BioWare made it pretty clear that there was a secret lingering in its N7 Day celebrations, and fans have finally figured out the hidden message. The result? A piece of concept art teasing a Krogan civil war. That's a bounty for lore nerds, but for people who wanted to see a little more of the actual video game part of Mass Effect 5, today's news has been a bit of a disappointment. According to executive producer Mike Gamble, though, it simply isn't yet time to show more of the RPG.
"For everyone yelling at me because we didn’t use N7 Day to provide a whole bunch of info…" Gamble laments in a tweet. "I mean, I get it. I’m a fan too. I want you to see stuff. But it’s not the time…yet. Has it been years since announce? Yes. Have we been busy? Yes. Are we NOW 100% on mass effect? Also yes"
That tweet came somewhat before fans found today's presumably final bit of Mass Effect 5 news. Hidden in Gamble's blog post were a series of italicized letters spelling out "URL KROGAN." It took a while for fans to figure out the precise meaning, until the Mass Effect Twitter account provided a clue: "https://www.masseffect[dot]com/[ERROR A20N7S12]"
That combination of letters and numbers constituted a cipher, with N, appropriately enough, meaning 7. Turn KROGAN into that cipher and you get 411826207, which led to this page on the official Mass Effect website, featuring a high-quality piece of concept art featuring a group of Krogans in battle, with the caption civil war underneath. That perhaps hints at a story we'll see told in Mass Effect 5, but there's only so much info you can pull out of an image like this.
But this kind of teaser is all we've seen of Mass Effect 5 going back for years now, and that's not much for a fandom that's been waiting nearly a decade for a new entry in the series. Hopefully we'll be getting more substantial news soon with BioWare now fully focused on the game, but I can't blame fans for being tired of vague teasers.
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