Like rubbing salt into the wound, the abrupt closure of beloved RPG studio BioWare means we now know more about Mass Effect 5 than we probably would've otherwise, which stings even harder knowing the game's now canceled. Based on a leaked trailer, it's likely the game was to be titled Mass Effect: Universe, and it seems it would've paired up returning party member Liara T'Soni with a new human hero in place of longtime protagonist Shepard. Perhaps the biggest disappointment of all is that the trailer said the game was "coming soon."

I suppose if you're someone willing to call a glass with two drops of water in it 'half full', you could argue the existence of the trailer is a tiny, barely glimmering silver lining amid the tragedy of it all, and adding just the faintest shimmer to that miniscule upside is a new tweet from veteran BioWare composer Sam Hulick, who scored the original Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3. In the tweet, Hulick says he plans to "release the re-scored Mass Effect Universe trailer for N7 Day."

N7 Day is an annual celebration of all things Mass Effect, and had EA not shut the doors on BioWare, there's a good chance we would've seen or heard something new about Mass Effect 5, potentially even the leaked trailer. But anyway, it happens on November 7, which Hulick admits is "a little tight" as he's also working on a pitch for an unrelated new game, but "I'll see what I can do," he says. "I don't wanna rush it, and I want it to properly represent my musical vision for MEU."

While you might think Hulick's endorsement of the leaked trailer substantiates its legitimacy somewhat, he's a freelance composer and was never officially hired on as a BioWare employee, so he probably didn't have a whole lot of insight into the next game's development. In fact, the legendary composer behind Journey, Austin Wintory, who just released 20 minutes of music he wrote in an unofficial capacity for Mass Effect 5, recently said "no one" had yet been hired to score the sequel. Still, more moody sci-fi music from a pair of renowned composers is never a bad thing, especially as we lie face down in a puddle of tears in the wake of BioWare's untimely end.

"EA never actually sells anything," former Mass Effect 5 dev says – so don't expect the RPG to be saved as "they just shut things down and sit on their licenses"

Former Halo and Assassin's Creed artist Nicolas 'Sparth' Bouvier has revealed that he served as the art director for the Mass Effect franchise until BioWare's closure.

BioWare announced last week that it is closing down, months after EA was acquired by private investors and effectively said out loud that cuts were on the way.

On top of the studio's closure, the Mass Effect 5 project in development at the studio was canceled. This was later revealed to be Mass Effect Universe as a leaked trailer made its way to the web shortly after the announcement, which in turn caused even more fan outcry, as the trailer looked to be cooking up something promising.

In a thread on Twitter, Bouvier – who was a senior artist on the original Assassin's Creed, as well as the 343-era Halo games – says "in light of last week’s news about BioWare’s closure," he was choosing now to reveal that "from April until last week, I was the art director of the Mass Effect franchise." He adds, "It was a privilege to work alongside such a talented team, with the shared ambition of exploring new creative territories while staying true to the legacy and spirit of the Mass Effect trilogy."

"Knowing that this work will never see the light of day is truly heartbreaking," Bouvier continues, saying, "We were good at this. We really were. I'm thinking about the team, the talent, what we could have achieved."

He adds, "In nearly 30 years in this industry, I've rarely seen a group so tightly knit, so experienced, and so good at working together," before concluding that he is "honored to have been part of it."

Mass Effect 5 lead says outpouring of support following BioWare closure "means so much to us," but is looking on the bright side: "At least I don't have to call in sick when GTA 6 comes out"

Update, 27 October: We've now included quotes from a new post from Austin Wintory further explaining his involvement with Mass Effect 5, which you can read at the bottom of this article.

The saddest part of Mass Effect 5's death is the end of BioWare and the developers whose livelihoods are being upended. Yet it's difficult for fans not to think of the RPG that might have been, too. After an apparent trailer for Mass Effect 5 leaked, we now also have an idea of what the game's music might've sounded like thanks to legendary Journey composer Austin Wintory.

As it turns out, Wintory had been in discussions with the developers to score Mass Effect 5, and he's now shared a 20 minute long "elaborate production" of "early musical drafts" he'd envisioned for the game. He notes in the description of the YouTube video that he had "not yet learned any narrative details of what they were planning," so his compositions are a pure "exploration" of what the game might sound like, but there's a world where Mass Effect 5 would've featured these tracks or something close to them.

"Working on Mass Effect 5 was my career's biggest dream project, my white whale," Wintory explains. "It is my favorite franchise of all time, and for the last couple years I'd been in serious conversations with BioWare and EA to jump in."

The music itself is pure Mass Effect – a combination of otherworldly synths and traditional orchestral sounds that paint a picture of a galaxy full of mystery and danger. "My suggestion was to treat the original game's masterful Jack Wall / Sam Hulick score as a starting point, and to build on it from there with deeper use of physical, analog synths and a more tightly interwoven use of the orchestra," Wintory says.

There are eight tracks here, and yes, they include Wintory's fantastic take on the track for scanning the galaxy map. Throughout the video, bits of text explain his approach for each song, and they've all managed to make me even sadder that we'll never see this vision of the game come to life.

"Thank you BioWare, Casey Hudson, Jack Wall, Sam Hulick, and countless others for several decades of my most cherished gaming memories," Wintory concludes. "And thank you to those at BioWare and EA who recently emboldened me to dream of what my place in that universe might sound like."

Update:

In a follow-up Twitter post, Wintory notes that he "was NOT hired," and in fact, "no one was." He'd "prepared this music as a discussion item" for the aforementioned conversations with EA and BioWare, but while things weren't final, he recalls the response being a positive one.

"The response was extremely enthusiastic from all who heard it but MUCH still needed to happen before it was official."

Almost 200,000 Mass Effect fans sign petition to save the series after BioWare's demise, and both Commander Shepard actors are on board with fan efforts

We'll never know exactly what BioWare was going for in Mass Effect 5, since the studio's now been shut down by EA. A former lead on the sci-fi RPG has spoken about the ideas at play, especially concerning the title, Mass Effect: Universe, and I'm not sure I want to hear any more because it just makes the disappointment worse.

After it was announced that BioWare was closed, a trailer leaked online for Mass Effect: Universe, which has since been confirmed as the actual fifth installment. The collective fandom is now a-flurry with questions about the aspirations and ideas behind this brave new frontier, and Romain Toutain, ex-technical director on the franchise, has shed some light on them in a livestream on Twitch.

His comments were made in French, but a Bluesky user was able to translate portions and put subtitles on a clip. There were a number of insights, but the biggest and most fascinating was the reason behind the title – you had the power to create and manipulate timelines in the game to some extent.

So earlier, my brother was watching Octobinz (Romain Toutain)'s livestream on Twitch. He was the Technical Director on Mass Effect Universe, so I wanted to share some bits he discussed.As he speaks french, I added subtitles to make it more accessible for everyone!#MassEffect #MassEffectUniverse

— @loustica-lucia.bsky.social (@loustica-lucia.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-10-26T14:59:37.491Z

"One of the reasons why it was called Mass Effect: Universe is that you had so many choices that you could plug your saves together to create parallel universes," he says. "To keep it simple. It's not exactly how it worked. You had different timelines, basically."

He adds players would've had the ability to "almost generate timelines," similar to Zero Time Dilemma. That's a relatively obscure puzzler from Spike Chunsoft where you play through missions in a non-linear fashion and the characters lose their memories every 90 minutes.

I get the impression BioWare was dancing with a multiverse of some kind, but not to the extent of Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart where you could jump between realities. Knowing BioWare, it would've been more existential and grandiose, and possibly going the Starfield route where every endgame is technically an alternate timeline.

Toutain confirms previously reported details, such as hand-to-hand combat and a customizable main character. "All the choices made in the first Mass Effect games were taken into account," he mentions, suggesting Universe would've explored every possible way you could screw up the original trilogy.

I would very much like to play this game, if only to see how things could've been if Mordin didn't – well, you know. Somewhere out there is a dimension where we get Mass Effect: Universe. I hope the me that lives there knows how good he has it.

"EA never actually sells anything," former Mass Effect 5 dev says – so don't expect the RPG to be saved as "they just shut things down and sit on their licenses."

Owlcat Games, the developer of Mass Effect-inspired RPG The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, has joined the calls to save Mass Effect.

Last week it was announced that BioWare is closing down and development on the next Mass Effect game is cancelled. This was followed by the leak of a trailer for a game titled Mass Effect Universe. Naturally, binning off one of the most beloved RPG series of all time has caused outcry from fans, with a petition campaign to save the franchise currently sitting at over 210,000 signatures.

In a post on Twitter, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn account shared a fan petition to save Mass Effect, noting that, "The Expanse show was saved by fans in the past. So the #SaveMassEffect movement has our full support."

The Expanse debuted on Syfy in 2015, but after its cancellation and massive fan outcry, the series was subsequently picked up by Amazon Prime Video for its final three seasons.

Unfortunately, Romain Toutain – who served as technical director for Mass Effect 5 – isn't too confident about the campaign. Toutain recently said he believes it's unlikely that a revival will come to pass, saying, "EA never actually sells anything" and "they just shut things down and sit on their licenses."

This has been seen before with the likes of American McGee's Alice series, with the former Doom developer saying EA has "no desire to see the Alice franchise continued." Which is to say nothing of the landfill of dead EA franchises – which, at the very best, get a remaster or mobile spinoff nobody wants – like Command and Conquer, Dungeon Keeper, Burnout, Dead Space… the list goes on.

Mass Effect 5 lead says outpouring of support following BioWare closure "means so much to us," but is looking on the bright side: "At least I don't have to call in sick when GTA 6 comes out"

Mass Effect fans got horrible news last week with the announcement of BioWare's closure as well as the cancellation of Mass Effect 5 – or, as it apparently would have been called, Mass Effect Universe. And just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, one former dev now suggests that EA isn't likely to sell the project to another studio to finish it off, either.

The next Mass Effect game was revealed in 2020, and in the years since, we have learned very little about it. That was until shortly after BioWare's closure, when an apparent trailer for a game titled Mass Effect Universe was posted online and looked, upsettingly, good.

Romain Toutain served as franchise technical director for Mass Effect at BioWare since early 2022, and in a recent Twitch stream reacting to this trailer – which he describes as an internal trailer rather than one we were ever meant to see – he responds to a fan asking if EA could have sold the studio and its project in order to save them (translated by Bluesky user loustica-lucia and verified using machine translation).

"But EA never actually sells anything," he replies. "They just shut things down and sit on their licenses."

So earlier, my brother was watching Octobinz (Romain Toutain)'s livestream on Twitch. He was the Technical Director on Mass Effect Universe, so I wanted to share some bits he discussed.As he speaks french, I added subtitles to make it more accessible for everyone!#MassEffect #MassEffectUniverse

— @loustica-lucia.bsky.social (@loustica-lucia.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-10-26T12:46:10.178Z

The publisher's apparent reluctance to sell any of its IP is something that former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah previously acknowledged after plans for its $55 billion acquisition were first announced last year. At the time, he suggested that this was "in large part because the individuals who would be responsible for making those decisions, for looking for those opportunities, are actually incentivized to not take risks. They are incentivized to not be the person who sold an IP that then turned into a billion-dollar franchise."

Even so, he suggested at the time that EA might look to its "huge repository of dormant IPs" and consider selling them to help with the enormous debt it's taken on as part of the acquisition.

"You might even see them toying with the idea of shutting some of their existing studios. Maybe they shut them down, but maybe they look for opportunities to sell off entire studios or entire groups," he said.

Now, following BioWare's closure, he suggests that Mass Effect and Dragon Age's fate could go either way. With no one working on the series within EA, that "might make them more likely to sell off those IPs," but equally, "it might also make them more likely to try to forget that they ever existed and bury them in the vault," he says.

None of this is stopping the Mass Effect fanbase's determination to save the series, though. A petition has now surpassed 200,000 signatures, and the actors who played Commander Shepard, Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer, have both publicly expressed their support.

Mass Effect 5 lead says outpouring of support following BioWare closure "means so much to us," but is looking on the bright side: "At least I don't have to call in sick when GTA 6 comes out."

In the week since BioWare's sudden shutdown and Mass Effect 5's cancellation, fans of the RPG series have rallied around a petition to "Save Mass Effect" that's gained nearly 200,000 signatures. Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale (who voice the male and female versions of protagonist Commander Shepard, respectively) are both on board with the community's efforts, too.

