After BioWare's closure: internal trailer for cancelled Mass Effect with Liara surfaces
A Mass Effect Universe video shows a spy thriller set after the Reaper war. Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier vouches for it; BioWare and EA have not confirmed it.
Archive image · Photo: Photo is by Richard Cabrera / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (cropped and resized)
A day after Electronic Arts announced the closure of BioWare and the cancellation of the next Mass Effect, an internal trailer for the project has surfaced online. The video was first shared on Reddit's r/masseffect and ends with the title Mass Effect Universe. According to a text card at the start, it was made by a small team using pre-production assets.
It shows an in-engine cutscene without gameplay: a new male protagonist, a former soldier turned something of a spy who travels to planets to stop conflicts, meets an asari in a bar who turns out to be the one stoking them. A hooded companion reveals herself as series favourite Liara T'Soni. According to VGC, the game would have been set in the Milky Way after the Reaper war.
BioWare has not officially confirmed the footage, but Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier described it on Bluesky as a real trailer of the Mass Effect game BioWare was developing before its closure. According to Game Informer, IGN also says it verified the trailer; there is no official confirmation from BioWare or EA. This week EA cut around 400 jobs, including the entire BioWare team.