BioWare unveil teaser for fifth MASS EFFECT game

BioWare have unveiled a brief teaser for the upcoming fifth game in the Mass Effect franchise.

As part of N7 Day - an annual celebration of the franchise derived from the N7 special forces group in the video games - BioWare released a series of text and video bursts teasing a new clip. Once fans had done some detective work, the full clip was posted as above.

The accompanying text (in the original files) suggests that the next game in the series takes place in or after the year 2819, the year that Mass Effect: Andromeda took place in, and a distress call from the Andromeda Galaxy has been detected. The text also suggests that the Systems Alliance, the Earth-led human faction in the Mass Effect universe, is still extant. The original Mass Effect trilogy concluded in the year 2186, for reference.

BioWare and parent company Electronic Arts confirmed some years ago that a new Mass Effect game was in development. However, it is still likely some years off; the company is currently working hard to get Dragon Age: Dreadwolf finished for its likely 2024 launch and will only turn its full firepower towards Mass Effect 5 (or, more likely, Mass Effect Colon Dramatic Subtitle) after that game comes out.

The Mass Effect franchise was launched in 2007 with the titular original game; it was followed by Mass Effect 2 (2010) and Mass Effect 3 (2012). The three games are notable for combining into one very large mega-game where players can guide their characters through almost 100 hours of an epic space opera war story, in which humanity and the other races of the Milky Way are plunged into war against an ancient alien threat, the Reapers. In 2017 BioWare released Mass Effect: Andromeda, a spin-off story set more than six centuries later in the Andromeda Galaxy. However, the game garnered a lukewarm reaction from fans and middling sales. BioWare decided not to proceed with a direct sequel, despite the game setting one up. In 2021 they released Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, a packaging of all three original games into one title with some upgrades to the graphics and controls.

It sounds like the new game will take place in the Milky Way again and will have to decide which one of Mass Effect 3's endings is canon. However, by taking place after Andromeda, it may also be able to resolve some of the unresolved story threads from that game.

Although teasing a new Mass Effect game is welcome, fans have also taken advantage of N7 Day to criticise the lay-offs of numerous developers from the company in the last few weeks, including some of the last original team-members from the Baldur's Gate franchise (an interesting look after Baldur's Gate III launched back in August from Larian Studios and was a massive critical and commercial success of the kind that BioWare has not enjoyed in over fifteen years), as well as QA staff after they voted to unionise (although BioWare have pointed out that was a decision by their contracted company rather than BioWare themselves).

It's fair to say that an enormous amount is riding on the success of both Dragon Age: Dreadwolf and Mass Effect Next: BioWare have not had a really big hit since the release of Dragon Age: Inquisition nine years ago, and the company has since been haemorrhaging fans, critical acclaim and its creative firepower.

Mass Effect: Andromeda

The year 2819. 634 years ago, the Andromeda Initiative launched five space arks and a huge mobile space station towards the Andromeda Galaxy. 100,000 settlers from a dozen races were placed in cryo-suspension and a cutting-edge FTL telescope identified half a dozen "Golden Worlds" in the Heleus Cluster for colonisation. However, something has gone wrong. The golden worlds are now desolate and ravaged by radiation or ice or heat. Strange ruins guarded by robots can be found on many planets, and a hostile alien race, the Kett, have invaded and seem to be determined to subjugate the cluster and its native race, the Angara. Low on fuel, food and supplies, the Andromeda Initiative has to work hard just to survive. The human Pathfinder, Ryder, is given their own ship and a tough crew to help the expedition survive. There is no going back.

Andromeda is the fourth game in the Mass Effect series and, as the lack of numeration hints, also a soft reboot of the franchise. The original Mass Effect trilogy told one story that over hundreds of choices made over three games until different players could have wildly different outcomes to their versions of Commander Shepard's battle against the Reapers. As a result, to avoid "canonising" any of these choices, Andromeda moves the action 2.5 million light-years away to our nearest big galactic neighbour. Plenty of familiar races, technology and terms show up, but no familiar characters. It was definitely a bold solution to the problem.