"Mass Effect holds a special place in the hearts of millions of players worldwide," the petition's description reads. "Its rich and immersive sci-fi universe, with Commander Shepard leading the iconic crew aboard the Normandy, has captivated gamers for years. However, recent revelations have cast a shadow over its future. The decline in dedicated resources and ambiguous development plans from Electronic Arts (EA) threaten to leave this beloved series at a standstill, jeopardizing its incredible legacy."

The petition doesn't call for publisher EA to reverse course on BioWare's fate, specifically, but asks the company to take "decisive action by committing to continued development of Mass Effect" with "proper funding, adequate staffing, and time allocation to maintain and advance the high standards the franchise is known for."

Should EA be unwilling to spend millions producing another new Mass Effect - separate from the leaked Mass Effect Universe - the petition suggests the publisher could instead license the franchise "to another studio that shares the passion and vision to keep it alive and allow it to flourish anew."

"Both solutions offer a way forward. By ensuring the ongoing expansion and enhancement of the Mass Effect universe, EA would not only preserve a cherished piece of gaming history but also continue to contribute to the cultural and emotional impact it has on gamers worldwide," the petition continues.

Famed FemShep actor Jennifer Hale jumped online to say she wants to think about a world in which a fan Kickstarter campaign, a game studio, and a group of investors could work together to restore the series. Matt Meer posted a similar video, asking people to "hold the line" and "save Mass Effect" – before encouraging fans to also sign the petition.

Mass Effect Universe supposedly featured "Hitman-style freedom" and a "galactic Cold War," according to BioWare insider

New gameplay details from the canceled Mass Effect game have emerged, following developer BioWare's abrupt demise. Mass Effect Universe was reportedly set to feature a galactic Cold War between the galaxy's remaining factions, espionage mechanics likened to the Hitman series, and, of course, romance.

The new tidbits come from YouTuber Dantics, who was supposedly on the Mass Effect player council composed of community members and content creators who gave BioWare feedback during production. IGN has backed up some of his comments and even reports that "every major [alien] race" was working in an in-production build, citing an anonymous development source.

A leaked trailer for Mass Effect Universe already gave us a small taste of what could've been, but Dantics now has more concrete details. The game, set more than 600 years after the events of the original trilogy, would've had three major factions caught up in a Cold War conflict with a mysterious threat lurking in the background. The story would've been a departure from the Reapers and their galactic invasion.

As for how this Mass Effect Universe would play, BioWare apparently wanted players to step into the boots of an N7 agent who was a "cross between John Wick and James Bond" - think up-close melee takedowns, gadgets, hacking, experimental tech implants, and more potentially stealthy options. Instead of large open-world environments, the scrapped Mass Effect would've also featured handcrafted linear missions "with Hitman-style freedom in how you complete them."

Deep romance options and "squadmates who can clash with each other" are also said to have been in development. We had previously seen series mainstay Liara in the game's debut trailer, and with the passage of a few hundred years, she had reportedly become an "incredibly powerful Asari Matriarch."

"Not to rub salt in the wound, but they were a lot further in development than their statement suggested. and we were going to get something truly magical," Dantics claimed.

Mass Effect 5 was "something special", dev says – it was BioWare's response to what Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 devs "were bringing to the table"

Sadly, we learned this week that BioWare is being shut down by EA. The legendary studio was responsible for many beloved RPGs, including the Mass Effect series, for which a new installment was deep in development. In the aftermath, fans have been scurrying for ways to salvage the project, including courting Palworld developer Pocketpair.

No, seriously - and apparently this isn't the first time that's happened, either. "Soon after a game is canceled or a studio shuts down, we get a lot of comments and emails from fans saying 'You should buy this IP!'" John 'Bucky' Buckley, head of communications and publishing at Pocketpair, posted on Twitter.

"Then, as months go by, those comments turn into 'Why didn't you buy it? You have the money!'" he adds, before explaining the reality that buying and selling IP is complicated, and often the asking price is obscene compared to the potential value. He then points out that, yes, people have been bugging him about Mass Effect 5.

"I got close to 30 DMs/emails from fans about buying Mass Effect in the last day," he says in response to someone asking. He then jokes that Jade Empire would make him more keen.

Pocketpair saving the new Mass Effect would be a plot twist and a half on this whole debacle, but I suspect it's wishful thinking at best. Despite the fact the studio seems to be doing well, who knows if EA would even be open to conversations around selling the sci-fi property, and if it was, whether the amount wanted would make any kind of sense.

I'm not sure it's a great fit to fly BioWare's flag, either. Palworld and the spin-offs that have been revealed are very different to the expansive role-playing games that make up the home of Dragon Age's repertoire. You don't want just anyone making the next Mass Effect - you want a studio that'll honor the existing work and legacy.

Ultimately, those who could've given us a sequel worthy of the first trilogy have just been let go. Mourn what could've been, and let the bargaining stage pass. And then boot up the first Mass Effect yet again.

Mass Effect 5 lead says outpouring of support following BioWare closure "means so much to us," but is looking on the bright side: "At least I don't have to call in sick when GTA 6 comes out"

My fiancee is in mourning for the canceled Mass Effect 5. She's been besotted with BioWare's sci-fi darling for only 6 years, but during that time, it's become a part of her. I even agreed to play the trilogy for the first time in 2022 so that she could live vicariously through me, experiencing the RPG with fresh eyes, intervening only to ensure I didn't kill Wrex at the end of the first game ("I will literally never forgive you for it!").

But as much as I loved every moment of my time as Commander Shepard, there's naturally a little more emotional distance between myself and Mass Effect. Professional curiosity also meant that my genuine sadness at the follow-up's cancelation – and the disbanding of one of the most prolific, talented developer teams in the history of video games – was chased by a desire to theorize. What would Mass Effect 5 have looked like, and how would it have gotten around the player's choice element that cemented Mass Effect 3 as one of the most satisfying conclusions to an RPG series I've ever seen?

A prequel seemed logical to me. Mass Effect: D-Day, perhaps, going right back to the First Contact War or the discovery of the Charon Relay. We could witness the moment humanity decided to leave Earth and colonize the planet, introducing alien races to the global population for the very first time and seeing the running theme of interspecies politics take root. But the leaked Mass Effect Universe trailer suggests BioWare was heading in the exact opposite direction on the spacetime continuum, and I find the prospect equally as tantalizing.

Name's Bond: Space Bond

Mass Effect Universe would have been one hell of a sexy space RPG. Gone are the militaristic uniforms of the Normandy's crew, the clunky cover shooter dynamics so emblematic of the original Mass Effect's contemporary. One look at the flashy action hero melee breaking out in the sleek alien night club, and Universe makes it clear: we're not in 2007 any more, Toto.

The trailer is only two minutes long, comprising pre-production assets as per a notice at the very start, but it's enough to have my full attention. In it, we get a brief rundown of who would have been our player character: an ex-soldier mercenary who turned his back on the spoils of war to do things on his own terms.

There's a James Bond quality about him as he flirts with an asari in the dimly-lit bar; he talks himself up, but just enough to titillate, stopping short of arrogance or braggery. Everything is looking rather steamy until the asari in question pulls an Uno reverse. His job is to put out fires, he says, but hers is to start them. A turian squares up behind the hero, indicating the brawl about to break out, when a familiar voice comes from behind the asari. It's Liara – Commander Shepard's asari companion-turned-criminal mastermind, who becomes the Shadow Broker in the Mass Effect trilogy – and she's on our side.

This, to me, is the biggest wow moment of the whole trailer. Not just because it's good to see Liara return after a brief cameo in Mass Effect Andromeda, but because of how much information her presence gives us about the game that never was.

Welcome back, Broker

As an asari, Liara's typical life span would be about 1,000 years. She's just over a hundred years old when Shepherd meets her in Mass Effect, incredibly young in the grand scheme of things.

But the leaked Mass Effect Universe trailer depicts her with visible signs of aging. She has actual wrinkles, for a start, and her voice is a touch deeper. Asari don't show their age physically until they reach 700 years old or so, indicating that Universe would have taken place many hundreds of years after Mass Effect 3 – closer to Andromeda on the timeline, itself set over 600 years later, though potentially sometime before, after, or even during.

By pitching us even further into the future with an ageing, 800 year-old-plus asari Shadow Broker as our companion (or at the very least, as an ally) BioWare seemed to have solved two problems at once. If it was intended to be set between Mass Effect 3 and Andromeda, Universe could have given us more exposition as to the immediate aftermath of the trilogy while making a stronger connection between it and the standalone title (especially since Liara is given that cursory nod in the latter). Set it one to two hundreds years after the fact, it could have brought up the question of Liara's successor; as the Matriarch draws closer to the end of her life, who will become the next Shadow Broker?

My guess is that Mass Effect Universe would have seen us, the player, as part of Liara's crew, possibly being groomed to take over her role as information warlord of the galaxy. An existing professional relationship is clearly established at the bar – "We know. That's why we're here," she says when the other asari's minions surround the protagonist – before the fight breaks out. And what better way to bring players back into the world of Mass Effect than seeing one of Shepard's beloved friends being a badass in her honor?

I would have loved to see Universe take us full circle, the companion becoming the big boss as we take on merc contracts across the galaxy in the name of the Shadow Broker. But with the game canceled, all of this is pure speculation. Unless the stars align, pigs fly up to dance among them, and EA sees fit to sell the IP on to a studio who actually wants to give it a shot, it's potentially useless speculation at that. Mass Effect Universe is no longer in development at the time of writing, but I am still thankful for this intriguing glimpse of what could have been.

As a more mature, high-octane, modern vision of the best sci-fi RPG of all time, Mass Effect Universe had the power to make the series make sense again in the 2020s. The fact that this trailer exists at all is a testament to the fact that BioWare did have a clear vision. It did have something to show for all these years of hard work. And I'm glad, at the very least, we had an opportunity to witness it for ourselves.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition is just one of the best RPGs of all time, and there's plenty more to choose from.

Following the unpopular closure of BioWare and cancellation of Mass Effect 5, project director Mike Gamble has taken time to thank fans for their outpouring of support.

Taking to Twitter, Gamble says the support has been appreciated and has encouraged anyone hiring to look out for his team, which he says is full of "OGs" – perhaps in the off chance people doubt that some of the talent behind BioWare's greatest hits are still at the studio.

"I could probably scroll for hours and continue reading the words of support for the studio, the legacy, and the impact that BioWare has had on you," he says. "It means so much to us. There is so much talent on this team of OGs, so if you are aware of any roles, please send them. I will personally vouch for everyone in my crew."

Not content with ending on a somber note, Gamble offers some humor before signing off.

"At least I don't have to call in sick when GTA 6 comes out."

Earlier this week, the news broke that EA would cut 400 jobs following an acquisition by a private investment group led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.

Sadly, BioWare was caught in that crossfire, with the studio shut down and work on Mass Effect 5 scrapped. Many developers across the industry have expressed sadness, and those who worked on Mass Effect 5 said it was "something special."

And special it looked. Not long after the news broke, rumors of a trailer surfaced, only for that very Mass Effect 5 trailer to leak online. What could have been, man.

BioWare veteran goes to bat for Dragon Age The Veilguard's dev team, says most of them "had little or no say in the things you disliked" about the RPG.

A trailer for Mass Effect 5, purportedly titled Mass Effect: Universe, has seemingly leaked online in the aftermath of developer BioWare's shutdown under EA.

The trailer, posted to the Mass Effect subreddit by a fresh Reddit user who describes their account as a "new burner," is just over two minutes long and completely gameplay-free.

Fans have already begun scouring it for generative AI markers, though it seems unlikely that something of this quality could've been slapped together within 24 hours of BioWare's shutdown.

While unverified, this trailer is turning heads in part because a self-described EA employee claimed, on October 21, 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," referring to the early production stage described by EA leadership in a statement.

"Also for clarification, the Mass Effect group is about 50 devs from what I’ve seen," this source added. "The Austin studio has been a mix of people supporting different games for some years now. So the Austin office will remain open, just no more BioWare unfortunately"

The trailer was originally posted several hours ago in a reply to a post sharing that reported EA employee's message. "Ask and you shall receive," the mystery user wrote.

