Back in Auguest, EA announced that Mass Effect Andromeda would not be getting any single player DLC, leaving in the lurch players looking forward to finding out what had happened to the races from the original trilogy that hadn’t appeared in the new RPG.
It appears as though their story will now be told through a tie-in novel being written by Hugo award-winner Catherynne M. Valente.
Speaking of DLC, these are the three pieces of DLC that would have saved Mass Effect: Andromeda.
The novel wasn’t commissioned in light of DLC cancellation, it was revealed last December, but EA reannounced the book with a release date of Summer next year. Originally the book had been slated to release this summer, but its delay isn’t addressed in EA’s post.
Mass Effect: Annihilation will tell the story of a quarian vessel, the Keelah Si’yah, which is carrying a load of 20,000 colonists. The complement is made up of all the races missing from Andromeda, the drell, elcor, batarian, and the quarian.
As you might expect, it’s not all smooth sailing: “A pathogen is discovered aboard the ark after many drell are found dead in their cryo pods. As the pathogen jumps species, the ship’s systems begin to fail, making it clear this is no accident.”
The book is due for a US and UK release on June 26th, 2018.
This whole story about all the missing races being off on a different ship bears more than a passing resemblance to a story from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B. The Golgafrinchan’s created three ships, two of them, Ships A and C, were to be loaded up with all of society’s best and brightest – artists, scientists, writers, and the like. While Ship B was filled with hairdressers, marketing departments, and TV producers – people the Golgafrincham elite thought they could do without. Ship B was then sent off to crashland on a distant planet.
I’m getting the distinct impression that the colony ship in Mass Effect: Annihilation has a Ship B vibe about it.