Andromeda also shifts gears in terms of format and genre. The first three games were linear action-RPGs, dramatically increasing the action quotient and dialling back the RPG systems as the trilogy went along. Andromeda reverses that move, having more RPG, customisation and advancement systems than any game in the series to date. It also takes a leaf out of the original Mass Effect (2007) by focusing on exploration as a key mechanic, although a much simplified version of the search for resources mechanic from the second and third games is also present. There is also much more of an open-world feel to the game this time around, complete with large, expansive maps with lots of side-quests to undertake and collectibles to find.

The changes were controversial with fans, who felt that the success of the Mass Effect series is rooted in linear storytelling, focused characterisation and a relatively constrained playing time (each game in the Mass Effect trilogy clocks in at around 30 hours). Making Andromeda into an open-world game taking comfortably more than twice that long to complete was always going to be divisive, not helped by Andromeda certainly not having the sharp writing of the series at its best. The game also suffers from having to dial down the huge events and epic storytelling from Mass Effect 3 (2012) and start building a new narrative from scratch. After the huge events of Mass Effect 3, Andromeda feels small again which some took as a good thing (you can't really beat Mass Effect 3 for scale, and it'd be foolish to try) but others took as a sign of a lack of ambition.

Structurally, the game starts out as normal for BioWare: an early, linear section acts as a tutorial and also an introduction to the story and characters. You play either Scott or Sara Ryder, the twin children of Alec Ryder. Alec is a Pathfinder, a special exploration/reconnaissance specialist whose skills are boosted by the presence of an AI in his brain, named SAM. After choosing which twin to play, the other one is unceremoniously boosted into a cryo-tray malfunction coma, which feels like a bit of a wasted potential (the option to play both twins in co-op would have been welcome). Anyway, Ryder Jnr. quickly inherits their father's super-AI and becomes the new Pathfinder.

Once the initial linear section is over, the game opens up and you have the option of taking on new quests on the Nexus - the mobile space station that serves as this game's answer to the Citadel - and then shooting off into space on the Tempest, the game's equivalent of the Normandy. The Tempest is a much smaller but, it has to be said, far more swish spaceship and it's genuinely more fun to explore, hang out and shoot the breeze with your companion characters (who have far, far more to say than their original trilogy counterparts) before carrying out missions. You can explore the map of the Heleus Cluster, scanning planets from orbit for resources and supplies, and also land at will on five planets. In the biggest shift in format for the series, each one of these five planets is an absolutely enormous map across which you can explore in the Nomad, this game's equivalent of the Mako.

Each planet is suffering from some kind of problem: Eos's magnetosphere appears to have been damaged, allowing harmful radiation to reach the surface. Havarl is a toxic jungle which is becoming less able to support life. Voeld is a frigid, frozen wasteland. Kadara's water supply is poisoned. Elaaden is a baking desert. These problems inhibit your ability to move around freely, restricting you to the Nomad and occasional jaunts outside. However, and most fortuitously, you quickly discover that an ancient alien race was in the process of terraforming the cluster and they have left behind huge engines hidden below the surface of each planet. Thanks to your SAM interface, you can activate these engines and bring each planet back to habitability. When you do so, the environmental problems clear up and you can found colonies on each planet.

Of course, you are not alone. Early on you meet the Kett, a hostile alien race which sees other species purely as resources that can be consumed, barely at the level of animals. This allows you to murderate the Kett on sight without guilt (always handy in a game built around lots and lots of combat), although to be fair the Kett do get some more development later on in the game that makes them both more hateful as enemies but also opens the possibility of negotiation, at least with some factions. The Kett are definitely not on the threat level of the Reapers, and are actually less advanced than the Milky Way interlopers, not having biotics or mass effect technology. Their guns hit hard, though, and they certainly have numbers on their side. They also come in a lot of varieties, with each type requiring different tactics to deal with.

More friendly are the Angara, the native inhabitants of the cluster. The Kett are the only aliens they've ever met, so unsurprisingly it takes quite a while for you to win them over as potential allies (after gaining an Angaran representative as an ally on your team). This is where Andromeda gets interesting. A game about 100,000 people showing up without warning and setting up home is effectively a story about colonisation and colonialism, a tricky subject to get right. Andromeda constantly brings up the subject, with Ryder at one point admitting to their new Angaran friend that whenever two civilisations meet in an unprepared manner, one usually ends up subsumed by the other. The legitimate Angaran concerns over whether the Milky Way newcomers are allies to help out against the Kett or potential rivals for limited resources in the cluster are given a fair bit of weight, and at different points in the story you gain and  lose Angaran allies because of how the Initiative is comporting itself as it settles the planets. The game doesn't go too far down this road, as ultimately this is a game about shooting bad aliens and being friends with the good aliens, but it's good to see the subject being tackled at all.