The video is convincing, and if legitimate, will likely be hit with a takedown notice of some kind soon enough. Of course, that would only add fuel to the fire online, and nothing every truly leaves the internet.

The least believable part of the trailer comes right at the end: "Coming soon." Soon is one of those words that's eternally misused by the games industry, but based on comments from EA and former BioWare employees, the next Mass Effect still needed plenty of time in the oven. Granted, this argument makes a lot of assumptions about the validity of the trailer and its intended release window.

Based on this supposed trailer, Mass Effect 5 would've paired recurring and visibly older character Liara T'Soni (that's the second blue alien girl to appear here, to be clear) with a new ex-military, human hero in place of longtime protagonist Shepard. A character of the same Turian race as fan-favorite character Garrus Vakarian appears around 1:31 in the trailer. The scenario feels like an ambush operation, which some fans have interpreted as a dip into corporate espionage from BioWare.

It's also worth noting that Mass Effect's annual day of celebration, N7 Day, was just a few weeks away. It's plausible BioWare could've trotted this trailer out on November 7, had EA not pulled the plug, but there's already enough wishful thinking going around.

"Man, I'm just so sad and angry," one Mass Effect fan writes in a reply to the trailer post.

"I know one of you BioWare developers are probably lurking in this sub, just want to say this looks fucking awesome. I’m so sorry this happened. Keep fighting," says another.

Mass Effect 5 was "something special", dev says – it was BioWare's response to what Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 devs "were bringing to the table."

Pack your bags and get ready to hop in the Normandy; the Mass Effect TV show is on the way. That's right, despite the recent (and devastating news) that EA has shut down BioWare and canceled Mass Effect 5, the upcoming Amazon adaptation of the famed video game franchise is reportedly still going ahead, and already there are plenty of details to start digging our sci-fi teeth into.

The original Mass Effect trilogy follows Commander Shepard on a brutal mission to save the galaxy and is counted among the best RPGs of all time. The story and fully realized worldbuilding are downright iconic, so when Amazon announced in 2021 that it had snagged the rights to bring it to our small screens, I've been paying close attention to every bit of news surrounding the upcoming TV show. So, if you are a massive Mass Effect fan like me who is dying to learn more, or a Fallout TV series enjoyer who is curious about Amazon's next game adaptation, then you've come to the right place.

Below is everything you need to know about Mass Effect's streaming debut. From release date predictions, updates on its production status, plot details, and more, I've made sure to scan every bit of information out there into a handy guide right here.

Mass Effect TV show release date speculation

Mass Effect is still very much underway; however, since filming hasn't kicked off yet, we are going to have to wait a while for a release date.

The show is still in the pre-production phase, and despite a previous Production Weekly list hinting at a Q4 2026 production start, there has been no new update on the Amazon adaptation actually moving out of the writers' room at this point in time.

Considering how much time will also be needed in post-production with special effects needed to bring the sci-fi story to life, I personally don't see Mass Effect releasing before 2028 at the earliest. This time frame also makes sense when we remember that the team working on Fallout will also be on Mass Effect.

Fallout season 3 is looking at a 2027 release window, so I doubt we will get Mass Effect before then. However, these are just my own speculative thoughts for now; I'll keep you posted as soon as I hear more.

Mass Effect TV show plot details: Will it adapt the games?

The Mass Effect TV show won't be a straight adaptation of the iconic video games; instead, we are getting a fresh story that takes place after the original trilogy. And personally, I have mixed feelings about that fact.

If you haven't played Mass Effect before, the game trilogy follows the human Spectre Commander Shepard, who has to stop a deadly synthetic race called the Reapers, who are hell-bent on erasing all organic life from the galaxy in a mass extinction event. In typical RPG fashion, your choices dictate how certain chains of events unfold, as well as what ending you ultimately see as well.

In a 2025 blog post by Mass Effect boss Mike Gamble, this plot direction was discussed: "The writers' room is going strong, and we’ve got a lot figured out about how it fits within the Mass Effect canon, and where it sits in respect to the new game," he writes. "The show will explore a brand-new story within the universe’s timeline, and will be set after the original trilogy. It won’t be a retread of Commander Shepard’s story – because after all … that’s YOUR story, isn’t it?"

We all know that since this post, the new game (aka Mass Effect 5) has now sadly been canceled due to EA's closure of BioWare; however, it does seem like the fact that the show is not telling Commander Shepard's story is still very much the plan. On one hand, this is a safe bet for RPG adaptations, considering players' choices created different canon endings and story paths. Amazon's Fallout series, for example, is brilliant and didn't follow a set story from the games; instead, it built a new plot set in the universe, and it worked masterfully.

However, the original Mass Effect trilogy has one of the best overarching storylines in gaming history: the high stakes of "the end of the galaxy and all organic life" if Shepard fails is the gut-punching action you want to see rather than the aftermath. Hopefully the new series manages to create a plot as action-packed and serious as the original trilogy, and I'm very much keeping an eye out for every new story-related update to see what direction it looks like the show is heading in. Watch this space!

Who is working on the Mass Effect TV show?

There are a lot of big names working on Amazon's Mass Effect TV series behind the scenes. Firstly, in terms of writers, we have Fast & Furious 9 scribe Daniel Casey on board. Star Trek: Beyond and Mindhunter writer Doug Jung is also set to join the production as a showrunner.

Looking at producers, Mass Effect boss Mike Gamble is executive producing the adaptation, along with the likes of former Marvel Studios producer Ari Arad and Karim Zreik. Basically, we have some big heavyweights who are seasoned professionals in creating popular franchises.

There is some more good news on the crew front, as Casey revealed via social media that the team who worked on Amazon's Fallout TV series will be on board to help bring the Mass Effect series to life.

Considering Fallout season 3 is looking to premiere in 2027, this also backs up my thoughts that Mass Effect won't be with us until 2028 at the earliest. However, I'm willing to wait if it means that the team who brought New Vegas to life will be in charge of giving us the likes of a Reaper-attacked Eden Prime as well.

Mass Effect TV show cast speculation

So far, no cast list has been shared, which makes sense considering we aren't in the production phase yet. However, a few stars have already expressed interest in the series in the past, so maybe they are in Amazon's sights.

Back in 2021, we did ask Henry Cavill if he would be interested in the Mass Effect series back when it was first announced. Cavill expressed his love for the games as well as his willingness to be part of the project. He is now on board working on Amazon's Warhammer series, but who knows, maybe he will swing by the Citadel in the future as well.

I'll keep an eye out for any more casting rumors and announcements. If production does pick up after the release of Fallout season 3 in 2027, as I suspect, we should be getting news on actors joining the Mass Effect fold very soon.

If you want more RPG goodness while you wait for Mass Effect, check out our list of the best BioWare games of all time. Or look ahead with our roundup of all the upcoming video game movies on the way next.

Mass Effect 5 is no more following the closure of BioWare after the EA buyout – but former developers believe it would've been an incredible RPG, had it come to fruition.

Tony de Waal, who acted as cinematic supervisor at BioWare and boasted some 29 years of experience at the studio, implies as much in a new LinkedIn post, explaining that he worked on everything from Mass Effect 2 to Dragon Age: The Veilguard – a game he says "was a herculean effort that tested the limits of even my workaholic mindset" – before Mass Effect 5.

"I believe we were making something special," he describes. "A level of autonomy and choice that no other game has been able to match."

The dev then references Baldur's Gate 3 team Larian Studios and CD Projekt Red, masterminds behind The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, recalling how BioWare looked to them: "We saw what Larian and CD Projekt were bringing to the table with their latest offerings, and started down a path to bring Mass Effect to the next level while remaining true to the Trilogy."

The cinematic mastermind closes by admitting "I'm sad you won't ever get to see what we were cooking" and paying tribute to his fellow devs, "some of the most talented people I've had the pleasure of working with throughout my career."

Interestingly, though, de Waal isn't the only BioWare veteran to reference Mass Effect 5 and how good it might've played had it been given the chance it deserved from EA to actually come to life.

Over on X, Derek Künsken, who introduces himself as both "a contract writer, and as a senior writer on staff" from BioWare, echoes this sentiment.

He isn't able to share too much aside from the fact that he was working on the new Mass Effect title and "what we were cooking was really cool," but that's got me wondering what could've been just as much as de Waal's own words do. I'm sure "really cool" is no understatement, after all.

It's disappointing to know that we won't get to experience what the devs had in store with Mass Effect 5 – and doubly so after hearing how amazing it may have been.

EA killing BioWare could lead to Mass Effect and Dragon Age rights being sold, former lead says, but they could just as easily "bury them in the vault"

Larian Studios boss Swen Vincke has reacted to the shutdown of original Baldur's Gate developer BioWare by EA.

News dropped earlier this week that EA is laying off 400 employees following its August acquisition. As part of these layoffs, the legendary RPG studio behind Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, BioWare, will be shut down, and development of the next Mass Effect game will be canceled.

In a Twitter post, Vincke reacted to the news, saying, "This is not something I ever expected to see." He adds, "Larian and Bioware started their trajectories in the games industry at the same time and Bioware led the way in making RPGs big."

Notably, BioWare developed the original Baldur's Gate and its sequel, Shadows of Amn, with Larian taking over the series for Baldur's Gate 3, which was released in 2023.

Vincke notes, "It's almost unimaginable" that from here on out "the name BioWare won't show up anymore when discussing upcoming RPGs," adding, "What a loss for all of us." He then thanks the studio for "all the games," "the many hours of gameplay," and "all the stories," before saying, "You can be damned proud of what you achieved," and expressing his hope that all the affected developers "land well."

While the studio's last couple of games didn't go down as well – with Dragon Age: The Veilguard famously going through a troubled development, culminating in a rushed effort following a pivot from a multiplayer project that EA had requested the studio create – BioWare is undoubtedly one of the most impactful RPG developers of all time, and paved the way for games like Baldur's Gate 3. And shuttering the studio now will once again result in years of knowledge being lost as the development job market grows increasingly small.

Mass Effect creator Casey Hudson has reacted to BioWare's closure and the cancellation of the upcoming fifth game in the series.

Last night, BioWare confirmed that the studio is closing down and that development on the next Mass Effect title is ending. EA was acquired by Saudi Arabia's Private Investment Fund, Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners, and Silver Lake, with mass layoffs being predicted as the deal has EA take on $18 billion in debt. And now, just over two months after the acquisition, BioWare is gone as part of 400 job losses across a number of EA studios, including at Skate developer Full Circle.

Hudson, who directed all three games in the original Mass Effect trilogy, reacted to the news on Twitter, with a post reading. "This is sad news on multiple fronts – for those of us who worked there, for our friends and colleagues at BioWare who are impacted, and for fans who were looking forward to the next Mass Effect adventure."

"I started my career at BioWare and will forever be grateful to the founders, Greg and Ray, for inviting me to join in BioWare's legendary journey," Hudson says, adding, "Its legacy will live on through those who were part of it and continue to create games through a passion for unforgettable stories, worlds and characters."

Hudson's first credit was for BioWare shooter MDK 2, before going on to direct Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the Mass Effect trilogy. He then rejoined the studio in 2017, serving as the studio's general manager and releasing Anthem and Mass Effect Legendary Edition. He is currently working on Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, which is in development at Arcanaut Studios.

Layoffs are increasingly becoming commonplace in the industry, with Microsoft currently in the midst of laying off 3,200 Xbox employees by the end of the fiscal year. On top of the $18 billion in debt the company has taken on, EA CEO Andrew Wilson made 305x more than the average EA employee last year, and, should the new owners decide to let him go, he could qualify for an additional $125 million in severance.

Unfortunately, as 2026 has shown, not even the most established or influential studios in the industry are safe anymore: earlier this year, Doom developer and FPS pioneer Id Software was gutted by Microsoft, and now BioWare is gone.

The Mass Effect franchise will live on – as part of Amazon's TV show.

Despite the sudden and shocking BioWare closure, IGN reports that the Prime Video Mass Effect series is still in active development.

The outlet confirmed that the creatives attached to the project are still on board. Star Trek Beyond writer Doug Jung was attached as showrunner, with Fast 9's Daniel Casey penning the script for the project, which was confirmed to be set after Commander Shepard's story in the first three Mass Effect games.

