Mass Effect 5 would have done a series' first and I'm convinced it would have saved BioWare

Mass Effect 5, or rather Mass Effect Universe, could have been the game that saved BioWare before Electronic Arts pulled the plug.

Last week, gamers around the world mourned the loss of legendary gaming studio BioWare, which brought you games such as Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

Shortly after, a teaser trailer for the next, cancelled Mass Effect game appeared online as if to add insult to injury.

While it was only a brief glimpse at what could have been, ex-BioWare technical director Romain Toutain offered more context in a recent livestream.

Reported via Kotaku and translated by Bluesky user @loustica-lucia, Toutain claimed the fans had “no [real] idea just how great it was.”

Apparently the game would rely on save files from previous Mass Effect games, meaning every choice you’d made up until Mass Effect Universe would have been logged and stored as the game’s history.

“One of the reasons why it was called Mass Effect: Universe is that you had so many choices that 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. You could almost generate timelines, kinda like ZeroTime Dilemma,” said Toutain.

BioWare’s goal was to give players “absolute autonomy” over the wider universe, and it all sounds really exciting.

After Dragon Age: The Veilguard failed, Mass Effect Universe could have been the game to save the studio

So many gamers were disappointed with the state of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and it cast a shadow of doubt over the next Mass Effect game as a result.

However, based on what we’ve heard so far, it sounds like it would have been an innovative and beloved entry in the series.

Of course, we have to take what Toutain says with a pinch of salt. Something can sound good on paper, but be anything but when brought into reality.

Just look at Cyberpunk 2077, for example. So many ideas were thrown around that it gave players unreasonable expectations for the final launch, only to disappoint. At least Cyberpunk 2077 had a happy ending, however.

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If Mass Effect Universe had pulled off its branching timeline mechanics, though, it could have been quite something.

As someone who’s not as well-versed in Mass Effect as I’d like to be, it’s a trilogy that’s more than earned its place in the world, and that’s because of its choices.

The appeal of the series is its choice, and giving more choice than ever to players sounds like a winning formula.

A game that doesn’t just take into account all of the hours you’d spent in the universe so far, but effortlessly makes them part of the story sounds simply unreal. Almost too good to be true, actually…

If any studio was to pull off such a miraculous feat, though, it’d likely be BioWare. While it somewhat mismanaged the Dragon Age IP towards the end of its life, Mass Effect was an entirely different beast.

As a gamer, the promise of Mass Effect Universe’s branching timelines and parallel universes would have had me playing the entire trilogy this week in excitement.

Unfortunately, we’ll never fully know what was cooking before EA pulled the plug. However, if what we’ve heard is true, it makes sense why the game was taking so long to develop.

Gamers petition to save Mass Effect

As expected, the closure of BioWare and culling of the Mass Effect series haven’t gone down well with fans.

Many are openly firing at EA in anger, and others are desperately hoping another publisher will swoop in and buy the IP.

A petition to save the series on change.org is currently sitting at over 200,000 signatures, and even actors from the series are showing their support.

EA is unlikely to budge, though. Perhaps it’ll greenlight another Mass Effect game years down the line, but it certainly doesn’t look like it’ll be selling the IP anytime soon, especially with one Mass Effect project still in the works.

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