Mass Effect 5: What We Can Expect from the Next Game

Mass Effect is one of the most celebrated RPGs of recent years and its fifth game is in development by Bioware, leaving fans very anxious to know what happened to the world after we destroy (or control, or assimilate) the dreadful Reapers. Released during the 2020 Game Awards, the first teaser showed what happened to the game's main character, or at least, a speculation of their fate.

But, from then on, we’ve had no more news and, during N7 Day – November 7th – what we received was commemorative armor for our character in Dragon Age The Veilguard with the colors of the Specters' armor, the combatants elite in the Mass Effect universe. So, if you’re eager to get to know what happened after the end of the main trilogy and the fate of the characters we followed throughout this journey, then we have bad news: there’s still no release date and no news about it.

However, we can speculate about the game with the information we have and imagine what we can expect about the next game in the Mass Effect franchise and, if you have questions or information, leave a comment.

Before talking about the future, let's remember a little bit about the past and about where we left our heroes when the Mass Effect franchise ended.

In Mass Effect, we meet Commander Shepard, someone who can be a man or a woman (if he is a man, he is called by default, John, and a woman, Jane), who was born on Earth, on a planet that is a Terran colony or on a ship, which changes your background and some dialogue a little, but doesn’t affect the gameplay or the story as a whole. You choose your origin, class, which can be a combatant, a stealth agent or a user of psychic powers called Biotics.

Whatever your gender, origin or class, you’re a strong candidate to become a Spectre, the universe's elite soldiers made up of various alien races, and what's more, you’ll be the first human to join their ranks. Accompanied by a more experienced Specter and two human colleagues, you begin investigating a case that starts with a simple murder and ends with you saving the entire universe from an ancient alien race, the Reapers.

The three games also present you with a gallery of unforgettable companions (some more than others) such as Garrus, the turian elite shooter and calibration expert; Liara, the asari who starts as an innocent scientist and ends up as the galaxy's greatest informant; Tali, a qurian who ends her pilgrimage by saving her entire home planet; Wrex, the krogan who frees his species from a genetic disease that prevented everyone from procreating; Mordin, the salarian who has one of the most moving heroic scenes in games; Ashley or Kaidan, human companions who you will have to choose between in the first game, and whichever you do will accompany you for the rest of the journey.

After a long fight against the Reapers, we discover a weapon capable of definitively destroying them and all species come together to build it and fight on equal terms against them. At this point, you will have a choice:

* Destroy the Reapers, but in return, you will destroy all inorganic life in the universe, which includes the Geth, a race of robots that have become conscious and intelligent, and their companion, Edi (who is also the AI ​​of your ship );

* Control the Reapers, which is exactly what the great villain of the story, the Illusive Man, head of the organization that preaches human supremacy over aliens called Cerberus, wants.

* Or Synthesis, which will create a new form of life, half-organic and half-inorganic, which will bring peace to the entire universe, but, in some way, takes away part of everyone's individuality and free will.

Each choice has its pros and cons, but, for years, none of them were made official as the right or canonical choice in relation to the franchise. However, this appears to be changing.

Mass Effect: Andromeda was perhaps Bioware's way of continuing the story of Mass Effect without having to actually answer the question of which of the three choices was the official one, taking the franchise to another galaxy more than 600 years apart.

Between the second and third games in the franchise, a mysterious patron decided to finance a daring project, taking the inhabitants of the Milky Way to another galaxy, where they could prosper and continue to exist, free from the threat of the Reapers. The chosen location was the Andromeda galaxy, the closest to here (only 2.5 million light years).

The chosen ones would board Arks and be frozen, and awakened only when they were close, where the Trailblazers of each species would explore compatible planets and establish colonies, contact the inhabitants of the Andromeda galaxy and restart their lives.

Upon arrival, the human Ark is faced with a big problem: a strange force corrupts the habitable planets and prevents colonies from establishing themselves. The ship's food, water, and energy are at critical levels, and if they don't find a habitable place soon, what remains of the Milky Way's population will soon go extinct. It's up to you, as trailblazer Ryder (Alex or Sara), to discover what's behind the corruption of the planets and solve the problem.

Despite the relative success (and the announcement trailer set to the sound of the sensational Ghost Riders in Sky) Mass Effect Andromeda was released with many bugs and performance problems that made Bioware abandon this parallel series and turn its attention to the original trilogy. So, we land on Mass Effect 5.

