Update January 24, 2017: Mass Effect producer Fernando Melo has confirmed on Twitter that multiplayer will be a part of Mass Effect: Andromeda’s free trial period a week before launch.
Quoting a tweet by a fan account regarding the announcement of a date for Mass Effect’s Origin Access trial, producer Fernando Melo confirmed that the ten hour ‘demo’ would also include access to multiplayer. He replied to a later tweet to point out that nothing would be closed off – sounds like a challenge to get as far as you can, to me.
For more on BioWare’s latest space opera, here’s everything we know about Mass Effect: Andromeda.
What this likely does mean is that the single-player portion, whatever amount of the start of the game it is, will not be huge. Each previous Mass Effect game has had a reasonably big starting level, be it Eden Prime, the Cerberus base or Earth, so expect to get to play Andromeda’s equivalent. Beyond, things may be more limited, not wanting some would-be speedrunner to finish the game before they’ve paid for it.
Includes MP as well 😉 https://t.co/EqSBmkvNT2
— Fernando Melo (@DiscoBabaloo) January 24, 2017
Of course, none of that will matter to dataminers. Expect every element of the multiplayer to be understood by the end of the trial period, along with anything Bioware failed to remove from the files before distributing the build. As these things are, normally, the full game with a few extra limitations coded on top, that might be quite a lot.
Elsewhere for Mass Effect, there are rumours swirling of a new trailer landing this week, as well as the marketing push kicking into full swing in general. Do check our post of all the Mass Effect: Andromeda trailers so far to get up to speed.
Original story January 23, 2017:Subscribers to EA Access – and Origin Access on PC – will be able to play through the first ten hours of Mass Effect: Andromeda a full week before its European release date.
EA’s monthly subscription service, EA Access, is exclusive to Xbox One, but Origin Access is available on PC and offers “the same awesome perks” according to this FAQ.
It was announced on Twitter on January 7 that EA Access members will get a time-limited trial of Mass Effect: Andromeda, and had it confirmed later in the same thread that Origin Access members will get the same opportunity. We didn’t know much more about the trial until recently, with these details bizarrely buried in a news post on the Access website four days ago.
Hiding behind a dull headline and an announcement about the addition of some old games to the Access Vault is the news that the clumsily named Mass Effect: Andromeda EA Access Play First Trial – we’ll probably call it a demo – kicks off on March 16, five days before the game’s release in the USA. That’s a week before its European launch on March 23.
So there we are – subscribe to Origin Access for £3.99 a month (or $5 for our US friends) to play ten hours of Andromeda a week early. And don’t worry, your progress during the demo will carry over to the full game if you decide to pick it up, according to the game’s purchase page on the Mass Effect website (scroll to the bottom).
It’s worth noting that previous Access demos have been limited in other ways: Battlefield 1 also had a 10-hour trial, but with a limited selection of maps and modes, so in case you’re planning to blast through the demo in search of juicy late-game details, there’s a fair chance you’ll run up against a harder cap on your progress. Perhaps you’ll be limited to the first star system, or something.