While BioWare provided an update about its in-development project – the next Mass Effect game – in a recent blog post celebrating N7 Day (November 7), the post also seemingly contained clues about what we can expect from the title when it finally comes out. The post, written by executive producer Mike Gamble, seems to have contained a series of clues that have been deciphered by fans of the Mass Effect franchise. These clues eventually led the fans to discover new art work for Mass Effect depicting the Krogan Civil War – a key moment in the franchise’s backstory.
The link to this image, which you can check out here, was hidden in the post with a series of letters that had been italicised. When put together, these letters spelled out “URL KROGAN”. The official social media account for Mass Effect provided a further clue by posting “https://www.masseffect[dot]com/[ERROR A20N7S12]”. This URL was eventually discovered to have been a replacement cipher, where each letter stands for an individual letter. For example, the letter N is substituted with the number 7. The clue led fans to discover the number “411826207”, which when entered into the URL provided by BioWare, leads to the download page for the Korgan Civil War art piece.
While fans have been busy with figuring this puzzle out over the weekend, Gamble himself also took to social media to talk about the fact that the studio is still working on the Mass Effect project. He noted that, while some might be disappointed at the lack of progress revealed in the N7 Day post, he said that BioWare simply wasn’t ready to reveal too much for now.
“For everyone yelling at me because we didn’t use N7 Day to provide a whole bunch of info,” wrote Gamble. “I mean, I get it. I’m a fan too. I want you to see stuff. But it’s not the time… yet. Has it been years since announce? Yes. Have we been busy? Yes. Are we NOW 100% on Mass Effect? Also yes.”
In the N7 Day post itself, Gamble wrote about how busy BioWare had been in recent times after having wrapped up work on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, as well as EA announcing its plans to go private. While all of this might be happening around the studio, Gamble noted that the team was “focused exclusively on Mass Effect,” and that “we have a lot of universe to cover, lots of features to build, and lots of romances to figure out.”
“We’re excited by what we’re building, and we promise you: when we’re ready, it’ll be a lot of fun to show,” wrote Gamble. “Until then, thank you for your patience because y’all are thirsty for news and I see you looking for secret meaning in my tweets (okay, sometimes they have secret meaning).”
A new game in the Mass Effect franchise was confirmed to be in early stages of development back in January. In the meantime, BioWare has also been restructuring itself, with the studio now opting to focus on single projects rather than working on multiple games at the same time.
