Yesterday marked the end of an era as EA closed down BioWare, the legendary studio behind classic RPGs like Mass Effect, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age: Origins, and Jade Empire, to name a few.
In the wake of this tragedy, something miraculous yet sad happened. In a Mass Effect subreddit post, an EA employee with the username "rasengo727" mentioned that "There was a trailer ready for Mass Effect 5 that I saw a few months ago, so I’m puzzled as to how “early” they were."
Then a day later, after that post was made, a former BioWare employee uploaded said trailer on Reddit for the now-canceled Mass Effect 5, which would've been called "Mass Effect Universe".
In the era of artificial intelligence, questioning the authenticity of trailers like this is the norm. While the Reddit mods can't independently verify the authenticity of this trailer, as they do not want any former developers or BioWare employees to be harmed, our own sources have confirmed for us that this one is, in fact, real.
Mass Effect: Universe Trailerfrom r/masseffect
The trailer shows the protagonist from Mass Effect 5's teaser trailer infiltrating a nightclub to take down some criminals in hiding, all with the cinematic presentation and storytelling of a spy thriller.
It also shows a montage of our protagonist's backstory, his adventures trapezing around the galaxy, romantic endeavors, meeting ancient aliens, and getting into intense firefights where our hero uses Biotic powers.
The trailer then ends with a fight breaking out and confirmation that Liara T'Soni, one of Mass Effect's most beloved characters, would be returning for this game, albeit much older than she was in the original trilogy.
A spy-thriller Mass Effect with Liara coming back? What a dark timeline we're living in right now
Like everyone else, I'm quite depressed over the closure of BioWare. Mass Effect was one of my favorite game series ever as a teenager. However, with the controversial ending of Mass Effect 3 and the disastrous launch of Mass Effect: Andromeda, the series was never able to recover.
So seeing this trailer makes the studio's end break my heart even more. An epic spy-thriller story calling back to the series' roots while bringing back Liara T'Soni (who was one of my favorite party members) would've been awesome.
Alas, we'll never know for sure now. All we can hope for now is another studio to buy BioWare's iconic franchises away from EA and give them the proper respect they deserved.
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