Prolific video game actor Jennifer Hale - who's been in everything from Bayonetta 3 to Halo - has said she'd return to Mass Effect almost instantaneously should developer BioWare ask her to.

As one of the two actors to bring Mass Effect's Commander Shepard to life, Hale obviously had a big hand in making the character and the trilogy as a whole so special, but it seems the iconic series had just as big an impact on her as it did on the fan base.

Speaking to IGN, 'FemShep' said she "would be there before they [BioWare] finish the sentence," even though the famed studio hasn't picked up the phone to call her just yet.

Mass Effect 5, or whatever it ends up being called, is obviously in development right now, but the ending of the initial trilogy makes it a bit hard to simply return to Shepard. One possible finale does show our Commander battered but still breathing under rubble - though another theory points to a possible connection to Mass Effect Andromeda, which was set hundreds of years after Shepard's first adventure.

Still, that doesn't rule out Jennifer Hale's comeback to the universe, as she said she'd play "anyone." Krogan, hologram, bug, rotting corpse - it's all fair play. "I love that universe. I'm ready. Anytime."

"Everyone out there, the more you tell them what you want, maybe the likelier it is that it'll happen," she said, calling on fans to also poke BioWare about it.

Earlier in the year, we learned that the next Mass Effect was "still in pre-production" amid more layoffs at the studio. Things haven't gotten any more optimistic since, as EA is taking on $20 billion in debt to help fund a $55 billion buyout to private equity firms, meaning the publisher might probably cut corners somewhere. Here's hoping the developers stay unaffected through it all.

Jennifer Hale says she didn't see a single line as Mass Effect's Commander Shepard until it was time to record: "It was all cold reading on the spot"

To this day, I still get a good chuckle out of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's Hero's Path feature, which shows you every single step you took on your journey, overlaid on the map. Just a few hours into my playthrough, there's a section where I die over and over again in the exact same location, only to run off for a good 10 hours and return, presumably triumphant, as I continued on my original path.

I won't lie, it's pretty embarrassing, and my partner will never let me live it down, as past me clearly struggled until frustration took hold and wandered off, head hung in defeat.

It's a feature that I wish we'd see more of in RPGs, letting us relive our adventures at the end and piece together the mystery of what we spent so much time doing via the map. What I didn't realise—until Arc Raiders came along—is that it's something extraction shooters sorely need, too, especially as a genre all about building tension and reflecting on your devastating losses.

Whether you live or die on a run in Arc Raiders, you'll first be greeted by the Journey page, not a boring ol' XP summary like every other extraction shooter (bar Arena Breakout, the only other in the genre, to my knowledge, that has a combat history map). This charts your entire match history with little Pac-Dots, showing you exactly where you went and what you did, including stuff like using items or fighting players. Hell, it's even got timestamps for each event.

As simple as it sounds, it's fun to look back at your route through each match. But it's even funnier when you see your dotted path frantically circling around one area, and you know in the back of your head that it's the moment you were cowering for your life, trying to avoid players or ARCs hot on your tail.

Of course, if you're a competitive player, you can also glean some handy, actionable ideas from it, like judging more optimal loot routes and whatnot. I'd rather just laugh at my prior mistakes, though, as you get to see the failure unfurling in real-time in a bird's-eye view.

Honestly, the only thing that I think would improve this Journey feature is if it marked other players' positions on the map. It'd be great to see how close you were to running into potential enemies or allies, as you'd either realise you were freaking out over nothing or that you narrowly avoided disaster by a hair's breadth.