As of earlier this year, there were industry whispers that the Mass Effect show was being tweaked to appeal to "non-gamers" as well as fans of BioWare's sci-fi franchise, which ran from 2007's Mass Effect to 2017's poorly-received Mass Effect: Andromeda.

During last year's N7 Day festivities, BioWare outlined its plot intentions for the Amazon MGM series.

"The writers' room is going strong, and we've got a lot figured out about how it fits within the Mass Effect canon, and where it sits in respect to the new game," the blog read. "The show will explore a brand-new story within the universe's timeline, and will be set after the original trilogy. It won't be a retread of Commander Shepard's story – because after all … that's YOUR story, isn't it?"

This all comes off the back of BioWare being shuttered by EA and a new Mass Effect title being canceled, just months after the company was acquired by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.

In its closing goodbye, BioWare said, "There is nothing easy about writing those words. Our focus right now is on our incredibly talented team who put their hearts into these games, and supporting one another through this transition."

For more on what else is making the leap from consoles to screen, we have a complete guide to upcoming video game movies.

Calling Mass Effect 3's legacy "controversial" would be an understatement. The ending, the DLC rollout, the decision to turn the Normandy's computer into a sexed-up fembot… the list goes on. But among all that, the villain Kai Leng might still be the most-hated part of both the game and the entire franchise. Even now, 14 years after launch, actor Troy Baker still seems embarrassed about helping bring Kai Leng to life.

In a recent video with YouTube channel Partychat, Baker is presented with clips of roles from throughout his career. He tells fond development stories about his roles as characters like Joel in The Last of Us and Higgs in Death Stranding, singing the praises of creators like Neil Druckmann and Hideo Kojima.

But the instant he sees Kai Leng on screen? "Don't," Baker says, turning to laugh. "Next clip. Nope, next clip." He simply grimaces as the video continues to play, and he witnesses his character get stabbed through the torso. "Yeah, I deserve that," Baker admits. "There's so many reasons why I shouldn't have played that character."

Mass Effect 3 presents Leng as if he's the biggest badass in the galaxy, but his dorky goggles, ninja antics, and samurai sword give him the vibe of those "I studied the blade" memes. The fact that Leng is presented as being of Chinese descent while playing into Japanese character tropes only makes it more embarrassing.

Every few years, you'll find yet another Mass Effect discussion thread with a title like "Is Kai Leng the worst character of the franchise," "Who is the worst character and why is it Kai Leng," or "wtf is Kai Leng? Was someone drunk when he was created." There are even popular mods that fully cover Leng's face and delete his dialog from the game. Now that's dedication to a proper hater life.

The Kai Leng hate has probably grown beyond reasonable criticism of the character at this point – as is the case with all negative online discussions – but the core of distaste for the character remains very real. Even, it seems, for Troy Baker himself.

Mass Effect 5 might just be the biggest upcoming RPG on the horizon.

A former BioWare lead says Mass Effect's development was built on a ton of impossible goals and massive ambition.

Speaking to FRVR, Mass Effect cinematic designer Armando Troisi spoke about game director Casey Hudson, recounting, "He would put these impossible goals in front of us," adding, "He was just like, 'okay, this is what we need to do, right?'" He adds that around the studio, Hudson was known as the "troublemaker in chief," an approach that clearly worked, as the game was ultimately lauded for its cinematic presentation.

Troisi says the cinematic team at BioWare was "hacking the engine to try to make things work." He adds, "We would throw on things like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and it would be playing in the background. And we would look at the cinematography, and we would look at it like, how is this working, and how could we emulate that?"

"It was weird because it’s a game I feel should have never been made," Troisi explains. “It was a new engine, a new IP, a new console. It was a triple threat trying to get that to all [work]. Trying to get the streaming to work and getting it all to go." And despite being a console exclusive for the Xbox 360 for around half a year, Troisi adds, "the story behind that is we didn’t have it working on console until the very end of development," which resulted in the game releasing in the glitchy state it was.

Mass Effect "really pushed the limits of what is possible in real-time rendering," Troisi explains, but there was a significant trade-off to get there, as he recalls the developers going through "21 days on, one day off kind of crunch to get this thing out the door."

However, despite all of that, it was worth it in Troisi's eyes, with the developer saying, "It’s a level of ambition that I think was just unheard of at the time," he said. "It’s not just an interactive narrative; it’s an interactive film. And delivering that to our audience in such a profound way, I guess, and wrapping it in such a great story and a great fantasy was just something that we were just so proud of, and I’m still proud of. It’s one of the things I look back on in my life and go: 'wow, that was really really hard, but really worth it.'"

Mass Effect 5 will be great as long as executives "get out of the way," says former designer: "We're all beholden to companies"

Original Mass Effect cinematic designer Armando Troisi isn't worried about BioWare developers' ability to handle a sequel as precious as Mass Effect 5. The company's executives, however…

"It's one of those things where, if people get out of the way and let game creators just do their thing, you never know the magic that they can create," Troisi tells FRVR about the next Mass Effect game in a new interview.

"I think, obviously, there's a lot of different things that come to play in making a game of that scale," Troisi continues. "But trust your people and try to change the world with everything that you try to do. And I think that they can do it. I'm rooting for them."

Mass Effect 5 was first announced at the 2020 Game Awards. Despite the years passing slowly with few updates, Troisi remains confident in the project because the original game's devs, such as lead designer Preston Watamaniuk and art director Derek Watts, continue to work at BioWare.

"They're the OGs, you know? I don't think there's anything that I could tell them that they don't know what to do," says Troisi. But while the heart of BioWare is maintained by its accomplished developers, the body of the company has changed over the past 20 years.

Executives overseeing both BioWare itself and owner EA have an increasingly rusty reputation after mangling Dragon Age: The Veilguard's 2025 release, shutting down looter shooter Anthem in 2026 after seven years, and, uh, accepting Saudi Arabia and private equity investor Jared Kushner as their overlords in a new $55 billion buyout. Yeah. On that last note, some EA devs now worry that "projects just won't get signed because they don't align explicitly with what the Saudi government wants or implicitly because [EA will think] 'oh, we're going to try and cater these things [to our owners] because if we pitch something else the government may not like or approve of it.'"

Ex-EA senior manager Emmanuel Rosier shares these concerns, saying in August that BioWare was "struggling as a studio, as a brand have been struggling in recent years, and I don't know if they [EA] will keep funding that one."

Mass Effect 5 is, in theory, in ongoing production and a lucrative opportunity for BioWare, but Rosier says, "I will believe it when I see it, the next Mass Effect game, let's put it that way." Even former BioWare executive Mark Darrah is preparing his doomsday bunker, anticipating a future where, "if [EA's new owners are] coming in, and they're very involved, they're going to do a lot of damage."

So, sure, BioWare developers have no problem making Mass Effect 5. What's truly uncertain is whether or not its executives will let them.

"I think BioWare can do it," Troisi reiterates, "if we just leave them alone to do what they do best."

EA goes $20 billion in debt as part of its $55 billion buyout, and the BioWare fans who've already waited 8 years for Mass Effect 5 are terrified of how the company might cut costs.

Archetype Entertainment and Wizards of the Coast have released a new trailer at Gamescom for their upcoming sci-fi RPG Exodus, confirming it'll release on April 7, 2027.

While surprises are a major part of Opening Night Live, one game we knew we'd be seeing more of during the Geoff Keighley-led showcase was Exodus, a Mass Effect-like RPG which is the debut title by Archetype Entertainment – a studio comprised of talent from Naughty Dog, Halo Studios, EA, and crucially, BioWare. However, I'm more sold on the game now after getting a closer look at Salt, one of the companions who just so happens to also be an octopus.

The Exodus Gamescom trailer showed Salt's combat capabilities, with the mech-piloting cephalopod serving as a sniper who can disorient enemies with ink, covering Jun as they traverse the battlefield. Plus, we got some backstory for the Octopus which got me a bit emotional.

Alongside more Salt, the trailer introduced Emrys – which a press release describes as "a member of the Deva, an enigmatic Celestial species defined by many consciousnesses." Emrys is set to take on a support role for the party by "launching Remnant Orbs that drain and weaken enemies while feeding the stolen power back into Jun as protection."

However, more crucially, almost three years after the game was first revealed, Archetype Entertainment has announced that the RPG will launch on April 7, 2027, on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (on Steam and the Epic Games Store).

Archetype has also announced that there will be incentives to wishlist the game, with the 1 million and 1.5 million wishlist marks unlocking cosmetic outfits for Jun and companions, respectively.

Check out our Exodus preview hub, where we report on hands-on gameplay and developer access to the upcoming space sci-fi RPG

EA, the publisher behind games like Battlefield 6 and The Sims 4 and parent of Mass Effect developer BioWare, is on many a player's mind right now following the $55 billion deal that saw its buyout – one that might spell disaster for Mass Effect 5, apparently.

Although we don't know too much about the next Mass Effect game as BioWare has been too "busy" to share its progress, it's been underway – or at least in some sort of pre-production state – since its reveal way back in 2020.

It's safe to say that all of this doesn't exactly inspire the greatest confidence in folks… and neither does the fact that a trio of private investors led by Saudi Arabia has just acquired EA, to put it lightly.

Former senior manager at EA Emmanuel Rosier, who now works as the director of market intelligence at industry analyst Newzoo, explains how he feels about BioWare following the recent buyout in a new interview with PC Gamer.

"They've been struggling as a studio, as a brand have been struggling in recent years, and I don't know if they [EA] will keep funding that one," he states. "I think that's the biggest question mark for me."

So, what about Mass Effect 5, then? "I will believe it when I see it, the next Mass Effect game, let's put it that way," Rosier says. "I've worked many years with BioWare, sometimes it can stretch for years and years until something comes." That checks out.

After all, Dragon Age: The Veilguard took nearly a decade to develop – and also suffered a rework of sorts as well. It's hard to tell what'll happen with the new Mass Effect, put simply.

"I think everything can happen at this moment," as Rosier concludes. "They [EA] can pull the plug very, very easily. And if the new investors, they don't have that many feelings about the history of the portfolio, they will take the most financially sound decision most probably."

I hate to say it, but I do fear the former EA lead is right here – anything could happen, and it's likely that profits are being taken into account above… well, everything else.

Only time will tell what the fate of Mass Effect 5 will truly be, but I'll be keeping my own fingers crossed that the new RPG from BioWare ends up coming to fruition someday – with a teaser (anything at all, please) sometime soon, to boot.

EA devs feel "the threat of layoffs at all times," especially after Saudi Arabia acquisition: "It's hard to see how teams or games that underperform wouldn't be dissolved"

You can make all sorts of romantic decisions across the Mass Effect games, each with their own distinct narrative arcs. An unexpected one actually happens based on the choices you don't make, and it was so surprising, it caught a developer completely off guard.

In Mass Effect 3, if you don't lay it on hot and heavy with either Tali or Garrus, they will hook up. It's a nice bit of narrative flavoring that makes your crew feel more alive and autonomous; if you've a personal life on board the Normandy, so do they, and even your rejections have consequences.

Kris Schoneberg, a level designer on Mass Effect 3 and card-carrying Garrus stan, tells us she found out about this literally while playing the sci-fi RPG. "I was testing the save game, and I didn't know that occurred," she recalls to GamesRadar+.

"I am a Garrus [superfan], like you can't see it but there's a Garrus shrine over here," she explains. "I loaded up the save game, and I'm running around The Normandy trying to test the bug that I have. And I open up the door, and yeah, they're standing in the doorway, right?"

The galaxy's greatest sniper and your crew's most elusive member, having a sneaky little rendezvous together. The scandal, it's like something out of a soap opera. Distressed at the shock, Schoneberg took this to the writers and demanded answers.

"I put the controller down, and I marched over to the writer's room, and I was like, 'When? When was this?'" she remembers. "So relatable, highly relatable."

We've all been there, in real life and in video game form. Just goes to show, you've got to shoot your shot at any and all opportunities to do so. Otherwise it might be your crush hanging out with a mysterious quarian or a galactic war hero.

"I hope PS6 will be a disaster": Sony reminds everyone it's taking discs away in warnings reportedly added to new PS5 consoles.

It's been a while since we've had any kind of tease for Mass Effect 5. Last year's N7 Day gave us some concept art, and a job listing in January of this year at least made it clear the game was still in development. When questioned about the lack of updates, a lead on the space RPG simply says the team's too busy right now to do any promotion.