The game's main storyline unfolds as the Initiative settles the cluster, fights off Kett attacks and manages some tricky diplomacy with the Angara. The storyline and structure encourages you to mix in main story missions with a ton of side-missions, such as helping the colonies get off the ground, tracking down supplies and trying to reconcile various "outcasts" from the Initiative who have gone rogue. You also have to find the missing other arks and track down resources like food and fuel for the organisation. There are also tough administrative choices on the Nexus, with issues like needing to bring more people out of stasis to work at solving these problems, but also in a way that doesn't exhaust current resources. You also have a personal mission to follow, as it turns out that your father had various secrets about why the Andromeda Initiative was founded and launched, and his own hidden objectives he kept from everyone else.

If that wasn't enough, the six squad-mates you pick up through the game also each have their own backstory and attendant loyalty quests to attend you. Completing these quests unlocks another tier of skills they can access in battle. You also have to manage the Initiative's APEX security squads, recruiting troops and send them off to perform missions you are too busy to deal with, as well as researching new technology to help you in Heleus. At certain points in the game you can also wake up new Initiative crew from cryo-sleep and assign them to science, military or commercial projects.

There is a lot going on in this game, far more than in any prior Mass Effect game (although you can see the descendants of Mass Effect 2's loyalty missions and Mass Effect 3's War Assets systems here). Sometimes it is exhausting and overwhelming, but a lot of it is pretty good and makes you genuinely feel like a plugged-in, senior member of a space exploration team. Trudging in from a lengthy ground combat mission on the desert moon of Elaaden to check in on how your APEX teams are doing and then invest your research points in some better armour and then assign a new science team which has just woken up from stasis can feel pretty good.

There is a thin line between "keeping you busy" and "burying you in filler makework," though and Andromeda strays across that line a few times (to be fair, not anywhere near as often as its structural predecessor, Dragon Age: Inquisition). Missions like tracking down 15 plants to scan or 15 new minerals to analyse are too tedious, and the game's immensely involved system for researching and building armour and weapon upgrades is both impressive and almost useless, since you will usually acquire comparable equipment from enemies in the field or from shops. Once you've used the terraforming vaults to save the planet Eos, you instantly know how to unlock the three Remnant ruin sites and attendant vault on each of the other planets, and it's a fairly repetitive task to undertake (with the exact same boss fight to follow). There also a few too many missions, particularly at the end of the game, which require you to visit three or four of the planets in rapid succession, which can feel like you're battling through a series of never-ending loading screens.

Andromeda also lacks the sharp writing of the best of the trilogy. Infamously, one of your crewmates is religious and when she asks you about your beliefs, your only options are to profess total ignorance of what religion is (!), immediately profess belief in a deity yourself or castigate her for believing in fairy stories. This lacks the more nuanced approach in some of the earlier games, and is fairly typical of the dialogue through the game. There is also a fair amount of implausibility about the size, scope and cost of the Initiative project (which was never mentioned once in the OG trilogy, even though it turns out several of the original characters knew about it), although to be fair the game does try to explain this later on.

Your cast of companion characters are also solid, but a little undercooked. South London geezer Liam is more fun than the bland human companions of the OG trilogy, but still doesn't really give you any reason to take him on missions. Cora is a fine human biotic soldier whose major defining character trait is that she served with an elite squad of Asari commandos, something she will shoehorn into every other conversation. She's also (very briefly) narked off because she was in training to become Pathfinder, but you usurped her position thanks to your convenient Head AI. Any potentially interesting character conflict is dealt with in about five minutes. You also have an Asari archaeologist, Peebee, whom the writers try very hard to differentiate from Liara by making her an attention-deficit, reckless, manic pixie girl (she does improve immensely over the game's length, but that first impression is yikes). There's a grizzled Krogan warrior, Drack, who starts off as a clone of OG grizzled Krogan warrior Wrex. Fortunately, Drack differentiates himself due to his sheer age and his family connections (his granddaughter Kesh is an important side-character) and ends up becoming a solid crewmate. Turian smuggler Vetra is also good fun, but the game's MVP in terms of characters is Jaal, the Angaran representative who joins your team and whose sense of humour and bewildered research into the Milky Way races is a constant source of comedy and sometimes pathos. Overall, they're a good cast but lack the punch and finer writing of the OG crew from the trilogy.

