THE CRUNCH
An internal trailer for Mass Effect Universe, the cancelled BioWare game in development before the studio's closure this week, has appeared online. The footage was made for EA leadership rather than the public, and opens with a note that it is in-engine footage using pre-production assets. It offers a first, and likely only, look at the game: a new protagonist exploring the galaxy with a crew including a Krogan, gunfights and biotics, a romance scene, and an appearance by Liara from the original trilogy.
Authenticity was quickly questioned, given how easily AI-generated fakes can now be produced, but IGN verified the trailer and Bloomberg's Jason Schreier corroborated it on his personal Bluesky account. Little else is known about the project. According to a former BioWare employee, it would have drawn on Baldur's Gate 3 and The Witcher to deliver what they described as "a level of autonomy and choice that no other game has", while staying true to the original trilogy.
The reaction is bittersweet. The roughly 50 developers working on Mass Effect Universe lost their jobs in EA's layoffs, which affected 400 employees across the company and also hit Respawn, Maxis, Full Circle and EA Motive. The cuts came only months after Saudi Arabia's $55bn leveraged buyout of EA, and while experts had anticipated reductions given the company's new debt obligations, the closure of BioWare still drew sympathy and anger from across the industry.