Michael Gamble, a project director and executive producer at BioWare, responded to a fan asking why there hasn't been a drop of Mass Effect 5 news since November. "Just busy workin'," he says. "Not a lot of time for tease [sic]."

Responses don't get more succinct than that. The developers on the next Mass Effect have their heads down on the upcoming game, and there just isn't much resource left for any kind of teasing or promotional trail. I respect both the candor and the prioritization.

When we might get more information is anyone's guess. N7 Day, held on November 7 every year to commemorate the series, is always worth keeping an eye on, though with expectations appropriately in check that we might get crumbs.

Summer Game Fest and The Game Awards are the next most likely candidates if there's an announcement or trailer to show. Mass Effect 5's first trailer closed out the latter in 2020, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a Divinity-level publicity stunt if or when the franchise returns to the event.

Concrete details have been scant. Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer, the voices behind female and male Commander Shepard, respectively, are both eager to return to the iconic role, but it's unknown if they or anyone tied to the SSV Normandy will be coming back. We'll see what emerges in the coming months.

The Mass Effect TV show reportedly goes through rewrites to make it "more appealing to non-gamers," and I'm hoping it follows Fallout and not Halo in that direction

Amazon Prime Video's long-in-development Mass Effect series has reportedly been ordered to rewrite scripts in order to appeal to a non-gaming crowd, but I'm just hoping it does so in a Fallout way and not a Halo way.

As reported on by The Ankler, Amazon's new head of global television Peter Friedlander is apparently waiting until script rewrites to properly give the Mass Effect series the crucial green light it needs to enter proper production. The report claims that the sci-fi show is on "the verge" of being green lit, but the Amazon TV boss wants rewrites to make it "more appealing to non-gamers" first.

There's no word on exactly which parts of the script Friedlander thinks could use some work, leaving the show's production and fans still eagerly awaiting Mass Effect 5 in an uncertain space.

Mass Effect inherently seems like the sort of universe that's rife for a small screen adaptation. There's juicy political drama, multiple steamy romances and possible love triangles, lots of action, some devastating tragedy, and a sprinkling of comedy. It's almost Game of Thrones but with aliens, and there's nothing much in BioWare's RPG that I imagine is inaccessible to your regular Prime Video audience - unless they turn Mordin's song into an episode-long musical, which I wouldn't have a problem with.

Regardless, if Amazon is dead set on smoothing out Mass Effect's gamey edges, I hope the show writers follow Fallout's lead by remixing what made the series special in a visual format rather than Halo's lead in just, urm, slapping game iconography on top of an otherwise unrelated sci-fi story.

The Mass Effect show will "explore a brand-new story" set after the original trilogy and "won't be a retread of Commander Shepard's story," according to BioWare

Peter Moore is one of the most memorable executives the game industry has ever seen. He presided over the Dreamcast at Sega of America and the Xbox at Microsoft and helped stoke the fires of the console wars. We still debate whether that tattoo was real to this day, but Moore's final stop in the game industry is perhaps the most notable. He did, after all, lead the sports division of EA during the span when the publisher was voted the Worst Company in America in 2012 and 2013.

"We were voted, two years in a row, the Worst Company in America, because of the ending of Mass Effect," Moore explains in an interview with The Game Business. "I mean, seriously, this is where BP is polluting the Gulf of Mexico – sorry, the Gulf of America," he adds with a touch of sarcasm. "Bank of America has brought down the global economy with subprime mortgages. But fucking Colonel Shepard dies in Mass Effect 3, and that makes us the Worst Company in America. So we went through that."

Moore might have gotten Commander Shepard's title wrong, but he's right about one thing: compared with companies doing existential harm against the environment and global economy, a game studio making a bad creative decision seems like small potatoes. But the Worst Company in America title was voted by readers of the now-defunct outlet The Consumerist, and there's no stopping gamers once you've given them an online poll through which to vent their anger.

Moore decided to meet those gamers where they were, he explains. "At that point, I jumped on Twitter," he says, and remarkably seems to believe that was the right call. "Many of you might remember that. I started engaging with gamers and all of the baggage that comes through that. But I felt it was the best way to start figuring out how we could humanize the face of EA. You know, we were, and probably still are, criticized."

Moore's read on the situation is a bit simplistic, but history tends to coalesce into simple narratives as the years roll on. EA's Worst Company in America awards weren't just about the Mass Effect 3 controversy – which, in turn, wasn't just about Shepard's fate. They were also a way to criticize the controversial always-online launch of SimCity in 2013. They were a protest against the company abandoning Steam in favor of a proprietary app. They were pushes against free-to-play games and microtransactions.

Those were all points that Moore was willing to acknowledge in a 2013 blog post, published shortly before the second award was finally determined. He also noted that some of EA's critics were pushing against the latest Madden cover athlete and "LGBT" inclusiveness. "That last one is particularly telling," Moore wrote at the time. "If that's what makes us the worst company, bring it on. Because we're not caving on that." (There is, of course, an all-new set of reasons to fear the company dropping those inclusive goals.)

It's worth noting, to Moore's point, that BP did get the Worst Company title in 2011, closer to when the Deepwater Horizon oil spill actually happened. And Bank of America was named the runner-up in 2011, 2012, and 2013. But maybe economic and environmental watchdogs just had better things to do with their time than voting in an online poll.

"Every day, millions of people across globe play and love our games – literally, hundreds of millions more than will vote in this contest," Moore wrote in that old blog. "So here's my response to this poll: We can do better. We will do better. But I am damn proud of this company, the people around the globe who work at EA, the games we create and the people that play them."

EA claims "our creative freedom and player-first values will remain intact" after buyout, and "even with the new debt" of $20 billion it will work to grow the company.

Notch another win for game preservation, as a Mass Effect fan has uncovered a prototype version of the cut mission that became the Bring Down the Sky DLC. It represents an extremely specific slice of the legendary RPG's development history, but for those of us who've been waiting nearly a decade for Mass Effect 5, any look at "new" content is sweet manna.

Oddly, this story starts with a YouTube comment. Back in 2010, Mass Effect composer Sam Hulick posted a track from an unreleased piece of DLC, offering no insight into what the expansion was meant to be. But a few years later, one comment declared that "it was a Caleston DLC." This user, offering no sources for their claims, alleged that "a guy said years back that it was leaked on Xbox Live for a short period of time."

This was a "my uncle works at Nintendo"-level rumor, but it was specific enough to get the attention of someone who goes by TheUnsungHero26. "While it sounded outlandish and came from an unverified source," they explain in a ResetEra thread, "it was such a specific claim that part of me believed it... And it turns out it was true!"

Well, true in a way, anyway. "During development of Mass Effect," TheUnsungHero26 explains in a YouTube video description, "BioWare uploaded a DLC prototype to PartnerNet, the Xbox 360 developer-facing Xbox Live sandbox. This DLC was dumped and uploaded to Hidden Palace on October 25, 2025."

That video, which you can see above, showcases a full playthrough of this DLC prototype. It's not the most exciting thing in the world – it mostly consists of a bunch of the same cookie-cutter sidequest areas that always drove me up the wall about Mass Effect 1 – but the fact that it exists at all is fascinating. Particularly since it is, indeed, labeled as Caleston DLC.

The name Caleston is already familiar to hardcore of Mass Effect fans, as it's the original name for the cut planet – technically, a cut moon – that eventually became Therum in the final game. Despite the location's appearance on the galaxy map in this prototype, TheUnsungHero26 explains that "selecting it actually takes you to an entirely different cut planet: a very early version of Bring Down the Sky, when it was meant to be a side quest in the main game."

But it's very different from the DLC that we actually got. "The map is different," TheUnsungHero26 says. "There are no Batarians, instead, the enemies are humans (as per the mission's original plot, which you can read about on the wiki), there's a timer, and instead of three bases, you are looking for three mine shafts with generators to shut down. There's also some oddities, like three crates with unique armor and weapons that were previously inaccessible, and a rachni nest."

It's a bizarre confluence of things – a cut mission, tied to the name of a cut planet, that eventually became DLC – but I'm hard-pressed to think of a game dev story that doesn't involve a bunch of pieces shifting around in ways that only make sense once the project is finished. Saving these sorts of development insights is a big part of what game preservation is all about.

"Now I realize the contents of this probably aren't too exciting to anyone except the most hardcore Mass Effect fans," TheUnsungHero26 concludes, "but experiencing 'new' content for a nearly two decades old game that I hold dear is something special. My hope is we see more pre-release builds of the game dumped, so we can uncover more cut content (of which there is a lot!) Big shout out to everyone who helps make game preservation like this possible."

The Mass Effect series includes some of the best RPGs ever made.

As work on The Witcher 4 continues to press on, CD Projekt Red opens the door to new faces with plenty of experience under their belts – like Dorian Kieken, the studio's new AI director and a hardened BioWare veteran boasting credits on gems from the Mass Effect series.

Kieken worked at BioWare for a solid eight years, as per his LinkedIn profile, starting as a producer on titles like Sonic Chronicles before moving on to act as development director and co-founder of the company's Montreal studio.

He then undertook projects like Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 – DLC included. Since leaving the team in 2015, he's gone on to found his own AI startup: AI Redefined, also known by the acronym "AIR."

Now, he's returning to game development, it seems – and he's not just going to any studio. Kieken is working with CD Projekt Red as the company's new AI director, as he reveals in an online post.

"After eight years of building memorable RPGs at BioWare and eight years of building cutting-edge AI solutions at AI Redefined, it is finally time to bring all of that together in my new role at CDPR as AI Director," he writes.

The new AI lead then explains that he'll be "responsible for the company's AI vision and strategy," and is "so excited" to be there. It's pretty cool, honestly, especially as it's not the first instance of CD Projekt Red welcoming knowledgeable devs recently.

Two months ago, former Baldur's Gate 3 developer Felix Pedulla joined CD Projekt Red as the team's newest senior cinematic designer, with other positions opening shortly after. As for Kieken's AI startup, AI Redefined, he posted late last year that it had been "acquired by CM Labs."

Fingers crossed that Kieken settles in nicely, and the next few years are just as bright for The Witcher masterminds as the past decade.

The Witcher 4 will cost CD Projekt almost $800 million between development and marketing, estimates analyst who also predicts new The Witcher 3 DLC this year

Skyrim's lead designer and former Bethesda veteran Bruce Nesmith has chimed in on what he wants to see from Mass Effect 5 (or whatever name the next Mass Effect game ends up with) and - surprise, surprise - he thinks BioWare could do well by ripping a few pages out of the Bethesda playbook.

"I would hope that they would try to just take their lore and make a modern game of it," Nesmith says in an interview with Press Box PR. "One of the knocks on Mass Effect that I would have is that they always felt like they were a generation behind. I know, they had very cool characters, they had great stories, but the gameplay always felt dusty and old. It just wasn’t there." Nesmith goes on to say that if BioWare could marry the studio's strengths with "more modern" sensibilities, then it could potentially have a "fantastic game" on its hands.

"I think taking lessons from Baldur's Gate 3 would fit Mass Effect really well," Nesmith continues before also naming dropping his own former workplace. "But I think they should probably try to make a more Bethesda-style game, to be honest."

Of course, Nesmith isn't implying that BioWare should fully go down the first-person sandbox route with Mass Effect 5. He just reckons fans of the series "are dying for an open world science fiction game that has that kind of flavor to it" and is "content heavy."

"Mass Effect players would be going nuts for that. But I’m a former Bethesda guy so I'm probably going to say that about a lot of things." Nothing wrong with having pride in some classics, I say.

Last time we heard from the next Mass Effect, BioWare was seemingly ramping up development by hiring a production director for the project.

OG Mass Effect Shephard actors would be there "with bells on" if BioWare brought them back for Mass Effect 5

Details on Mass Effect 5 are still scarce, but BioWare seems to be ramping up production by hiring for a new lead developer.

BioWare's executive producer and Mass Effect 5's project director Michael Gamble jumped online earlier today to share a job opening at the studio for a production director. "Hi, I'm hiring a very important senior leadership role," Gamble tweets. "They'll report to me and it's gonna be awesome."