However, the game wins back a lot of goodwill through combat. Combat was very stiff in the first Mas Effect game, improved in the second and became fairly solid in the third, but never spectacular. Andromeda takes advantage of the more advanced engine and the larger areas where you will be fighting. One of the game's big selling-points is that you have a jet pack which you can use for combat and exploration, and it has to be said that it is fantastic. You can rocket up to vantage points, jump out of melee range of non-ranged enemies and execute a sharp dodge to get out of a sniper's firing line. You can level up dozens of abilities rather than just four or five and switch between them in the field. The game's frankly ludicrously huge selection of weapons and armour means you can tailor your character's combat abilities and specialities in fine detail. Simply put, Andromeda has easily the best combat in the series to date and the best mechanics and systems for tailoring your character in the way you see fit.

Andromeda is a game that sometimes feels like an embarrassment of riches and sometimes a rich source of embarrassment. The sheer volume of content should in theory mean you'll never get bored, but in practice you can find yourself tracking down just one more plant to scan at 2am and wonder what the hell you're doing. The companion characters are potentially fascinating, but their dialogue sometimes feels undercooked. The game has an immense array of systems to engage with, but they're not all worth the time. The game has fantastic combat, but the enemy can feel under-developed and not enough of a challenge. The theme of colonisation is potentially brilliant, but the story only periodically engages with it. The planets are huge and beautiful, but also full of repetitive content.

If you can work through or avoid the more disposable content of the game, its story eventually becomes quite interesting (especially as the events of the original trilogy do turn out to have more bearing on Andromeda than you first think), its combat is always great and compelling, and the game sells the wish-fulfilment fantasy of you being a space captain (more Janeway than Kirk) quite well.

Mass Effect: Andromeda (***½) can't hold a candle to the original trilogy's stronger story and characters, but by pivoting to focus on exploration and more freedom, it carves out its own identity. Somewhat underrated and well worth a look, the game is available now on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

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Happy 10th Anniversary to MASS EFFECT

On 20 November 2007 the video game company BioWare took one of the biggest risks in their history by releasing what was only their third original game, not one set in a pre-existing universe. The first, Jade Empire (2005), had been extremely good but had not set the world on fire. Given that BioWare had bet the farm on them moving into original, creator-owned IPs, they needed their new game to be a success. It was called Mass Effect and, rather fortunately, it was.

BioWare had been founded in Canada in 1995 by newly-graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk and Augustine Yip. Using programming knowledge gained from other courses taken alongside their medical studies, they created a video game called Shattered Steel. It was published by Interplay and was a very modest success. Yip decided to return to practising medicine whilst Muzyka and Zeschuk moved into full-time development. Their second game came about during discussions with Interplay, who wanted to use the Dungeons and Dragons licence they'd just acquired (at a steal) from TSR, Inc. BioWare created a new video game engine, which they dubbed "Infinity", which blew away the team at Interplay and led to them getting the commission to make a massive fantasy roleplaying game. For a brand new studio it was a big achievement...and a huge responsibility.

Fortunately the two doctors and their rapidly expanding team were up to the job. They released Baldur's Gate in 1998 and it was an enormous success. They branched into console development with MDK2 (2000) but their hearts had been stolen by character and story-focused roleplaying games, games which emphasised character developments and even romances over magical explosions and loot. Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000) was an even bigger success than its forebear, whilst Interplay's in-house Black Isle Studios used the Infinity Engine to craft the excellent games Planescape: Torment (1999), Icewind Dale (2000) and Icewind Dale II (2002).

