New details about the canceled Mass Effect project continue to come out following BioWare's closure, and the latest reveal shows just how ambitious the game was. According to a former technical director on the project, Mass Effect: Universe would have made every single choice from the original trilogy canon.
Electronic Arts announced it was shutting down BioWare last week as part of company-wide cuts of around 400 jobs, ending early development on the next Mass Effect game. The project's name, Mass Effect: Universe, came to light shortly after through a leaked trailer.
Every Ending Would Have Counted
One of the biggest questions hanging over the next Mass Effect was how BioWare planned to deal with the end of Mass Effect 3. The trilogy wraps up with several very different endings, and players made countless decisions along the way that changed who lived, who died and how the galaxy looked when it was all over.
Speaking on a livestream, technical director Romain Toutain explained that the team's answer was to keep all of it. "All the choices made in the first Mass Effect games were taken into account. One of the reasons why it was called 'Mass Effect: Universe' is that you had so many choices," he said.
He went on to describe how the game would have handled those different outcomes. "You could plug your saves together to create parallel universes, to keep it simple. It's not exactly how it worked. You had different timelines, basically."
How The Timeline System Worked
Toutain, who was clearly still excited about the project, said fans had no idea how great it was before diving deeper into the tech behind it.
"It's more like, you can make decisions that might contradict things you've already done or things you have to do, and so it would create plot 'points' in the timeline," he explained. "I mean, that was the theory. It worked, in practice. I'll tell you about the tech one day because it was really exciting."
He also revealed that the entire game was built to track its own state at all times. "Everything was stateful, and at any time, you could stop the game... and ask a system that solved logical equations, 'Is this valid?' And if it isn't valid, what conditions must be met for it to be valid?"
In other words, the game would have constantly checked whether the player's decisions fit together, and then worked out what needed to happen for the story to make sense. For a series built around choice and consequence, it sounds like a natural next step, and it would have let players carry their personal version of Commander Shepard's story forward.
A Big Swing That Never Got To Land
The system would have been a huge change from how many sequels deal with branching stories. Games often pick a single canon ending, or quietly downplay past decisions to avoid contradictions. Mass Effect: Universe was set after the events of the original trilogy, and treating every possible outcome as valid would have avoided forcing players to accept an ending they did not choose.
Sadly, fans will never get to see it in action. EA said only a small team at BioWare was working on early development of the project, and it decided not to move forward as it focuses on fewer large-scale projects. The game was first teased in 2020 and never received a full reveal.
BioWare's closure ends a more than 30 year run for the studio behind Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age and Mass Effect. The studio had a rough stretch in recent years, with Mass Effect: Andromeda, Anthem and Dragon Age: The Veilguard all falling short of expectations.
What's Next For Mass Effect?
With the game canceled, the biggest active Mass Effect project is the live-action series in development at Amazon MGM Studios. The show is also set after the original trilogy, so it will be interesting to see how it handles the same question of which choices count.
For now, Toutain's comments give fans a glimpse at what might have been, and his promise to share more about the tech someday suggests there may be even more to learn about the game that never was.
Would you have wanted Mass Effect: Universe to honor every trilogy ending, or should BioWare have picked one canon ending to build on?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.