Whoever gets the role will be responsible for making sure the studio as a whole is on the same page in regard to high-level concepts, and will already need over 10 years of experience on AAA games and "deep expertise in ARPG and RPG development," according to the job listing. They'll also need "a passion for the Mass Effect universe to serve as a high-impact leader on our next Mass Effect title." EA's job board currently doesn't include any other openings for BioWare specifically.

Mass Effect 5 is now the only game in production at the famed RPG maker after BioWare spent decades as a multi-project outfit, perhaps due to the soft launch of Dragon Age: The Veilguard and the layoffs that followed in its footsteps.

At the start of last year, we learned the next Mass Effect was still in its pre-production phase five years on from its first reveal trailer, which revealed that Liara T'Soni was back alongside remnants of the galaxy-threatening Reapers. Our only hint as to what the game is actually about came from Liara unearthing N7 armor. Although, whether this is a direct sequel or one set in the distant future is unclear since Liara, and all Asari, are, you know, capable of living for hundreds of years.

OG Mass Effect Shephard actors would be there "with bells on" if BioWare brought them back for Mass Effect 5

Former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah, who was at the famed studio for more than two decades while running the Dragon Age franchise, has suggested that Mass Effect 5 might actually benefit from being the only game on the developer's plate even if it means the gap between BioWare releases is longer.

For years, BioWare juggled multiple projects at the same time. The original Mass Effect, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, and Dragon Age: Origins were all in different stages of production concurrently, for example, and the studio continued with that structure of having developers go back and forth between games up until, well, now.

Executive producer Mike Gamble even recently stated "the team is heads-down and focused exclusively on Mass Effect" since they "have a lot of universe to cover, lots of features to build, and lots of romances to figure out" - and, presumably, not enough bandwidth to cover a second game anyway.

Speaking to Destin Legarie, Mark Darrah says the "Mass Effect 5 team did what we should have done when we moved the Dragon Age people on to Anthem, which is everyone went." By nature, that means there's going to be a more significant gap between the studio's releases - Darrah himself guessed Mass Effect 5 might come out "a long time" after Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

"BioWare has effectively become a one-project studio, which has its own problems, but it's a different set of problems than what BioWare has been up until arguably 2022," Darrah continued, before explaining all the upsides that can come with making games under a one-project structure.

The BioWare of old, Darrah said, had "several projects fighting for attention and resources, and like bumping each other and elbowing each other and causing unintended effects on each other. That's not the studio that it is now. As near as I can tell, 100% of what they're working on right now is Mass Effect. That's probably for the best."

Fans find Mass Effect 5 art of a Krogan civil war hidden in BioWare's N7 Day post, studio lead says "I want you to see stuff. But it's not the time…yet."

When it comes to heartbreaking moments in Mass Effect, the number one spot will always belong to the exit of Dr. Mordin Solus. But in second place is Garrus and Shepard’s promise to each other before heading to war against the Reapers, a scene so poignant, it almost made Jennifer Hale break down.

She recalls doing the scene for the Behind the Voice podcast, mentioning that it's the time during her tenure voicing the female Commander Shepard where the emotions started catching up to her. "The goodbye scene with Garrus kicked me hard," she says.

"90% of the work – maybe 85% now – is cold reading. I've never seen a line until I say it," she continues. "That scene with Garrus took me by surprise. I saw it, and I was like, 'Oh – oh…' And as I was doing it, I was starting to break, I was starting to cry, and I was like, 'No, no, no!'"

In her words, "Shepard doesn't cry," and she took a moment to re-center herself before restarting the scene. The exchange in question is deeply impactful, with two soldiers who've been through hell and back realizing this might be the final time they get to square up together.

As is typical of both, there are no tears, only a solemn vow to find each other afterwards for an alcoholic beverage or three when all is said and done. Garrus breaks rank to order Shepard to give the Reapers hell, something they absolutely take to heart. It's poetic and heartrending, and given the lump in my throat revisiting it on the back of this piece, I can only imagine what it was like in the booth for Hale.

After three glorious games performing as Shepard, Hale's been emphatic about returning to the role in Mass Effect 5, if BioWare will have her. If the series does bring back the commander, maybe Garrus can make an appearance, and they can go for that drink. Hey, we can dream, right?

Mass Effect 5 remains in development amid $55 billion EA buyout, and BioWare is now "heads-down and focused exclusively on" the RPG, with "lots of romances to figure out."

As development of Mass Effect 5 continues, there's one important question we're all asking: Will the cast include another Krogan as cool as Wrex? The second, of course, is will Commander Shepard make a return. Jennifer Hale, the beloved voice of the female Shepard, is keen to reprise the role.

"I have no idea," Hale tells the Behind the Voice podcast about whether Shepherd is lined up for the next game. "This is what I say to fans: If you want Shepard in the next game, please email them and tell them, because maybe they'll respond to that."

She reiterates that she doesn't know anything about a prospective Shepard comeback, but she says "I would love it." A fifth mainline Mass Effect game was teased back at the 2020 The Game Awards, though the announcement was really just that, with no further details provided.

BioWare is apparently still handling development on the series, but the current status of Mass Effect 5 or anything else in development there is unknown. Between layoffs and a muted response to Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the studio's been going through a rough patch, and EA's recent buyout announcement has raised questions over long-term plans for any of the publisher’s subsidiaries.

Hale's been on the record repeatedly about her interest in coming back to the franchise. In October 2025, she mentioned it'd be a short conversation, and the following December, she doubled-down, alongside Mark Meer, the voice of male Shepard, who's just as keen to become the commander again.

Whether this will yield anything, or if Shepard is even involved in the game to begin with, remains to be seen. Hale's advice isn't the worst though: If you want more Mass Effect, you know who to ask (respectfully).

Mass Effect 5 devs should use Dragon Age: The Veilguard as a "scapegoat" so they can "get what they need" from EA, says former BioWare exec.

As development on Mass Effect 5 apparently continues amid EA's current buyout, one question floating around is whether or not Commander Shepard would make a return. Should they do so, the voices that brought the character to life would be more than happy to reprise the role.

Both Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer, Shepard's female and male voices, respectively, did an interview responding to fan enquiries on Fall Damage, and it didn't take long before the possibility of coming back popped up. "I like to think Shepard is alive in all of our hearts," Meer comments, with Hale responding: "Shepard is alive if you make it so."

She then encourages people to contact the "powers that be" - EA and BioWare - to request some more of the Normandy's finest captain. "We will be there, because we should not go," she adds. "I would be there with bells on if they offered for me to play Shepard again."

Meer wouldn’t be far behind. "I agree, but only under any circumstances," he says in typically tongue-in-cheek manner.

Bringing back Shepard presents some narrative quandaries for the developers. Depending on what you chose over the course of the original Mass Effect trilogy, they may or may not be around any more, and if they return, the devs would be making at least one of the endings more canonical than the others.

In theory, anyway. There's always the conceit of cloning or using tech like cryogenics, or placing events somewhere on the timeline where Commander Shepard is just around normally. The possibilities are there, is what I'm saying. Given the tumultuous state of the industry, I'm happy more Mass Effect remains feasible, and if the trilogy's fateful protagonist remains involved, all the better.

Fans find Mass Effect 5 art of a Krogan civil war hidden in BioWare's N7 Day post, studio lead says "I want you to see stuff. But it's not the time…yet"

This year's N7 goodies seem to actually be telling us something for a change. The Mass Effect 5 update, delivered by way of a blog post to commemorate the RPG series' annual day of celebration, is expectedly cryptic. In it, BioWare exec Mike Gamble waxes lyrical about how much the team appreciates us fans and our patience, reinforcing that the developer is still hard at work on Mass Effect 5 and giving no indication that EA's $55-billion buyout has complicated matters. He also shares that the new Mass Effect TV show will take place after the events of Commander Shepard's trilogy ("because after all … that’s YOUR story, isn’t it?") before assuring us that there definitely isn't a hidden meaning in his message.

But the cheeky bugger was lying, of course. You don't need my decades of proofreading to spot the nine italicized letters scattered throughout the blog post, spelling out a mysterious URL fragment. Long story short, a new Mass Effect 5 image is safely in our hands, depicting a Krogan soldier leading an army and captioned "civil war". With a pivotal choice at the end of Mass Effect 3 indicating only one way this many Krogan could be around in the new game, could this be confirmation of BioWare reneging on its commitment not to canonize player choice? Or could it actually be telling us the contrary – that it'll respect our decisions, and find unique ways of doing so?

Someone else might've gotten it wrong

If there's one thing I've learned about Mass Effect's hardiest alien race, it's that Krogans love a good battle. They're built like stocky turtle-oid tanks, born with an innate militarial understanding that makes for excellent soldiers and generals. That's why many Mass Effect 3 players, myself included, opted to cure their genetic disease and enlist the Krogan army as a war asset.

Whether or not you view the genophage as a necessary act of biological warfare, inflicted upon the Krogan by Turians in an effort to control birthrates and prevent another Krogan uprising, deciding to cure it is a pivotal moment in Mass Effect 3. Freeing a race from centuries of forced eugenics feels like one of the less morally-challenging choices in the game – the opposite of which, there are many – especially when the alternative is to deceive your old friend Urdnot Wrex (if he's alive to see it) and be a bit of a bastard. For the greater good, some might argue, but I disagree.

After poring over the new picture of a Krogan civil war for way too long, my first thought was that it could only mean one thing: Mass Effect 5 will show the genophage cured for good, allowing the Krogan race to proliferate, as well as the consequences of not heeding the Turian's warning of an second Krogan war should their combative natures get the better of them. It certainly looks that way in the image Gamble pointed us to.

But if BioWare committed to that choice – something that would have rippling effects through the world of Mass Effect as we know it – what other player-based outcomes could it canonize in ME5?

Between a rock and a hard-headed place

The destruction of all synthetics is another huge decision players can make in ME3, with implications for the whole galaxy that would surely be referenced in future games.

But there's only so much we can expect to see reflected in ME5. As our very own BioWare superfan Heather Wald said in relation to Dragon Age: The Veilguard's limited array of choices carried across from Inquisition, seeing which major choices will be honored in the new Mass Effect game also means that others might not be. So much happened in the trilogy, after all, and it would be a staggering amount of work to accommodate each and every variation of ME3's endings into the next big instalment.

But the Krogan presence in Mass Effect 5, something all but confirmed at this point, could also be explained in the context of an un-cured genophage.

Even with their limited numbers, Shepard's betrayal in procuring a fake cure in Mass Effect 3 could have sparked a civil war between those Krogan who wanted a cure and those who defected and joined forces with the Citadel. This would prove an intriguing setup for a galaxy wherein the Krogan become even more hostile to outsiders than before, turning them into a powerful adversary for whoever our new player character might be.

The fact that the Krogan's ongoing existence in Mass Effect 5 could be the result of either choice outcome has given me hope that BioWare is going to let us carry that decision across. The parameters are flexible enough that a Krogan civil war seems possible no matter what you chose to do in Shepard's final act, which makes it all the more exciting to theorize on how BioWare would actually implement it.

Again, this is pure speculation, but I'm glad to have more than a seconds-long video of someone walking (thanks, 2023) to chew over this year. Though, I mean, an extra little something wouldn't have gone unappreciated…

If you can't wait for ME5, check out these other games like Mass Effect to give you a similar dose of RPG goodness.

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.

For more games like Mass Effect to sustain yourself on, you know where to click.

It's November 7, which means it's time for your tiny annual update on the status of Mass Effect 5. As malaise over the big EA buyout takes hold, BioWare is taking this N7 Day to say that the upcoming RPG is still in development and offer a tiny – I emphasize, tiny – handful of teases about what to expect.

"Like you, we’ve heard the rumors lately," executive producer Mike Gamble says in a new blog post, gesturing toward the EA buyout news that is very much fact rather than rumor. "You’ve made it clear you care deeply about what’s next. So let’s start by setting the record straight: the next Mass Effect game is in development, and EA and BioWare remain committed to telling more stories in this universe."

Gamble says that "the team is heads-down and focused exclusively on Mass Effect. We have a lot of universe to cover, lots of features to build, and lots of romances to figure out. We’re excited by what we’re building, and we promise you: when we’re ready, it’ll be a lot of fun to show."

