Well, anyone hoping for Commander Shepard’s grand return in the next Mass Effect should probably take a deep breath.
On Tuesday, the Bioware store began selling the N7 day lithograph — slick artwork shown off last November. Fans went bananas, though not because of the item itself but rather its product description. There were several mentions of Shepard, insinuating that the former series protagonist survived the events of Mass Effect 3. However, Bioware project director Michael Gamble set the record straight later.
“The original thing was written by the people who run the store and aren’t familiar with the game,” Gamble said on Twitter.
The original thing was written by the people who run the store and aren't familiar with the game :)
— Michael Gamble (@GambleMike) May 10, 2022
There you have it. Shepard is probably dead in the next Mass Effect, or at the very least, we shouldn’t take random product listing as gospel. In fairness, Gamble didn’t outright deny that Shepard was in the game, only that the folks running Bioware’s store made a mistake.
Given that Dragon Age 4 is nowhere to be seen, it’ll likely be years before we ever see anything substantial about the next Mass Effect. Hopefully, the game will have an actual title soon, so I don’t have to keep calling it “the next Mass Effect” since that is getting tiresome. Sure, “Mass Effect 4” is an option, but I won’t dismiss the five or six people who enjoyed Mass Effect Andromeda like that.
Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.