In November, BioWare released a teaser image for an upcoming Mass Effect game, depicting four characters riding a bus towards a geth-shaped crater. Have you recently managed to buy a high quality lithograph of said image, which is of such high quality that, according to the store’s listing, “no detail is lost, down to the dust and snow particles”.
But that store listing did a little boo-boo, apparently. According to YouTuber Mr Hulthen (by VGC), the list originally alluded to the possible return of Commander Shepard, the beloved protagonist of the original Mass Effect trilogy. The text has since changed, but when MrHulthen first saw it, it contained the lines: “Shepard’s final mission may have ended the threat of the Reapers, but at great cost, including Earth itself. As Shepard and the survivors are left to pick up the pieces, fans are left wondering what comes next.”
Mass Effect fandom being what it is (read: cruelly hungry for solid information; in love with Commander Shepard), this little bit of text has led to a disproportionate amount of speculation. It’s understandable, because there’s certainly been a lot of talk about Commander Shepard, and you’d think a studio like BioWare, knowing their fan base, would be a little careful playing with expectations. Also, what about poor Commander Ryder? Ryder was fine.
But Michael Gamble, project director for the as-yet-unnamed game, says it was indeed a mistake. “The original thing was written by the people who run the store and are not familiar with the game,” he said. I wroteadding a smiley face that could – and will be – interpreted in a thousand ways.
The original thing was written by the people who run the store and are not familiar with the game 🙂May 10, 2022
Now the listing is vigilantly uninteresting. Aside from some facts about the poster itself, it only reads: “Mass Effect will continue…” And that it will continue, although in November of last year the game was still in its early stages of development, so the sequel is likely it’s far. still.