The Game Awards Gives Us First Glimpse of New Mass Effect

The 2020 Game Awards show, which aired Thursday, was a mixture of awards for current games and announcements for future ones. And the biggest announcement of all was that we would be getting a new Mass Effect game.

To be clear, this is not referring to the remastered version of the original trilogy announced in May. Rather, this will be a new franchise entry altogether.

The trailer is brief and vague, but fans have been able to identify some Mass Effect staples, including what sounds like an attacking Reaper and the sight of N7 Armor. Beyond that, we get a dash of space history and a brief view of a person and a planet before the promise that “Mass Effect will continue.”

The teaser was enough to fuel some fan speculation that the person we see snag the armor is Liara T’Soni. And in the background, we can see some unidentified aliens, including a Krogan, a Drell, and a Salarian.

Beyond those visuals, the rest of our clues are audio-only. It’s a mixture of talk about First Contact War and the Citadel along with audio clips from Mass Effect 3. The last thing we hear is a voice (perhaps Liara’s voice) saying, “Is anyone receiving this? I’ve lost contact.”

It looks like the new game is going to play off of Mass Effect 3, and it may even make the destruction ending of that game canonical. One thing is for sure, though: this new game looks like a return to more familiar characters and settings rather than a continuation of Mass Effect: Andromeda.