While it may have just been a teaser trailer, the Mass Effect video BioWare unveiled at the Game Awards features plenty of incredible hidden details. Some of this information even points toward essential info about the next installment in the series.
Below, we’ve gone over five significant details the Mass Effect teaser hides in plain sight. If you saw any that we missed, or have any thoughts on the breakdown, be sure to leave a comment.
Obvious spoiler warning: we’re going to be talking about the ending of Mass Effect 3 in some detail here, so click away if you somehow didn’t realize that.
The Next Game’s Timeline
While it is pretty difficult to figure out when everything is taking place in the teaser trailer, the brief shots we see of Liara may in fact be a clue.
When Commander Shepard first meets Liara T’Soni at the start of the first game in the series, she is 106 years old. While this may seem old to humans, this indicates that she is still within the Maiden stage of asari life.
Her appearance also indicates her youth, as her face shows minimal signs of aging. In the most recent teaser, Dr. T’Soni looks a bit different.
The Asari scientist’s freckles and wrinkles could indicate that at least a few years have passed since the ending events of Mass Effect 3. On the other hand, this could simply be due to updated graphics.
Either way, Liara looking for Shepard for years is also in line with her character, though, as some endings see her and the crew of the Normandy searching the Galaxy for them, especially since Shepard already came back once.
Background Characters
When BioWare announced another Mass Effect in November, one of the unveiled images features silhouetted characters exploring terrain next to a small exploration ship. While it seemed pretty vague at the time, we now know that it matches up with a similar shot from the teaser.
Right after Liara picks up the debris from the snow, we get a far off shot of a Salarian, Turian or Krogan, and possibly a Human. Could this be other well know characters from the trilogy searching for Shepard?
All signs indicate yes, as we’ve now seen them exploring both a desert and snow-filled planet for any signs of the Commander. Or, at least, you thought that was a snow planet.
Dead Reapers
If you look closely, you can see a dead Reaper in the background of the snow that Liara is walking on before she picks up the N7 piece. Looking even further into this section of the video, though, it reveals Liara is walking on a Reaper’s carcass when she picks up the armor part.
As she is climbing, you can see a lot of detail amongst the snow, including the squid-like shape known to the Reapers.
While the imagery and idea of walking on the corpse of a Reaper is cool enough in and of itself, it’s also an important detail, as it points at a possible canon ending of Mass Effect 3 for the next game.
Broken Mass Relay
One of the first significant details we see in the trailer is actually pretty easy to miss, as you can write what we zoom by at the 45-second mark off as junk or a destroyed ship floating in space. Pausing the video shows that it is clearly a broken Mass Relay.
Anyone who knows Mass Effect knows the importance of Mass Relays to the series, as they are the transit devices responsible for faster-than-light space travel throughout the galaxy.
While Control and Synthesis endings leave open the possibility that the Mass Relays could be repaired, in the Destroy ending they are in disrepair without an obvious way to fix them.
While showing this and putting in a Reaper horn sound effect might seem like it could just be an homage to the original trilogy, everything points to the fact that things will pick up at some point in the not too distant future from when Mass Effect 3 ended.
Canon Ending
While nothing is confirmed, signs point to the fact that the canon ending for Mass Effect 3 may be the Destroy choice.
The Destroy ending is the climax that saw the destruction of all synthetic life, from the Geth to the Reapers. In this, the Mass Relays are also broken beyond repair, just like we see in the teaser.
The destroyed Mass Relays would also explain the contact issues we hear in the audio throughout the beginning of the trailer, as many are stranded without the Mass Relays.
It’s also important to remember that dead Reapers are prevalent in the latest teaser. Of course, there were plenty of Reaper casualties before the ending of Mass Effect 3, thanks to Shepard and the united Milky Way Galaxy, but the Destroy ending kills all of them.
More than anything, Liara’s smile at finding the N7 armor is likely because she’s happy and hopeful that it belongs to Shepard. The Destroy ending is the only one that points to Shepard being alive, as their chest can be seen rising in N7 armor alongside a sharp breath being taken.
What do you think BioWare is hinting at in this teaser? Let us know in the comments below.
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