Jennifer Hale, the renowned actress best known for playing Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series, would love to come back — even though she hasn’t been asked to do so yet.
Speaking to IGN, Hale talked about how much she’d love to return to the sci-fi universe, saying she “would be there before they finish the sentence” if the chance to reprise the iconic FemShep arose. Hale called on the fans to let BioWare and EA know they want to see the return of Shepard. “Everyone out there, the more you tell them what you want, maybe the likelier it is that it’ll happen,” Hale says.
The catch, of course, is that we don’t know if Commander Shepard will return to the series in any capacity — and we honestly don’t even know what Mass Effect 5 is about, or even the full name of the game. BioWare has only shared a couple of cryptic teasers over the last few years, and from that, fans have gleaned that the new entry likely takes place in the far future.
The True Ending does show a split-second shot of Shepard’s N7 breastplate buried under rubble, before a single breath is taken. But there’d have to be something strange going on if Shepard managed to survive into the far future.
But it also seems like Hale would be game to do pretty much anything within the universe of Mass Effect, with the actress saying she’d be willing to play “Anyone. I love that universe. I’m ready. Anytime”
The other element here is the precarious position both BioWare and the next Mass Effect are in. After EA said sales of Dragon Age: The Veilguard were disappointing, a swathe of key developers were laid off at BioWare — with EA saying, at the time, that it had the “right number of people in the right roles” on the new Mass Effect.
All that was before the company’s massive $55 buyout that was announced in September, taking the company private with a number of investment groups, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Affinity Partners (founded by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner), and Silver Lake.
The buyout calls into question what kind of changes might be seen at EA, and if that includes restructuring and/or layoffs. United States senators have expressed “profound concern” over the buyout, as they say it poses “significant foreign influence and national security risks.”
Mass Effect 5 doesn’t currently have a release window.
