What is BioWare's new game?

The game BioWare teased earlier this afternoon could be Shattered Steel or Mass Effect 3.

A barcode tweeted by the developer was scanned to reveal a binary code. Rock Paper Shotgun deciphered this to give the number 55.845, otherwise known as the atomic weight of iron, a material that can be turned into steel.

Shattered Steel was a 1996 game by BioWare that was fast-paced and involved mechs destroying each other. Multiplayer was a key part of it.

A second barcode tweeted by BioWare was deciphered to give a temperature value of -128.5 Fahrenheit. That's the coldest temperature recorded on Earth - in Vostok, Antartica on 21st July 1983. RPS questioned whether this was cold enough to shatter steel?

Vostok also happens to be the name of the first manned spaceflight.

Vostok is the name of a planetary system in Mass Effect 1, too.

What does it all mean?

Earlier today we saw an image - and the video clip the image was pulled from - of an unannounced BioWare game. These showed a gruff man with a sniper rifle-style gun looking out on an indiscernible cityscape. The setting appeared to be present day and there was no fancy technology to be seen.

Some speculated that the sniper rifle looked like an Incisor rifle from the Mass Effect games.

But the man was unrecognisable and there were no unquestionably clear links to Mass Effect 3 - the game BioWare is most likely building next.

We'll know for sure when the game is announced in full at the VGA awards next month.