The live-action Mass Effect series at Amazon MGM Studios will eventually have to answer a question that has followed the franchise for years: which version of the story actually happened? Now, a former BioWare developer has revealed how the canceled game Mass Effect: Universe planned to answer it, and the solution was to make every choice canon.
Electronic Arts closed BioWare last week as part of cuts affecting around 400 jobs across the company, which also ended development on the next Mass Effect game. Its title was later revealed through a leaked trailer.
Parallel Universes For Every Player
Speaking on a livestream, technical director Romain Toutain said the game was designed around the choices players made in the original trilogy. "All the choices made in the first Mass Effect games were taken into account. One of the reasons why it was called 'Mass Effect: Universe' is that you had so many choices," he explained.
He described the approach in simple terms. "You could plug your saves together to create parallel universes, to keep it simple. It's not exactly how it worked. You had different timelines, basically."
Toutain added that new decisions could clash with what players had already done, and the game would build those clashes into its timeline. "I mean, that was the theory. It worked, in practice. I'll tell you about the tech one day because it was really exciting," he said. According to Toutain, the game could be paused at any time and checked by a system that solved logical equations to see whether the current story state was valid, and what would need to happen to make it valid if it was not.
The Problem Facing The Amazon Series
A game can let every player keep their own version of events. A TV series cannot. The Amazon show is set after the events of the original trilogy, which means its writers will need to decide what happened at the end of Mass Effect 3, and that is a decision certain to leave some fans unhappy.
The trilogy's final choice dramatically reshapes the galaxy depending on whether Shepard destroys the Reapers, controls them or merges organic and synthetic life. On top of that, dozens of characters can live or die based on decisions across all three games, from Wrex and Mordin to the fate of the entire Rachni species.
Mass Effect: Universe was going to sidestep that problem entirely. With the game canceled, the show is now the franchise's biggest active project, and whatever it picks will effectively become the official version of events for many fans, at least on screen.
Who Is Behind The Show
The series was first reported in 2024, and Amazon has since moved forward with Daniel Casey, who co-wrote F9, as writer and executive producer, while Doug Jung, who co-wrote Star Trek Beyond, is attached as showrunner. No casting or premiere window has been announced.
Neither EA nor Amazon has shared an update on the series since BioWare's closure, and EA has said it has nothing to share at this point. The show was being developed while BioWare worked on the next game, and it is not yet clear whether the series had planned to tie into Mass Effect: Universe in any way.
Learning From Fallout
Amazon has dealt with a similar problem before. Its Fallout series is set after the events of the games and had to work around player-driven endings, especially in Fallout: New Vegas. Some of the show's choices sparked debate among fans, but the series was still a massive hit and gave the games a big sales boost.
That success could be the blueprint for Mass Effect. With no new game on the way, the series has a chance to introduce the franchise to a new audience, even if it means picking a canon ending that the canceled game was designed to avoid.
Which ending should Amazon's Mass Effect series treat as canon, Destroy or Control?
Sound off with your thoughts in the comments below.