BioWare then created a new engine, the Aurora Engine, to power a new D&D roleplaying game. Neverwinter Nights (2002) was also a big success, although more for its incredibly powerful campaign-creation system allowing players to recreate the D&D experience online than the game's own, pedestrian story (the game's expansions were rather better-received). By this time BioWare had become arguably the most feted RPG design studio on the planet, so were the perfect collaborators for LucasArts, who wanted to make the first-ever Star Wars roleplaying game. The result, Knights of the Old Republic, was released in 2003 and was a huge success, one of the best RPGs of all time and possibly the finest single Star Wars video game ever made (a distinction it comfortably holds today, despite a serious challenge from Jedi Outcast and TIE Fighter).

At the very height of their success and critical acclaim, BioWare chose to give it up and begin working on their own, original titles. They encouraged their partner companies to dish the sequels out to the old Black Isle team, now rising out of the ashes of the collapsed Interplay as Obsidian Entertainment. Obsidian made the well-regarded (if buggy) Knights of the Old Republic II (2004) and Neverwinter Nights II (2007) whilst BioWare began their assault on the original IP space.

BioWare began developing three original games. The first was a martial arts roleplaying game called Jade Empire, using the Knights of the Old Republic engine. The game came out in 2005 and was an original X-Box title. It was a modest success, but not the mega-selling hit BioWare had been hoping for. They also began working on a new fantasy IP, a vast and expansive RPG using a whole new engine which would be a "spiritual successor" to Baldur's Gate. The game eventually went way over time and budget, but was ultimately released in 2009 under the name Dragon Age. Fortunately it was a big hit and went to spawn two sequels (and a third, under the working title Dragon Age IV, is currently in development).

Alongside these titles, BioWare began working on a science fiction RPG. They wanted to do something different for this game and that was to make an epic space opera in every sense of the word: a game with a deep, detailed backstory, lots of alien races and a growing menace which would eventually, over the course of three games, build into an apocalyptic threat. BioWare also really wanted to nail the things they'd always been applauded for - deep, interesting characters complete with friendships, interrelationships and even romances - but using modern 3D technology to make the characters more relateable and convincing than ever before.

Released in November 2007, Mass Effect fulfilled those goals. The player takes on the role of Commander Shepard, a resourceful military officer in the Systems Alliance (a future human government) and the first human "Spectre", a special forces agent tasked with dealing with massive threats to the Citadel, a multi-racial alliance based in a huge, ancient, alien space station. Saren Arterius, a rogue Turian Spectre, begins undertaking strange attacks against Citadel forces and Shepard is assigned to stop him, using a starship called the Normandy and a multi-ethnic crew of humans and aliens. The game ranges across a large chunk of the Milky War galaxy and, as the story developers, Shepard is forced to make a number of huge decisions with extremely far-reaching consequences. Literally, the fate of entire species is in Shepard's hands.

The game was widely praised for the customisability of the character. Shepard could be male (voiced by Marc Meer) or female (voiced by Jennifer Hale) and their physical appearance could be tweaked considerably. They could also be "good" (Paragon) or "evil" (Renegade) based on moral decisions they made throughout the game. Companion characters could be permanently killed off, along with allies and enemies (who would then go on to appear - or not - in the sequels). This led to a game with a set storyline but where the details of that story could completely change from player to player.

At the end of the game it is confirmed that Saren is working for a powerful alien race called the Reapers, a biomechanical nightmare that emerges every few millennia to wipe out advanced spacefaring races for unknown reasons. The overwhelming threat of the Reapers became the driving force behind the sequels.

Mass Effect sold well on release and was critically acclaimed, appeasing BioWare's new owners Electronic Arts (who were rather less happy with the long gestation period and enormous budget of Dragon Age, eventually mandating a low-budget, quickie sequel to help justify the cost of the first game). It was followed by Mass Effect 2 in 2010 and Mass Effect 3 in 2012. These games increased the emphasis on characterisation and story whilst refining combat (both games saw a reduction in traditional RPG gameplay elements, such as inventory management, to the ire of some fans). Mass Effect 3's release in March 2012 was highly controversial, with a badly-written ending that many fans felt was unsatisfying. BioWare released patches and DLC which reworked the ending and improved it, but it remained a dubious decision.

