paths of technological advancement colliding, it's no good if that's only used as a prop for saying "See, you're shit, now lay down and die" in a few chapters or a bit more.

I've regained somewhat of an interest in Mass Effect fanfics because I've tried to force myself to play through Andromeda, and that is not an experience I wish to recount or repeat in the future, as it's left more annoyed than upset, but still absolutely disgusted with it. For a game set in a different galaxy altogether, there have been absolutely no moments where I felt at awe of the worlds we can explore. Scenery was pretty from time to time, but with nothing to back it, it's just left me feeling like I've wasted my time.

So how about it? Anything new to recommend? Anything old that slipped by?