Mass Effect Universe "looked incredible" says creator who claims he advised BioWare

A content creator who claims to have served on a BioWare community council has shared alleged details about the cancelled next Mass Effect game, titled Mass Effect Universe.

In a lengthy Twitter/X post (thanks, PC Gamer), YouTuber Dantics claimed the cancelled game was set more than 600 years after the Reaper War.

He said he'd had access via his role on the "Mass Effect Council" and had seen firsthand what BioWare was developing, and provided feedback during development.

According to Dantics, the game would have centred on a "galactic Cold War" between three major factions, rather than another Reaper-style invasion. Humanity, the Krogan, the Batarians, and others would have allied, with the Council races forming their own alliance and the Geth emerging as a third superpower.

He also mentioned Geth-built megastructures, connections between the Milky Way and Andromeda, and a "shadowy adversary".

Players would have controlled a customisable N7 agent, which Dantics described as "a cross between John Wick and James Bond" rather than "a walking gun rack".

They would also have had experimental technology implanted, giving them the ability to hack and manipulate the environment, see through walls, identify systems, and remotely trigger hazards.

Missions would have been handcrafted, as in the original trilogy, but with "Hitman-style freedom" in how they were completed. Dantics also listed brutal close-range executions, squadmates who could clash with each other, romances that weren’t "sanitised", and Shepard’s legacy being preserved regardless of which ending players chose.

Squad member Liara would also have returned, only now as an "incredibly powerful Asari Matriarch".

"From what I saw, BioWare was making Mass Effect for us, the fans, not for people who don’t exist," Dantics wrote. "It looked incredible. And now we may never get to play it."

None of this has been confirmed. Neither BioWare nor EA has commented, and Dantics’s role on the council hasn’t been independently verified.

It follows the appearance of an internal trailer for Mass Effect Universe, which has since been confirmed as real, after BioWare’s closure and the cancellation of the game.

The EA job cuts, which took place only a few months after Saudi Arabia's $55bn leveraged buyout of the company, also hit developers at Respawn, Maxis, Full Circle, EA Motive, and other EA-owned studios. While such cuts were anticipated by experts given EA's new debt obligations, the news of BioWare's closure nonetheless drew out many messages of sympathy and anger from across the industry.

We said a sad farewell to BioWare earlier this week.