Simply dropping the word "romances" into the blog alone will be enough to send a fanbase rabid for alien booty calls into overdrive, but there is one more teaser in here – a series of italicized letters that spell out either "URL KROGAN" or "URL MASS EFFECT KROGAN N7" depending on what's meant to be italicized here. I assume there'll be some web page you need to append these terms to in order to see some secret teaser, similar to the 2023 Epsilon videos, but it doesn't seem anyone's yet discovered the key.

Gamble also offers a quick update on Amazon's Mass Effect TV series, confirming that it'll fit within the existing timeline, similar to the Fallout show, and tell a new story set after the original trilogy.

We've now spent a lot of years waiting for news on the next Mass Effect game, and morsels of information have been few and far between. This is still something of a crust of bread tossed to a fanbase starving in the desert, but with anxieties running high about what the EA buyout will mean for the future of series like Mass Effect, any assurance is appreciated.

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November 7th marks N7 Day, a celebration of all things Mass Effect, even if most of the universe's population doesn't realize it. To mark the intergalactic holiday, BioWare is once again loaning out Commander Shepard's ship for people to use in No Man's Sky. (He won't be needing it any time soon, anyway.)

"To celebrate N7 Day, we are again collaborating with our friends at BioWare and EA to run the Beachhead expedition," a blog on the space sandbox's website reads, "and offer the No Man's Sky community another opportunity to claim the legendary SSV Normandy SR1."

The iconic ship was first shot out of a mass relay and into No Man's Sky's orbit straight after the release of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, and it's since come back to the game a couple of times, last year included.

"We've welcomed many new Travellers to No Man's Sky since the Normandy's last appearance in the Euclid galaxy, and we hope this news comes as a welcome surprise to our fellow Mass Effect fans," the blog continues.

You can complete the Beachhead Expedition and grab the Normandy from now until November 18, at which point the game will cycle through this year's other expeditions every two weeks until mid-January 2026. So, go get it while you can. And if you can't, well, the Normandy's sure to pop back up at some N7 Day in the future.

"We remain THE BIGGEST Mass Effect fans and I can't describe how happy this makes us," Hello Games founder Sean Murray tweeted.

Speaking of, we haven't seen the long-awaited Mass Effect 5 in years, but BioWare put everyone's worries to bed by reconfirming that "the next Mass Effect game is in development, and EA and BioWare remain committed to telling more stories in this universe," earlier today.

"The darker side of the universe": No Man's Sky adds "spooky" Breach Expedition update with new solar systems as devs celebrate last big patch hitting 110,000 concurrent PC players

Prolific video game actor Jennifer Hale - who's been in everything from Bayonetta 3 to Halo - has said she'd return to Mass Effect almost instantaneously should developer BioWare ask her to.

As one of the two actors to bring Mass Effect's Commander Shepard to life, Hale obviously had a big hand in making the character and the trilogy as a whole so special, but it seems the iconic series had just as big an impact on her as it did on the fan base.

Speaking to IGN, 'FemShep' said she "would be there before they [BioWare] finish the sentence," even though the famed studio hasn't picked up the phone to call her just yet.

Mass Effect 5, or whatever it ends up being called, is obviously in development right now, but the ending of the initial trilogy makes it a bit hard to simply return to Shepard. One possible finale does show our Commander battered but still breathing under rubble - though another theory points to a possible connection to Mass Effect Andromeda, which was set hundreds of years after Shepard's first adventure.

Still, that doesn't rule out Jennifer Hale's comeback to the universe, as she said she'd play "anyone." Krogan, hologram, bug, rotting corpse - it's all fair play. "I love that universe. I'm ready. Anytime."

"Everyone out there, the more you tell them what you want, maybe the likelier it is that it'll happen," she said, calling on fans to also poke BioWare about it.

Earlier in the year, we learned that the next Mass Effect was "still in pre-production" amid more layoffs at the studio. Things haven't gotten any more optimistic since, as EA is taking on $20 billion in debt to help fund a $55 billion buyout to private equity firms, meaning the publisher might probably cut corners somewhere. Here's hoping the developers stay unaffected through it all.

Jennifer Hale says she didn't see a single line as Mass Effect's Commander Shepard until it was time to record: "It was all cold reading on the spot"

EA is officially going private as part of a $55 billion dollar deal led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner's investment firm Affinity Partners. The deal will be partially financed by EA taking on $20 billion in debt – and as the industry wonders how the publisher will deal with that financial burden, BioWare fans in particular are terrified of what might await the beloved RPG studio in the future.

"The transaction will be funded," a press release explains, "by a combination of cash from each of PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners as well as roll-over of PIF's existing stake in EA, constituting an equity investment of approximately $36 billion, and $20 billion of debt financing fully and solely committed by JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., $18 billion of which is expected to be funded at close."

You may have heard about leveraged buyouts funded by private equity in the past, and this is essentially how they work. An investor, or group of investors, puts up some amount of cash to buy a company, while the rest of the purchase price is funded through debt taken on by that company. In grossly simplified terms, once the deal closes, EA will have a $20 billion mortgage on itself.

No one yet knows precisely how EA will pay off that debt, but other leveraged buyouts have often been swiftly followed by money-saving efforts that, well… calling them "aggressive" would be a substantial understatement. As Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier notes on Bluesky, the EA deal "could mean mass layoffs, more aggressive monetization, and other big cost-cutting measures."

EA's success is propped up by massive franchises like its annual sports games, but the company also owns no shortage of beloved IP. Would the risk of another Titanfall happen when there's $20 billion in debt to pay off? Would a new Skate, whatever issues it might have, ever have been greenlit?

But nobody's more frightened of the possibilities than BioWare fans. The beloved studio has produced some of the most beloved RPGs of all time – the likes of Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age – but it hasn't had a bonafide hit in years. Finally getting to launch a single-player RPG last year seemed like a victory, but Dragon Age: The Veilguard underperformed financial expectations.

"It's over, Commander," as one thread on the Mass Effect subreddit laments, and you'll find a lot of similar sentiments in other comment threads across the internet. The general feeling among fans seems not to be fear about what might happen to BioWare with those financial concerns in mind – they're acting as if the studio is already dead, that Mass Effect 5 is already canceled, and they're mourning accordingly.

Goodbye BioWare, we had an exceptional run, even Andromeda. 💔

— @maisey.bsky.social (@maisey.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-01T00:51:08.201Z

If BioWare gets added to the pile of Origin, Westwood, Bullfrog, Maxis, and Pandemic, it will really help cement that EAs most meaningful legacy might be shutting down some of the greatest and most foundationally important teams in game development history. That's like killing the Avengers.

— @len.bsky.social (@len.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-01T00:51:08.215Z

I knew the future of Bioware was bleak, but I didn't think it was gonna be *this* bleak.

— @luke-garou.bsky.social (@luke-garou.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-01T00:51:08.187Z

Even if BioWare does survive whatever EA does in the future, there's one more concern with the company now owned by investors tied to Saudi Arabia and the US conservative political apparatus. Would BioWare's historic depiction of LGBTQ+ content remain intact? That's a concern even former Mass Effect and Dragon Age narrative designer Trick Weekes seems to share on social media.

Buyers: So your games... guns and football, yes?EA: Mmhmm, mmhmm, mostly guns and football, yep.Buyers: No gay stuff? No politics we're not going to like?EA: Haha, definitely not! Hey, could you give me one sec? I just need to shut down a studio real quick.kotaku.com/report-saudi...

— @trickweekes.bsky.social (@trickweekes.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-01T00:51:08.084Z

Of course, none of these concerns have yet come to fruition, and it's too early to tell what the future of EA will look like – frankly, it's impossible to predict what will happen because we've never seen a deal like it.

"$20,000,000,000 of debt financing is a shockingly large number to have to service," as games market analyst Mat Piscatella says on Bluesky, "while also transitioning from a public to private organization and all the implications that has on the people that work in it. We've obviously never seen anything like this at this scale in the industry before."

At least the best BioWare games will always be there.

Former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah says the studio should use Dragon Age: The Veilguard as a "scapegoat" to get the resources it needs for Mass Effect 5.

The next Mass Effect game is BioWare's only big project known to be in development, and Darrah reckons this perceived focus on one, single game will make its development cycle "less messy" than previous titles, which in the past have "cannibalized" each other, in his words.

In an interview with MrMattyPlays (thanks, PC Gamer), Darrah straight-up advises the Mass Effect 5 team to point to Dragon Age: The Veilguard's lengthy development, which endured a shift from single-player RPG to live-service multiplayer and then back again, as an example of what not to do.

"To be frank, the Mass Effect team is going to be able to point to The Veilguard and say, 'We should steer away from some of these things, because look what happened'," Darrah says. "I would honestly encourage that team to scapegoat Veilgard as much as they need to to get what they need from the organization, whether it's true or not."

Darrah adds that, "the problem with being single project is you have this sort of boom and bust thing happening, where you get really big, and then you have to slim down.

"Now, EA seems to be trying to move to some sort of model where people flow within the overall organization a lot more. So maybe that will be fine. Maybe that'll work out great, but it remains to be seen."

Darrah left BioWare in December 2020 alongside longtime Mass Effect director Casey Hudson after more than two decades with the company. With Mass Effect 5 having been announced in 2020 but presumably kicking into full development post-The Veilguard, that means Darrah hasn't had his hands in its development, but his insights as a BioWare veteran from the very beginning nonetheless carry a lot of weight.

One thing's for sure: Both the Mass Effect series and BioWare as a whole are in desperate need of a bounce back after Andromeda and The Veilguard, respectively, and all eyes are on Mass Effect 5 to see whether it sticks the landing.

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Mass Effect 5 won't be dropping the RPG series' penchant for one of sci-fi's most notorious visual effects, according to a hint from its project director.

Last week, Twitter user Gray commented that "Mass Effect 5 better stick to tradition and have an excessive amount of lens flare." As any good sci-fi project with its roots in the 00s should, the original trilogy makes plenty of use of lens flaring - a visual effect that occurs when light is scattered by passing through a lens.

In filmmaking, lens flares were once avoided but became so popularized by directors such as Steven Spielberg and particularly J.J. Abrams that they eventually became ubiquitous in sci-fi. Clearly, the original Mass Effect trilogy didn't have an actual lens to aim that light through, but that didn't stop BioWare from creating them in its series.

And it sounds like that's not likely to change. Mass Effect 5 project director Mike Gamble - who served as a producer and project manager across Mass Effect 2, 3, and Andromeda - responded to Gray's tweet with an affirmative 'ok' emoji. It's a minimal clue, but it's one of still relatively few that we've got to go on when it comes to the next Mass Effect game. If nothing else, it's evidence that the sci-fi visual language that the Mass Effect team has spent nearly 20 years nailing down isn't going anywhere immediately.

We have learned snippets of information about Mass Effect 5 over the years; back in February, we found out that Mass Effect 5 is officially in pre-production; back in October 2024, he confirmed that Mass Effect 5 "is photorealistic" and will be staying that way for now, and hinted that it will feature "multiple endings." The recent release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard likely means that we're still a considerable distance from Mass Effect 5, but at least the details are starting to come together.

While you wait, check out our list of the best RPGs.

A former Dragon Age boss says he felt his team was "jerked around" by EA, but that BioWare's corporate overlords weren't really interested in Mass Effect either.

In a new video, former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah explains how, in 2017, he witnessed a BioWare first: In the "final push" towards the release of Mass Effect: Andromeda, he led a "final team" that came on to help the series' black sheep get out the door. Unfortunately, it seems that wasn't a decision Darrah was particularly happy with.

"My feeling at the time," he explains, "was the Dragon Age team was feeling jerked around. We were feeling like we were getting no support from BioWare or EA, which was basically true."

He maintains that moving senior leadership away from a project - in this case the game that would eventually become Dragon Age: The Veilguard many years later - was an "incredibly dangerous" strategy that stemmed from EA being "disinterested" in BioWare.

That disinterest didn't last too much longer, however. Darrah says that EA wasn't "particularly interested" in Mass Effect: Andromeda, "because they had little to gain from the success of Andromeda and little to lose from its failure." In fact, the company "had a lot more incentive for BioWare to move onto the next thing that they could tie themselves to."

That "next thing" was Anthem. While theoretically that loot-shooting service game could have become a major BioWare cash-cow, it failed utterly, grinding to an abrupt halt barely a few weeks after launch.

BioWare initially discussed rebooting the game, but those plans were eventually abandoned in favor of a return to the single-player RPGs that made its name - last year's Veilguard and the upcoming Mass Effect 5.

