Mass Effect News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

It’s been a long time since the glory days of the original Mass Effect trilogy, and though the series’ fanbase remains as strong and loud as it has ever been, there’s little doubt that the sci-fi franchise’s stock has fallen notably over the years, thanks in large part to the misstep that was Mass Effect: Andromeda. Series fans will, however, take solace in the fact that its next mainline instalment’s development is being led by veterans who’ve been working on the franchise for a long, long time.

An eagle-eyed gamer has noticed an unsettling detail about the ending of Mass Effect 3 that would be easily missed by most players. The Mass Effect trilogy is packed full of interesting details, but this is one that BioWare perhaps wishes most players wouldn't discover.

Jennifer Hale, one of the talented voice actors behind Mass Effect’s legendary hero Commander Shepard, hasn’t heard from BioWare about possibly appearing in the upcoming Mass Effect 4. In classic RPG fashion, the original three Mass Effect games gave players the ability to fully customize their protagonist, down to selecting their gender. This choice resulted in Shepard being voiced by two different actors, with Mark Meer playing the male version and Jennifer Hale stepping into the role of the female Shepard.

BioWare fans are already looking forward to Mass Effect 4 and Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, but the famed developer could have even more projects already in the works. BioWare is responsible for some of the most beloved Western RPGs of all time, from licensed hits like Neverwinter Nights and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic to original IPs like Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

The next Mass Effect game will be led by trilogy veterans across several key positions on the development team. While the game is still a long way off, BioWare has slowly teased a new Mass Effect title since its initial announcement in December 2020. A beloved sci-fi franchise, Mass Effect set the stage for BioWare's modern era by introducing the dialogue wheel, a voice-acted protagonist, and leaning even further towards BioWare pillars such as memorable companions and romance.

If you're a fan who's desperately looking for a new adventure, then this new RPG might be exactly what you're looking for. Following the release of, a soft reboot of the sci-fi franchise, Bioware's sci-fi games have been dormant as the studio quietly continues development on the fifth mainline entry in the saga. While players look forward to that, it might be time to turn to the tabletop to satisfy that craving to send all those pesky Reaper packing back into deep space.

The recent layoffs at Electronic Arts may have put the future of some upcoming projects in question, but fans can rest assured that Mass Effect 5 is still being worked on at BioWare. There has been a growing number of layoffs in the gaming industry over the past year or so, with Mass Effect 5 developer BioWare cutting part of the Star Wars: The Old Republic team back in June. This hasn’t slowed down in 2024, with a reported total of over 8,000 job losses in just the past couple of months alone.

From Battlefield studio Ridgeline Games being shut down to Respawn Entertainment’s single player Star Wars FPS being cancelled, a number of EA studios have been affected by the company’s recently-announced mass layoffs. It seems, however, that the two major projects that BioWare has in production haven’t been affected.

Today’s the day when Destiny 2 and EA’s Mass Effect collaboration begins, bringing cosmetics and in-game goodies inspired by the Normandy crew.

An eagle-eyed player has spotted a deep Mass Effect Easter egg in Helldivers 2, one that might put a smile on the face of anyone with fond memories of shopping in the Citadel. Earlier this month, Arrowhead Game Studios released the sequel to its 2015 top-down shooter Helldivers on PlayStation 5 and PC. Helldivers 2 shifts the camera to an over-the-shoulder third-person perspective, but it retains the same premise: as one of the titular Helldivers, the player must travel to alien worlds to defend the Super Earth government from various extraterrestrial threats.

When it comes to sequels, especially sequels of “groundbreaking titles” that have the potential for great expansion, the expectation is that the second title will always be better than the first. Whether it’s video games, movies, or certain other properties, people look forward to the sequels because they want to see what people do next. When it came to Bioware and their spacefaring franchise, they set the table pretty well with their original game, but when Mass Effect 2 was released fourteen years ago, gamers feasted. Fourteen years later, we still look back at that title with awe and reverence for all the right reasons.

There are several possible outcomes at the end of Shepard's saga in, and the different options are only available if certain conditions are met. The initial ending of was met with serious criticism for its vague and unsatisfying ending. Despite changes, it remains one of the more controversial parts of BioWare's sci-fi epic. While some fans are still disappointed, the, which is now the standard ending in , helped the finale make more sense and bring more closure and meaning to the series. After three games and over 100 hours of building a team, fighting enemies, and preparing to face the Reapers, the war's outcome comes down to one final choice.

Every science fiction game has a different approach to accuracy, whether it's 's complex empirical lore or 's elevation of real, present-day issues. The issue of accuracy in science fiction is a prickly one. The two elements it's made up of — hard, demonstrable science and fanciful, speculative fiction — seem inherently opposed to one another. As a result, different works of sci-fi have different approaches to balancing the two halves, with some using reality as a jumping-off point for fantastical concepts, while others seem to conjure pseudoscientific ideas from thin air.

Experience more stories from BioWare's fan-favorite RPGs.

remains shrouded in mystery since the developers have released little more than teasers for it. However, those teasers have been enough to uncover some hints as to what could be included in and where it might take place. Among the information gleaned from teasers is the reconstruction of a Mass Relay that was likely destroyed during the Reaper Invasion of, and a distress signal originating from the Andromeda Galaxy.

