Mass Effect: Universe Would Have Reflected Multiple Trilogy Choices

Last week brought us breaking news about BioWare's closure and the end of development on the new Mass Effect franchise entry. Following the announcement, we saw an alleged trailer for the canceled game and learned it could have offered a level of autonomy and choice described as unmatched by any other game.

The new details about the unreleased project, shared by Romain Toutain, franchise technical director, in a Twitch stream, suggest that it would feature an intricate choice system. Bluesky user @loustica-lucia published a clip of some of Toutain's commentary with English subtitles, since the original stream was in French.

Toutain said new information that players could "generate" timelines, seemingly with far-reaching implications beyond The Veilguard's three-choice import system, as "all of 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 that you could plug your saves together to create parallel universes."

He explained that, with the game's technology, "everything was stateful." BioWare had developed a tool that could pause the game and run a logic solver to evaluate the current game state and determine the possible consequences of player choices. It could check whether a particular outcome was valid and identify the conditions needed to make it possible. If the required content didn't exist, the team would know it needed to create a new branch or produce what was missing.

Toutain also confirmed that players would have been able to customize the protagonist, learn how the Mass Relays were restored after their destruction in Mass Effect 3, and switch seamlessly between gunplay and melee combat.

The closure of BioWare is part of Electronic Arts' wider plans for its franchises, which the company recently outlined in a message on the future of its major titles.