As many fans hoped, this Mass Effect/N7 Day, BioWare and EA have given a tentative and somewhat cryptic glimpse of the upcoming Mass Effect 5. Fans have been picking through the trailers and the accompanying information, trying to figure out where the next Mass Effect will lead them.
Three Mass Effect 5 teasers were released over the course of the evening of November 7th, hinting at the next entry in the sci-fi action-RPG series.
There was a countdown running on EA’s N7 2023 along with some text giving the impression you were listening in on some intercepted transmission. And with each teaser trailer and each snippet of information, fans poked and prodded. What buried treasure lay within?
In some cases, the ‘treasure’ turned out to be a rusty can. There’s only so much you can do with brightening and zooming in on a video, even if it is in 4K. A lot of this ‘analysis’ was pretty tongue in cheek.
“Walking confirmed for Mass Effect 5,” someone remarked, which led into a string of Quentin Tarantino jokes. But there are a few things that can be gleaned from the videos and the ‘transmissions’.
For a start, there’s some very cool new armour on display, though the person wearing it has their face covered. The conclusion a lot of people are jumping to is that it’s Commander Shepard from the original Mass Effect trilogy.
BioWare’s Michael Gamble has tweeted out a picture of the character and while they’re an N7, as Shepard was, that’s a designation used by commandos in the Alliance military.
Also, while EA and BioWare haven’t officially called the game Mass Effect 5, the first micro-teaser was dubbed ‘Epsilon’. Epsilon is the fifth letter in the Greek alphabet which is too much of a coincidence.
The text accompanying one of the videos quotes some of 2022’s N7 audio teaser. “ANDROMEDA DISTRESS SIGNAL DETECTED” it reads, which some fans have taken to mean this game will tie into Mass Effect: Andromeda, the fourth Mass Effect game.
Andromeda takes place 600 years after the Mass Effect trilogy, which could suggest some kind of time jump. The text accompanying the ‘Defiance’ chunk of the trailer reads “OCULON-2819-DEFIANCE”, which others have taken to mean the date the game is set in. Jumping forward could solve the problem of having to factor in Mass Effect players’ decisions.
What does this all mean? It means that EA and BioWare wanted to drum up more excitement for Mass Effect 5 and they’ve succeeded. Now, if EA and BioWare can just give us a release date, that’d be great.
While you wait for Mass Effect 5 to arrive, check out the best space games on PC. Or if you’re craving an action-adventure, these are the games you should be playing.