Posting a huge gallery of old images, one of Bioware’s veteran concept artists, Matt Rhodes has revealed strands of story cut from Mass Effect, as well as some fundamental changes to the story.
Originally, for instance, Shepard could have recreated herself with Reaper technology. Intrigued? Read on.
Originally, the writers planned on having Shepard turn to Reaper technology to save the galaxy. You would close the game being confronted by another human Spectre. The spectre would be either Ashley or Kaiden, it would all come down to who you chose in the first game.
Here’s an early painting of human reaper:
You can see that the tiered hexagons remained much the same, as does the chamber, but the human reaper changed from its final design.
Here you can see that the human reaper was once much more infant-like:
Rhodes explains why it was scapped: “This one in particular was far too literal. I include it because the human-tube has been a long running and terrible joke between a few friends. Just imagine the deafening squeak of a thousand asses rubbing on glass.”
It’s a fascinating gallery and there are images there that delve deeper into spoiler territory if you’re that way inclined. Go have a look. There’s also a load of Dragon Age character designs.