BioWare remains responsible for many of the best RPG games out there.

Longtime video game voice actor Jennifer Hale says that her role as Commander Shepard in Mass Effect boiled down to a lot of last-minute performances since she didn't see any scripts until it was time to record them.

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Hale reckons that "85 to 90%" of video game voice capture work boils down to cold reading. "The entirety of Mass Effect, I saw no line before the moment I recorded it," she says. "It was all cold reading on the spot. A couple takes, maybe a few, and it goes out to market. That's it."

The Mass Effect games were obviously recorded quite a while ago, but the games industry is still often secretive and late when it comes to recordings. Hale says "voice performers have to be incredibly skilled in the game arena, even more so than in other arenas" due to the demands this production schedule puts on performances.

Many voice actors don't even know what they are being cast in until much later in the process. Lady Dimitrescu actor Maggie Robertson had no idea what was in Resident Evil Village until after she'd been cast. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's Matthew Mercer didn't learn he was playing Vincent until a cryptic message was shared with him at the studio and on camera. Stewart Clarke voiced Strohl in Metaphor: ReFantazio, but didn't realize he was in a big Atlus game until that recording was near its end. This kind of thing happens a lot, and it's just a glimpse into the controlled chaos that goes on behind the scenes.

Actors supporting AI protections didn't know they were being replaced in Zenless Zone Zero update 1.6: "I found out the role was recast today alongside all of you."

Over a decade has passed since Mass Effect 3 first graced fans with its stellar story and sci-fi world, and BioWare lead Michael Gamble is celebrating its 13th birthday with a post – but at the same time, he's also ensuring that readers are aware that's all his post is.

It's not a cryptic hint, a mysterious teaser, or any other flavor of a masked reveal – it's just a celebratory post commemorating the monumental release of Mass Effect's third entry. "Happy birthday, ME3," writes Gamble, who is currently directing Mass Effect 5. The game means a lot to us. I'll leave it there. That way nobody can say I purposefully teased them or created some sort of news story hinting at the next game details."

Gamble's words are certainly funny, but he does have a point. As a fan of anything BioWare myself, I admit the community seems to look into things – even when it shouldn't. It doesn't help that actual hidden hints do often drop, either, with past situations like the N7 Day 2023 teaser coming to mind. BioWare's full focus shifting to Mass Effect 5, which is currently in "pre-production" now, after Dragon Age: The Veilguard is also significant.

After all, fans yearn to know more about the beloved sci-fi RPG series' upcoming entry – and so far, BioWare hasn't revealed too much. Mass Effect 5 is the studio's only big project after The Veilguard currently, though, which means that the community might get the long-awaited news it's hoping for soon. Until then, however, there are four brilliant Mass Effect gems to go back and replay – so I know what I'll be doing in the meantime.

Here are some of our most exciting new games this year and beyond to keep an eye on.

A lot of artists dislike working for big companies, and BioWare's co-founder Greg Zeschuk explained why in a less-than-glowing assessment of EA.

"I like to comment that EA gives you enough rope to hang yourself," Zeschuk says in an interview with Eurogamer. "And what I mean by that is you have to learn to work within the structure."

It might seem like the dream of an artist to have a huge company footing the bill, but that backing also comes with a lot of restrictions creatives need to deal with. "I think we did quite well, if you look at the Mass Effect [trilogy that] came out of there," says Zeschuk. "It was actually a pretty successful run. But you have to understand how to work within a big company. And, for me, that was the end. It was like, 'oh, I don't like big companies'. So I knew by year two that I was going to leave at some point. I just didn't know when."

It seems that BioWare actually enjoyed reasonable freedom within EA, though. "There's all kinds of shenanigans we did," Zeschuk admits. Some BioWare devs made games for Facebook under a fake company name, and when EA spotted "a couple of Apple development devices and we weren't in the mobile division, they were like 'what are you doing?'"

I suppose when you make a series as successful as Mass Effect, you're given a longer leash. But EA isn't the only big company BioWare worked with. Zeschuk shared another story about a time Microsoft gave "the worst advice, absolute moronic advice from them, the stupidest thing ever."

The advice was to release Jade Empire on the original Xbox in 2005, just before the Xbox 360 came out. "Microsoft was like 'no no, you should release it now, right at the end of the cycle, because it's a great time.'"

Now Zeschuk makes craft beer. He must be happier being away from all the big companies, especially considering that EA just laid off a lot of BioWare devs and WB games shut down Monolith and cancelled the Wonder Woman game. It's not a great time for big game companies.

In other news, there was a Pokemon Presents today that revealed a lot more information about Pokemon Legends Z-A.

Amid changes at BioWare as the studio shifts its focus to Mass Effect 5, while shuffling some devs to other EA studios and reportedly laying some off, the project director of the upcoming sci-fi RPG has clarified that the game is "still in pre-production."

Last week, BioWare general manager Gary McKay said that considering Mass Effect 5's current "stage of development," the team doesn't "require support from the full studio," noting that "many colleagues" had been matched up with other EA teams with open roles. In a statement sent to IGN, a BioWare spokesperson confirmed that with Dragon Age: The Veilguard now shipped, "the studio's full focus is Mass Effect." The spokesperson didn't provide comment about the reported layoffs, however – Bloomberg has since claimed that less than 100 employees are left at BioWare.

In a Twitter thread responding to this news, the project director of the upcoming Mass Effect game, Michael Gamble, has clarified what stage of development the RPG is currently at and it sounds like it's still quite a ways off being completed. "As the notes have said, we are still in pre-production," Gamble writes. 

Considering how little we know about the game, it makes sense. Hell, we still don't know if it'll pull a Witcher 4 or Switch 2 and be given the "unofficial" name that everyone's been using for it – Mass Effect 5 – or be called something else entirely. 

As for the current team size, this lines up with comments made by former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah, who claimed in a video after The Veilguard's release that Mass Effect 5 "isn't ready to suddenly have a team of 250, 300 people working on it." In the same video, he said that he believed that since the project wasn't "up and running at full speed" yet, "there is a need to find other work for them within the rest of the EA organization while the Mass Effect team figures out what Mass Effect is going to be, figures out the structure, and then gets ready to ramp up to a much bigger team size."

As layoffs reportedly hit BioWare, former Dragon Age writer tells fans not to worry: "DA isn't dead because it's yours now."

Now that Dragon Age: The Veilguard is out, one BioWare veteran suggests that the developer has found itself in a unique situation with Mass Effect 5 being its only known ongoing project. Despite this, he believes that the upcoming sci-fi RPG "isn't ready" to suddenly take on a large team of people, leaving them looking for other work within EA for the time being.

Mark Darrah was an executive producer at BioWare for almost 24 years up until 2021, and also served as a consultant on Dragon Age: The Veilguard. As highlighted on ResetEra, he's now publicly released one of his members-only videos (below) from last year on what's next for BioWare now that The Veilguard has been released, touching on the developer's history of focusing on multiple projects at once, which now seems to have been totally flipped.

He points to 2023, when the MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic was moved out of EA and into Broadsword Online Games' care. At this point, Darrah says, "for the first time since arguably 1995, maybe not even then, BioWare is only working on a single project, which is Dragon Age: The Veilguard." He believes that once the developers wrap up any final patches they're working on for The Veilguard, with there being no plans for DLC, "there's only Mass Effect, so everyone at BioWare will be working on Mass Effect."

Things aren't quite as straightforward as that, though. Darrah says that "Mass Effect isn't ready to suddenly have a team of 250, 300 people working on it." He notes that, in the past, when the developer absorbed talent from one of its projects into another in order to focus on it, it was already "up and running at full speed" and "had enough existing infrastructure that it was able to absorb everything." 

This isn't where Mass Effect 5 is at, Darrah says, which means "there is a need to find other work for them within the rest of the EA organization while the Mass Effect team figures out what Mass Effect is going to be, figures out the structure, and then gets ready to ramp up to a much bigger team size."

This situation could end up being a positive one overall, Darrah argues: "This might be great because what it means is that BioWare, for the first time really ever, is able to singularly focus on a single project, is able to put all of its tension on a single project, is able to put everything it has towards a single goal, which is making the best Mass Effect it possibly can." 

However, there's the potential problem of BioWare finding itself unable to reclaim the staff who've moved onto other EA projects when the time to ramp things up comes – be that because timings don't line up, or staff simply want to stay where they are – but obviously that remains to be seen. 

Though the game was announced years ago, details about the next Mass Effect remain incredibly light on the ground, which adds up with Darrah's suggestion that things aren't exactly running at full speed yet (although it's worth keeping in mind that this video was originally published in November for his channel members). There's still no telling when Mass Effect 5 may actually be released. 

As Dragon Age: The Veilguard director leaves and studio closure rumors surface, Mass Effect 5 director appears to hint the RPG is just fine: "Every week is a good week at work for me."

It's been a rather strange few days online for BioWare fans, with Dragon Age: The Veilguard's director confirmed to be leaving BioWare, and unconfirmed rumors that the developer's Edmonton studio could be closing. However, after some clarification from the Dragon Age director herself regarding her departure, some vague comments from the project director of Mass Effect 5 seemingly hint that fans of the sci-fi RPG series have nothing to worry about when it comes to the next game.

Corinne Busche had been at EA for over 18 years, but just a few months after the Dragon Age game she directed was released, she's off to a new role "in the CRPG space." In a statement sent to Eurogamer, she confirmed that her "departure was voluntary, as I have been presented with an opportunity I couldn't turn down," and said that she ultimately "did what I set out to do at BioWare. That is to come in and help right the ship." Before this, Eurogamer already claimed that BioWare had been unaffected by any other changes despite rumors that suggested otherwise – journalist Jeff Grubb separately stated that "I don't think EA is closing BioWare Edmonton" and "was told there is nothing solid about that part of the rumor."

Needless to say, you should certainly take the rumor with a pinch of salt, but if it'd left you concerned at all for the state of the next Mass Effect game, it appears that project director Michael Gamble has been offering some subtle reassurance that everything is going just fine with the upcoming sci-fi RPG. After simply stating "I love Mass Effect" on Twitter, one fan questions if that means he'd "hopefully had a good week at work?" To this, Gamble says: "Every week is a good week at work for me. [Mass Effect 5 producer] Brenon Holmes knows."

Gamble doesn't directly acknowledge Busche's departure from BioWare or the rumors about the developer's Edmonton studio, but he seems to be sending a pretty clear message that work on the next game is still going ahead as normal. Recent rumors aside, these sorts of messages are always nice to hear when details on the game itself have been so light on the ground in the years since we found out it was happening. Hell, we don't even know if it's actually called Mass Effect 5 yet. Here's hoping we'll get some more solid updates at some point soon. 

Dragon Age: The Veilguard went for stylized art, but Mass Effect 5 project director says the sci-fi RPG "is photorealistic and will be as long as I'm running it."

BioWare fans are theorizing that the next Mass Effect will bring back the iconic series' moral binary system, making players decide between Paragon (good-ish) and Renegade (bad-ish) choices in the game.

That's based on a potentially hidden detail spotted in one of the upcoming game's posters, as well as a new comment made by BioWare producer and Mass Effect 5 project director Michael Gamble.

BioWare first shared a poster of our faceless protagonist's silhouette on N7 Day in 2023, but as you can see in the embedded post below, eagle-eyed fans have finally sussed out that Mass Effect's Paragon and Renegade logos can be superimposed onto the image. Adding more fuel to the fire is Gamble's quotes from a couple of days ago, which seemingly kickstarted a fresh round of speculation.

"Yes, it’s true that more people played Paragon," he tweeted. "But, it would have been meaningless if Renegade had not existed. The ability to choose is stronger than the number of people playing any option." It would probably be odd if he didn't take that mindset to the game he's leading now.

The OG Mass Effect trilogy handled morality slightly differently than the studio's other big series, Dragon Age, by adopting more clear cut 'good' and 'bad' choices. Doing or saying something a little morally ambiguous - like punching an exploitative journalist - would net you Renegade points, while more empathetic dialogue options and decisions would give you Paragon points. Sliding far enough to either side of the spectrum would then open up especially devilish or gentle options.

 You can occupy the wait for the next Mass Effect with the 25 best RPGs available right now.