Mass Effect fans are scrambling to decipher the new teaser for the upcoming game

Why release a new Mass Effect trailer when you can just send fans spiraling down the plot hole with a brief tease In place? BioWare today released its latest salvo of clues for the upcoming sci-fi RPG, including ambient video of a new mass relay, giant space stations firing on ships around the galaxy, in progress. of construction. There are nods to the ship from the original trilogy, Normandy, the villainous group Cerberus, and much more. Strap-in.

On the last day of N7, we only got one image. This time around we got a full 25 second clip of a ground effect relay built in space with ambient noise and mysterious repeating sounds. “There’s so much to discover in there.” tweeted project manager, Mike Gamble. “Good luck, investigators!”

The fans had their preview of the next Mass Effect from a trailer presented at The Game Awards 2020. In it, Liara from the original trilogy features a snowy planet with destroyed reapers in the background and stumbles upon a piece of armor that appears to have belonged to the protagonist of the series, Commander Shepard.

It also included a photo of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, which Gamble said was an intentional reference, implying that the new game could be a sequel of the two. Mass Effect 3 and Andromeda. This and subsequent teases have spurred fan theories on everything from time travel (Andromeda takes place hundreds of years later) to the still-living Shepard.

So what fans found so far in the last video? Well, for starters, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this ground relay. It was originally revealed in a BioWare Art Book 2020 which included further concept art teaser shots for the upcoming Mass Effect. “MR7” implies it is the seventh mass relay under construction, and the color of the paint designates the human supremacist group Cerberus as the builders.

A ship floats in the lower right corner of the screen. Is it the Normandy from the original series, or maybe Andromeda’s Tempest? Or maybe it’s the “mud captainship shown in last year’s teaser investigating the remains of a Geth. You can also see a blur moving across the screen at about six seconds. Some fans think THAT IS the Normandie, as it was the only known ship to have cloaking technology.

Then there are the numbers at the bottom of the screen: 11_07_90_000_1000-2013313. One interpretation is that this sequence dates from the year 2190, which would put it only four years after the destruction of the Reapers at the end of the original trilogy. 314, meanwhile, could be a reference to Relay 314, the discovery of which sparked the First Contact Wars before the events of Mass Effect 1, and lead to the creation of Cerberus. The file title also states that the footage was intercepted, implying that it could be surveillance by Systems Alliance, the galactic governing body of the original trilogy.

A fan tried to clean audio in clip and came to a recording of what appears to be Liara saying, “Exactly, the Council will be furious. Even though they should know by now not to underestimate…” The conversation continues, apparently interspersed with Geth sounds, but the rest is hard to understand. Still, this seems to indicate that the Council, the governing body of the Systems Alliance, is still intact, and so the fallout from the Reaper invasion hasn’t sent the galaxy into some sort of new Dark Age.

A big question since the following Mass Effect was revealed how the original trilogy and Andromeda could be tied together since there is a gap of around 600 years between them. This is how long it took for the colonists to get to the new galaxy and start exploring without a mass relay to help them travel. It’s possible that the new game will simply resume on this much later new date. Although Liara is in the first trailer, Asari can live to be over 1,000 years old. Time travel is another possible answer, given that the entire series relies on faster-than-light travel through the manipulation of mass and energy.

Another big question is whether Shepard might still be alive. There is now overwhelming evidence that the canonical end of Mass Effect 3 is where the player destroys synthetic life and mass relays. A final scene shows someone reluctant in Sheperd’s name on a memorial, and later cuts to the captain of the panting Normandie. Between Liara seemingly discovering Shepherd’s old armor on earth and the new game possibly taking place shortly after the trilogy ends if the 2190 date is to be believed, perhaps the favorite space renegade of not everyone is so dead after all. Earlier this year, a BioWare store post literally said as much, but Gamble quickly clarified that it was a mistake. Hmmm.

Either way, fans will likely have to wait a long time to see where all the clues lead and what theories actually unfold. BioWare has confirmed that while development on the upcoming Mass Effect advance, it is still very much in pre-production. We don’t even have a release date for Dragon Age: Dreadwolf yet, which the studio has been working on since 2018 Anthem. In the meantime, fans will have to content themselves with plumbing the depths of the Mass Effect wiki.

Update 11/07/22, 5:03 PM ET: Gamble confirmed the second half of Liara’s Twitter post, which reads, “Although they should know by now not to underestimate the human challenge!”

Update 11/07/22 5:42 PM ET: BioWare has now released the ffully decoded audio of today’s tease: