Mass Effect's Cancelled Sequel Would Have Turned Your Saves Into Timelines
Every choice mattered. Ouch.
The more we learn about BioWare's cancelled Mass Effect, the more it hurts. Romain Toutain, the franchise technical director on the project, says the game would have taken every choice from the original trilogy into account, to the point where your old saves could create whole parallel timelines (Kotaku).
Toutain shared the details on his Twitch stream while reacting to the leaked internal trailer, and a subtitled clip has been making the rounds since. On top of that, composer Austin Wintory has now posted about 20 minutes of music he wrote for the game (GameSpot).
How would the cancelled Mass Effect have used your choices?
"All the choices made in the first Mass Effect games were taken into account," Toutain said. He explained that players had so many choices they could "plug your saves together to create parallel universes," and said "everything was stateful" (PC Gamer).
He compared it to the Dragon Age Keep, but only "kinda." The system checked whether a game state made sense. If you killed a character a quest needed, the game would either find a way to keep the mission working or fail it on purpose, depending on what the designers wanted. Toutain also said "it worked in practice," which is maybe the most painful sentence in this whole story.
What else do we know about the game?
The game, internally called Mass Effect: Universe, had a new customizable hero, and Liara shows up in the leaked trailer. A separate leak from YouTuber Dantics says it was set 600 years after Mass Effect 3 and played like a spy thriller, with the galaxy split into three superpowers (Kotaku). That part hasn't been confirmed by anyone who worked on the game.
Wintory, who scored Journey, called Mass Effect his "ultimate white whale" and his "all-time dream project." He'd been in talks with BioWare and EA for a couple of years, but nothing was ever finalized (GameSpot).
Is there any hope for Mass Effect?
BioWare announced it was closing on October 21, and EA cancelled the next Mass Effect as part of about 400 layoffs (AP via KSAT). Fans answered with #SaveMassEffect, which has passed 200,000 signatures and put up a Times Square billboard, but EA hasn't responded (Kotaku). We covered the petition here.
My read is that these details make the cancellation sting more, because they show the team understood exactly what fans loved. Mass Effect was always about your Shepard, your choices and your crew, and this game was built to respect all of it. Toutain also said "EA never actually sells anything," so a rescue from another studio seems unlikely. The best thing fans can do is keep the series alive by playing it (and maybe saving Wrex, again).
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Header image is an official Mass Effect Legendary Edition screenshot from EA and BioWare, via Steam.
