The day after the closure of BioWare and cancellation of the next Mass Effect game, a purported trailer for Mass Effect: Universe has surfaced on Reddit. The authenticity of the trailer is unknown at this point, but at the very least it sure looks legit.
Straight to it, here's the video:
Mass Effect: Universe Trailerfrom r/masseffect
Man, that looks like Mass Effect—and sounds like it, too. The music is right, and at least two PC Gamer employees are pretty sure that's Liara's actual voice. Shepard's out, but the new guy seems suitably Shepard-like, although I can't help but notice the absence of the N7 logo on his uniform. Maybe the new guy was meant to be a rawer, rougher kind of troubleshooter—more of a housecleaner than a world-saver—or perhaps the ascent to the rank was meant to be part of the character's progression, which would've been cool.
There are no obvious AI telltales here, at least none that I can see, and adding to the trailer's "real deal" potential, a redditor claiming to be an EA employee said yesterday that a trailer for the new game had been produced and suggested that it was not as early in the development process as was widely believed.
Not long after the trailer came to light, Jason Schreier of Bloomberg said on Bluesky that it is indeed real, and that BioWare had been working on the game until its closure.
Whatever the case—and we're still working on verifying its provenance—the trailer is also just the right blend of sexy, violent, and corny: Even if this isn't a real trailer for what BioWare was working on (and at this point it seems pretty certain that it is), it's a Mass Effect we would definitely play.
