For N7 day, BioWare has published a new clip of the upcoming Mass Effect game, and it has some Mass Effect 5 hints hidden in it. While fans are poring over the sequences of numbers and the rhythmic, mechanical clicking sounds featured in the video, the single shot is centred on a new mass relay – the gateways that made faster-than-light travel possible, and which were destroyed in one of the endings to the RPG game series final chapter.
“There is something we want you to have a look at,” writes Mass Effect project director Mike Gamble in BioWare’s N7 Day blog post. “We’ve intercepted some strange footage from one of the monitoring stations in known space. It could be nothing, but…”
The mass relay in the shot orbits a gas-shrouded planet and has ‘MR 7’ emblazoned on its sunward side. An incomplete inner ring sits at an angle in the gyroscopic mechanism that will at some point hold the element zero that powers FTL travel for ships that pass through it.
Happy #N7Day from across the stars! 💫 We found this interesting footage you may want to 🔍 a bit more closely.
Download in HD ⬇️https://t.co/gyydhuuT1e pic.twitter.com/h97zjH5C1G
— Mass Effect (@masseffect) November 7, 2022
BioWare coyly suggests that fans look “a bit more closely” at the footage, suggesting that there are hidden hints to be found in the video, and provide a link to a high-quality version of the clip. The file is titled SA_Intercept_SatheriumSystem_Dock314.mov.
The clip is 25 seconds long, and contains a reverberating clicking sound at every five-second interval. The noise echoes three times each time it’s heard.
In the bottom corner of the video, there’s blue text that reads, “Vacuum-dock relay construction record / Monitoring station operated by Green Dagger Ltd / Property of Deepspace Dhow SAV / Ship Captain: Sub-Navarch Soa’Rhal Zhilian-Jones.”
What does that mean? We don’t know yet. However, the reconstruction of a mass relay does suggest a couple things: first, that mass relay technology has been cracked, since this isn’t one of the old Prothean relays that were destroyed at the end of Mass Effect 3 (depending on which ending players select). That in turn may suggest that the ‘destroy’ ending is the canonical one, and the jumping-off point for the next game in the series.
That’s all we get for now, it seems. “We love bringing this universe to life, and although there’s much more we want to share with you, that’ll have to be for another time,” Gamble says.
Check out the best space games on PC if you’ve got the hankering to explore space in the meantime.