After leaving BioWare in January, Mass Effect lead writer Mac Walters has established a new remote studio, Worlds Untold, in Vancouver, Canada, with NetEase Games. As per a press release, it aims to create new IPs with “depth and possibility” that “can’t be contained in a single game, or even a single medium.”

It looks like is now a must-play for fans looking to get the full experience. Details gleaned from N7 Day 2023 teasers point to some exciting hints that the Andromeda galaxy’s storyline will somehow connect to the Milky Way galaxy’s storyline. This means that players who were previously avoiding the last entry in the franchise will likely have to dive into the game to better understand the narrative Bioware is crafting for. Given the game’s reputation, that may sound like a daunting task, but it’s better than it seems.

According to industry insider Jeff Grubb, the next installment in the Mass Effect RPG series may not arrive until 2029.

In December 2020, BioWare confirmed that it had started working on the next instalment in the Mass Effect franchise, but since then, updates on the game have been limited to brief teasers, posters, and the like, with another new teaser having been released earlier this week. So what does that suggest for where the game is in the development process?

The latest teaser for has some huge implications for the story. The 30-second trailer was released as the culmination of an N7 Day 2023 puzzle crafted by the team at Bioware, which had fans solving clues using ciphers, details from past N7 Day reveals, and general knowledge of the history of ’s development. Onlookers were also treated to a new piece of art featuring the N7 armor-clad character shown in the trailer. Along the way, some new details were revealed that give significant clues about where Bioware is taking the next game’s story.

To celebrate N7 Day, BioWare released a brief new teaser trailer for the next instalment in the Mass Effect franchise yesterday, revealing a new character sporting N7 colours and seemingly being set up as the series’ next protagonist (though all may not necessarily be as it seems).

BioWare has released a new teaser for the next Mass Effect, following multiple reveals via its initial N7 Day blog post. It showcases an unknown character wearing a helmet and coat with the N7 logos, who pauses to look back. They then take out a sidearm and venture outside to what seems to be a waiting ship.

BioWare marked this year’s N7 Day, an annual celebration of all things Mass Effect, with a blog post and series of teasers giving fans a first look at the next entry in the Mass Effect series.

Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is the game that has BioWare’s full attention right now, but once the fantasy RPG is out (which might be as late as late 2024), the studio will turn its focus to the next instalment in the Mass Effect franchise. The sci-fi RPG is currently in pre-production, which means there’s plenty about it that we don’t know yet, but it seems some crucial details may have filtered through nonetheless.

The next Mass Effect game may move away from open-world exploration.

Starfield has only officially been out for a couple of days, but fans have used the early access period to recreate some of the most famous spaceships from movies, TV shows, and other video games. They’re incredibly detailed and faithful to the originals; genuinely impressive feats for a game that hasn’t been out very long yet.

Players have been making the most of Starfield's ship creator to build homages to spaceships from Star Wars, Mass Effect, Firefly, and more.

An industry insider is reporting that BioWare is continuing to push back Dragon Age: Dreadwolf's internal release targets, and that it's having a knock-on effect when it comes to development on Mass Effect 5.

Dragon Age and Mass Effect’s storied developer BioWare have laid off around 50 employees, including veteran devs who had been with the company for 20 years, in what they call a “shift towards a more agile and more focused studio.” The reasoning behind the job cuts has a now-rote focus on efficiency that sadly echoes other redundancy announcements from this year - including ones from other widely admired studios like Firaxis and CD Projekt Red.

There's a new real-time strategy game blowing up on Kickstarter, and while it's most obviously inspired by Starcraft, it also adds RPG elements from games like Baldur's Gate and Mass Effect.

In light of BioWare eliminating approximately 50 roles to become a “more agile and focused studio,” general manager Gary McKay talked about the development for upcoming titles, like Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. Though not directly revealing the departures’ impact on the same, he said, “Our dedication to the game has never wavered.

It's been a while since we've heard any official news from BioWare on either Dragon Age: Dreadowlf or the next Mass Effect, but today's announcement is something that no one enjoys seeing. BioWare has officially announced that 50 people that were currently working on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf are being laid off, with the reasoning behind the move explained as the studio trying to become "more agile and more focused".

EA-owned development studio Bioware has provided a studio update in which the creator of a new Mass Effect has announced layoffs.

Mass Effect 5 fans are worried about the fate of a fan-favourite character after the sequel's director shared a cryptic update. 

All the genres of yesteryear are coming back to life. We've got CRPGs, point-and-click adventures, and, uh, retro LCD games. Yet RTS games—the only noble genre that lets you send entire battalions charging directly into enemy fire because it's easier than coming up with an actual plan—still feel like they're out in the cold. But hey, maybe not for long, because a new one called ZeroSpace hits Kickstarter today and it's got some very lofty goals indeed.

Larian Studios has knocked it out of the park with Baldur's Gate 3, shooting up the Steam charts as soon as it launched and being well-received by fans and critics alike. While this new release has many players hopping on the Baldur's Gate series for the first time, there are a few things thrown in there for older fans, and one of them is Minsc, the loveable ranger, and Boo, his even more lovable companion. But that doesn't mean they haven't made a single appearance elsewhere since Baldur's Gate 2.

Star Wars Outlaws is set between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and the developers are going all out to make sure the game fits not just the fictional era, but the actual age in which those movies are made - and it sounds like they're taking the same approach that BioWare did with the original Mass Effect.