A trailer for Mass Effect: Universe, the cancelled BioWare sequel, has leaked on Reddit just as EA confirmed the studio's closure and the end of development on the game. The roughly two-minute video first appeared on the r/masseffect subreddit from a burner account belonging to someone claiming to be an EA employee. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier and IGN both confirmed the footage is authentic and came from inside the company.
The leak lands one day after EA announced it was shutting BioWare after 30 years and cancelling the next Mass Effect, which was first teased in 2020. In a memo to staff, EA executives Cam Weber and David Tinson said only 'a small team at BioWare' was working on early development for Mass Effect, and that the decision not to move forward led to the studio's closure.
What the Mass Effect: Universe trailer shows
The trailer opens with text stating it is made from in-engine footage using pre-production assets. It follows an ex-military officer in an N7 trenchcoat, who enters a bar and strikes up a conversation with an Asari. He talks about his frustration with military life, saying that by the time you put out one fire, another has already started, before describing his new work as stopping fires before they begin and making the choices no one else is willing to make.
As the conversation turns tense, Liara T'Soni, the Asari ally from the original trilogy, reveals herself and the scene erupts into a full bar fight. The action includes hostiles trapped in mass effect fields and others crushed by furniture, intercut with vignettes from the wider universe: a hovercraft racing over an icy planet, a gigantic alien suspended in a glass cylinder, and a team studying a holographic map. The trailer ends on the game's title, Mass Effect: Universe.
- Officially titled Mass Effect: Universe, previously known as Mass Effect 5