During N7 Day 2023, Bioware released some images with small snippets of information that revealed a 34-second teaser, which you can check out below.

The N7 Day 2023 teaser eventually showed a helmeted figure – quite feminine in outline – wearing a padded N7 jacket with a collar worthy of Cyberpunk 2077 and a helmet that everyone is calling “Daft Punk”. She pulls out a gun and heads out of the building towards an open area that looks very dusty or sandy, with golden tones. The trailer was also accompanied by new Mass Effect art, which you can see below:

This dusty and sandy setting may give us a clue as to what happened after the end of the original trilogy, in addition to one of the main references that appears in the trailer released during the Game Awards, which is the Citadel (a gigantic space station that functioned as the capital of the galaxy) which was destroyed during the 3rd game and – spoilers – was part of the ultimate weapon against the Reapers.

In the final minutes, Liara T’Soni, one of our companions, appears taking a piece of Shepard’s armor from an ice-covered planet. In other words, in some way, it suggests that some catastrophic event altered the climate, changing a large part of it on several planets in the universe. Of course, there was a war against the Reapers, which would be reason enough for it to affect all of them, but perhaps that wasn't all.

It's possible that Bioware is canonizing the Destruction ending.

A lot of evidence of this can be seen in the trailer:

First, you hear the apocalyptic sound of the Reapers in the trailer and, during the scene where Liara walks across the ice planet, you can see a Reaper in the background (whether he's alive or dead is another matter). This appearance was confirmed by the project's director, Michael Gamble, who confirmed the presence of Reapers in the trailer.

If you played the Synthesis and Control endings, you know that it's not possible that Reapers "survived" to "make noise in the trailer".

Afterward, the ice planet we see Liara on looks a lot like the final scene of the extended version of Mass Effect 3, in which we see – only if we choose the Destruction ending – the chest of someone wearing N7 armor breathing deeply as if they had just woken up – hinting at the possibility that Shepard survived the Citadel’s explosion. The trailer clearly wants to make a connection to this point in the story, implying that Liara has been searching for Shepard all these years and has finally found a clue.

Additionally, the poster revealed as part of N7 Day 2021 teases the upcoming game. Not only does this crater look a lot like a Geth helmet, but if you zoom in on these small figures, one of them appears to be wearing Krogan armor.

Interestingly, in January 2022, BioWare General Manager Gary McKay revealed in a BioWare blog post that the poster contains “a handful of hidden Easter eggs”, including “at least five surprises, all of which point to an incredible future in the Mass Effect universe.”

Of course, he doesn't go into detail about what any of the secrets are, but adds that he's seeing "incredible work from both teams," referring to the Mass Effect and Dragon Age development teams.

Further evidence that we will be playing in a scenario where the Destruction ending was chosen is the appearance of Liara. When we chose the Synthesis ending, it’s possible to see that all living beings acquired lines with a greenish glow on their skin in addition to bright-green eyes. And we don't have those in the girl's blue skin.

So, the speculation is that the next game will ignore the possibilities of Control and synthesis, canonically assuming that Shepard chose to destroy the Reapers using the ultimate weapon, but, for some reason, they still managed to escape.

The new Mass Effect game is being made by a "veteran team" at BioWare. Shortly after the release of the teaser trailer, BioWare project director Michael Gamble highlighted some of the names returning to create the next step in the franchise on Twitter.

For starters, Dusty Everman has returned to the development team as a lead narrative designer. Gamble mentions that Everman was one of the main contributors when it came to bringing the Normandy ship back to life and was previously a senior designer at BioWare. Parrish Ley, who previously served as cinematic director on the Mass Effect Trilogy, is also returning to bring "his vision" to the new adventure, along with BioWare's longtime programmer and technical designer Brenon Holmes and the original art director of Mass Effect, Derek Watts.

Now the burning question is: when will the next Mass Effect adventure arrive? Well, we probably won't see an official release date for some time, especially considering BioWare is still in the early stages of development.

Now talk to us, what do you hope to see in the next Mass Effect? Are you anxious? Leave it in the comments and let's theorize about Shepard's next adventures aboard the Normandy or remember exciting moments from the trilogy.