WHAT COULD'VE BEEN: Since BioWare's closure and the cancellation of the next Mass Effect game, several people involved with the project have spoken out about what was planned. Together with a leaked trailer, their comments paint a picture of a spy-thriller space opera that would have taken Mass Effect's emphasis on player choice further than ever.
A Redditor shared a trailer for the next Mass Effect game, revealed to be called Mass Effect: Universe, shortly after EA canceled the game and closed BioWare. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier and IGN later confirmed the trailer's authenticity, and others involved with BioWare have added some context.
Made with pre-production assets and intended only for internal use, the footage centers on a human character in a trench coat who tells an asari he left the military for a new job to "stop fires before they start."
The asari replies, "I start the fires." Liara, returning from the original trilogy, then reveals herself, stating, "We know," and a fight involving guns and biotic attacks ensues.
Mass Effect: Universe Trailer
by u/Random_Hyabusa_Ninja in masseffect
Other shots depict shootouts, a romance scene, and a spaceship flying over a frozen planet. Australian YouTuber Dantics, who says he was part of BioWare's Mass Effect Council, a group of creators that gave the studio feedback, later outlined the game's setting and how the trailer related to BioWare's design goals.
The man in the trench coat would have been the customizable player character, whom Dantics described as an "agent" for N7, the special forces program from the original trilogy. Mass Effect: Universe aimed to deliver a James Bond-like spy thriller set centuries after Mass Effect 3.
Players would have used an experimental implant to influence objects and the environment around them, which Dantics compared to Cyberpunk 2077's hacking gameplay. BioWare was designing missions to resemble the original trilogy's handcrafted format while letting players choose how to complete them, like the Hitman games or the opening stretch of Noveria in the original Mass Effect.
The description aligns with a lengthy LinkedIn post from BioWare cinematic supervisor Tony de Waal, one of the roughly 50 people still at the company when EA closed it this week. He wrote that the team set out to deliver a level of autonomy and choice no other game has matched after seeing what Larian and CD Projekt were doing, likely referring to Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and The Witcher 3.
Dantics also noted that Mass Effect: Universe would retain series staples like potential romances and conflicts between companions. He seemed excited about the project because BioWare was making it primarily for its fans and because its small development team fostered creativity.
The game would have introduced a setting where, after 600 years, humans and the other races throughout the galaxy had largely repaired the damage from the events of Mass Effect 3, eventually splitting into three superpowers. One consisted of the original Citadel Council races (presumably the asari, turians, and salarians), another was an alliance of humans, krogan, batarians, and others, and the geth formed the third.
Dantics described their relationship as a cold war, with a shadowy adversary working behind the scenes. Player choices from the original trilogy might have also impacted the story, and the game would have connected to Andromeda.
Although BioWare's closure dashed any hope that fans would play Mass Effect: Universe, some hold out hope that EA might one day sell BioWare's IP.
While the publisher tends to leave dormant properties like Ultima in its vault, former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah thinks EA might sell them to help pay down the roughly $20 billion in debt from the leveraged buyout that preceded BioWare's closure.
What the canceled Mass Effect 5 would have been: a sci-fi spy thriller built around player choice
