With the world of Mass Effect there really are very few limits one can go for new stories, back stories, and histories of the massive universe and characters. Dark Horse has released a few comic series examining a few of these stories never fully told in the games, and they're proving that even an extremely minor character can have an intriguing story to tell pre-Shepard. They are launching a new comic series this week, Mass Effect: Foundation, which taps into a back story of a character from one of the Mass Effect 3 DLCs—and for the sake of spoilers, I'm not going to say which one.
Once again, the lead writer for Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, Mac Walters, has stepped up to provide this back story that takes place shortly after the First Contact War and definitely after the Mass Effect: Evolution comic series.
To be perfectly honest, the comic's story is quite bland until the last few pages. It features a child slave working at the Arcturus Station—which may have been quite dead in the games but has been a popular hot spot in a couple of the Mass Effect comics—an agent for the Shadow Broker and an agent of Cerberus. As you can imagine, these agents are not friends even though they're both human. The agent of the Shadow Broker was sent to Arcturus to destroy a Mr. Roth, someone who is funding Cerberus. As the Shadow Broker sees it, Cerberus is a prohuman terrorist organization (we've heard that before, right?) who recently destroyed a Turian freighter for no reason. According to Cerberus, those Turians were slavers. It's the same argument Mass Effect fans have heard numerous times in various situations.
Thankfully, this brief battle between the agents is not what Foundation is about. Instead, it's really about the child slave and who that child becomes in a particular Mass Effect 3 DLC.
Those who haven't played any of the DLC will most likely not be interested in Foundation, and it's always possible that those who have played this particular DLC will not realize who this character is. In that way, Foundation could be sadly lost on ME fans except for those who are fascinated by the history of Cerberus.
If that intrigue is enough to pique your curiosity, be on the lookout for Mass Effect: Foundation #1 to release on July 24th (my birthday, which is so fitting for this Mass Effect fan) with Dark Horse comics. If nothing else, I can almost guarantee you won't see the ending coming. I'd love to fully guarantee that, but I'm sure someone out there will read up on all the characters from all of the ME3 DLC and make a prediction just out of spite.
Game Revolution received an advanced review copy from the publisher.