Despite the poorly-received ending of the third game, the Mass Effect series remains generally well-regarded. It's a big-budget, combat-focused space opera game which nevertheless emphasises relationships, dialogue and story over mass slaughter. There's a lot of good writing, moments of great humour and some canny characterisation in the trilogy, and the degree to which you can change things so entire races can be absent from later games in the series is remarkable. Mass Effect was also highly notable in that it was almost the only new space opera universe to appear on screen in the first decade of the 21st Century (The Expanse and SyFy label-mates Killjoys and Dark Matter eventually helped end that drought). The game trilogy eventually went on to sell about 20 million copies, which although not setting the world on fire (Fallout 4, for example, sold over half that in its first 24 hours on sale) is very impressive for a single-player-focused, narratively-driven game series.

Unfortunately, Mass Effect's legacy has not been enduring. The fourth Mass Effect game, Mass Effect: Andromeda was released in 2017 and faced a seriously mixed reception, with technical issues and a bland storyline. The game sold 2 million copies in its first six months on sale, which was far below EA and BioWare's expectations and led to the series being put on hiatus (despite two sequels to Andromeda being in the planning stages). BioWare are now focusing on Dragon Age IV and a whole-new IP, an action game called Anthem. Not only is the future of Mass Effect itself in doubt, EA seems to be down on the whole idea of single-player-focused games with strong stories altogether, preferring big "open world" games or multiplayer.

Although flawed, the original Mass Effect trilogy remains a compelling gaming experience and well worth a look if you haven't yet given it a try. The complete trilogy is available now for the PlayStation 3, X-Box 360, X-Box One and PC.

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Trailers for MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA

BioWare are gearing up for the release of Mass Effect: Andromeda. This is the fourth game in the Mass Effect series, but is also the start of a new trilogy which will not be releated to the events of the previous games.

The training video above explains the basic premise: in 2176 Jien Garson (voied by Sense8's Jamie Clayton) convinces Earth and several other worlds to sponsor the Andromeda Initiative. This project sees three large colony ships and an even larger mobile base, the Nexus, constructed with the goal of colonising the Andromeda galaxy, over two million light-years from the Milky Way. In 2185, between the events of Mass Effect 2 and 3, the Initiative is launched. All four vessels are well outside the Milky Way galaxy when the events that conclude Mass Effect 3 take place, meaning that they are not effected by the choices the player makes at the end of the trilogy.

Andromeda itself will begin circa 2780. After a journey of roughly six hundred yeaers in cryosleep, the Nexus and the colony ships have reached the Helios Cluster, a region on the outskirts of the Andromeda galaxy. Unfortunately, one of the ships, the Hyperion, crewed and operated by humans, has gone off-course. You control either Scott or Sara Ryder, the children of Alec Ryder, the Hyperion's Pathfinder. Something happens and Alec goes AWOL, leading you to pick either Scott or Sara (the other character remains in the game as an advisor, but not a squad-mate) and promote them to replacement Pathfinder. Unlike Shepard from the first three games, who was already a combat veteran, your character in Andromeda will be untested and new to command.

The game will unfold in a broadly similar manner to the previous trilogy, with you flying to new worlds and taking part in missions. This time there's more freeform content based on exploring each planet in your new vehicle, the Nomad (an advancement from the Mako), and getting into scrapes with new aliens. There is a new adversary race, the Kett, but not much has been revealed about them. BioWare want to keep a lot of surprises for the game itself, which sounds like it will be focused much more on exploration than the previous games in the series. However, they have revealed a new classless levelling system, based instead around skills, and a more nuanced take on morality rather than the old binary Paragon/Renegade system.

Mass Effect: Andromeda will be released in Spring 2017 on PC, X-Box One and PlayStation 4.

MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA announced

BioWare confirmed a while ago that Mass Effect 4 was going to be a thing, but it wasn't going to be called that and would be a very different game. They've now reaffirmed that with the proper title, Mass Effect: Andromeda.

The new game will take place some considerable time after the events of the Mass Effect Trilogy. You will play the commander of a starship exploring the Andromeda Galaxy, having made the dangerous intergalactic journey from the Milky Way. The game will apparently feature a mixture of established, "classic" races from the original games and some new species you encounter in the new location. The game's setting will allow BioWare to minimise references to the original trilogy.

No word yet on the storyline, but the game's structure will see your ship exploring new worlds both from orbit and using the Mako ground vehicle, which plays a bigger role this time around and can be upgraded. The game is set for release in late 2016.