EA told its employees that it will be laying off 400 staffers as well as shut down storied studio BioWare. This, in effect, also ended the next Mass Effect game, which was already in early development. Seemingly immediately after, a Redditor who claims to be an EA employee using a burner account shared what looks like the trailer for the cancelled game.
The trailer opens with text noting that it’s been made from in-game footage using pre-production assets, but phrased in a way that is very strange for a trailer. This then cuts to show a man wearing an N7 trench coat entering a bar, with an asari approaching soon after for a conversation. This presumed new protagonist recounts a previously military line of work, saying that he’s now in a “new line of work”, with the trailer now cutting to a very James Bond-esque montage of action, both in the literal and figurative sense of the word.
Following what sounds like a threat by the new asari, a familiar face – Liara T’soni, an asari from the original Mass Effect trilogy – reveals herself, and things devolve into a messy bar fight. The trailer then ends with the title, Mass Effect: Universe, being shown. All the while though, there’s something that sounds like royalty-free music playing in the background, adding to the weirdness of an otherwise good looking trailer.
The timing of the leak is almost too good, to the point where it feels suspiciously convenient. Regardless, both Bloomberg’s Jason Schrier and IGN have said that the trailer is legit. The latter also provided important context for the weird opening text – it was meant for EA leadership rather than the public, and it may have been made as early as last year. The report also mentions a public-facing Mass Effect 5 trailer, but it didn’t make it out in time to escape the BioWare shut down by EA.
Mass Effect: Universe Trailer
byu/Random_Hyabusa_Ninja inmasseffect
On one hand, the trailer does look good, oddities with the background music and opening text notwithstanding. But on the other, BioWare had first announced Mass Effect 5 back in 2020, during the game awards. This has led to some questioning the pace at which the studio was working, taking nearly six years just to reach early production. Either way, the game is unlikely to see the light of day, and the trailer, alongside the expected Change.org petition, is probably not changing that.
(Source: Reddit [1], [2], Jason Schreier / Bluesky, IGN)
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