BioWare teases Mass Effect 5 title, trilogy ending questions
UPDATE: Full teaser trailer revealed.
UPDATE 11.30pm: After a bit of community head-gathering, the clues have been cracked and BioWare's full 30-second Mass Effect teaser trailer has been shared online.
It's not, admittedly, a whole lot more informative than the initial five-second fragment we got at the start of it all earlier today, but it does at least showcase a very nice trench coat emblazoned with the N7 logo, suggesting our masked mystery figure - the next game's protagonist? Villain? - is a member of the series' crack military squad. Or a coat thief.
That same trench coat resurfaced again in artwork shared on BioWare's Twitter/X feed, this time sneakily revealing - through a bit of the old 'ENHANCE' malarky - some tiny potential lore details.
By zooming in, we see a fussy neon bar scene, featuring clothes for the geth and sightings of angara - which Eurogamer Mass Effect expert Tom Phillips explained to me thusly (it's Matt writing this update, by the way; Tom isn't referring to himself in the third-person): "Angara are native to Andromeda so this means either the geth are in Andromeda too now or the angara are in the Milky Way (I think it's the latter)". So there you go!
ORIGINAL STORY 6.14pm: BioWare has celebrated this year's annual Mass Effect celebrations with a blog post that hints at Mass Effect 5's title - and suggests fans will get answers to their burning questions concerning what happened after Mass Effect 3's ending.
It's unclear, however, whether this means these are coming in Mass Effect 5 - still several years away - or sooner, as part of N7 Day itself.
"We've asked ourselves many of the same questions you've asked us over the years!" Mass Effect boss Mike Gamble wrote. "What happened to everyone you know and love in the games? Who really died? Who had kids with whom? What does a baby volus sound like?
"What about all the galaxies? The endings! What the heck is going on with our asari scientist-turned-Shadowbroker? What about S— nevermind... you get the idea.
"And of course, to those questions, there are answers, but you'll have to wait to hear them. And anything we do say won't be easy to find, just like you've come to expect from our #N7Day teases."
The rest of the post continues with a list of various Mass Effect merch available to buy, with hidden binary code spread throughout. Filter it out and you get 01000101011100000111001101101001011011000110111101101110, which spells out "Epsilon". Could this be the name of the next Mass Effect game?
Fans have already found a new page on EA's site if you type in the following URL: https://www.ea.com/en-gb/games/mass-effect/epsilon It remains to be seen if more will be added to the page in the coming hours. [UPDATE: There's now this brief video clip, below - and a reference to Andromeda.]
It's worth noting that Epsilon was one of the original names BioWare considered for the series, before the developer ultimately picked Mass Effect. Oh, and epsilon is also the fifth Greek numeral - which would make sense for ME5.
Of course, the answers to who lived and died after the events of Mass Effect 3 are going to differ from player to player. The sheer mention of "S-" has got fans hyped up, however - as some who insist Shepard will somehow be alive in the next game look for crumbs of information to justify their theories.
Mass Effect 5 remains in pre-production, with the bulk of BioWare still busy finishing the long-awaited Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. The next chapter of the space opera saga is expected to pick up many hundreds of years after the original trilogy, and return the series' focus back to the Milky Way.
Previous years have seen N7 Day provide further clues. 2021 gave us a highly-detailed image with a ton of hidden details, not least the return of the geth. Last year brought further concept art and a snippet of fresh dialogue from Liara.
Earlier today we reported on two sets of former Mass Effect and Dragon Age workers seeking to use N7 Day to highlight their own plights, after being let go earlier year. A picket is planned at BioWare's offices, while a group of staff are taking the company to court over severance pay.