Mass Effect 5’s Leaked Trailer Is Real, and It Shows Exactly What EA Just Binned

BioWare’s body was barely cold when someone decided fans deserved to see what EA just binned. A day after EA shut down BioWare and cancelled the next Mass Effect, a roughly two-minute cinematic trailer for the game turned up on Reddit. It carries the title Mass Effect Universe, and yes, it’s real.

Is it legit?

Short answer: yes, as far as anyone can tell without EA saying so.

• Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier confirmed it. He said he can confirm it’s “a real trailer of the Mass Effect game that BioWare was developing up until its closure.” Schreier is the reporter who broke the closure itself, so he’s about as solid a source as this story gets.
• IGN also verified it independently, according to Push Square.
• There were hints beforehand. Before the leak, a Reddit user claiming to be an EA worker said there was a Mass Effect 5 trailer they’d seen “a few months ago”. An earlier IGN report had also said a new trailer had been made internally.
• EA hasn’t commented. It hasn’t confirmed the trailer or responded to Kotaku’s request for comment.

What’s still unconfirmed: who leaked it and how. It was dropped as a comment in r/masseffect by a brand-new burner account (u/Random_Hyabusa_Ninja), replying to a fan who wrote “just give it to me and let me dream”. Nobody knows whether it came from an ex-BioWare dev, how it got out of EA, or whether it was deliberate. Treat any “it was the lead director” claims you see floating around as fan fiction.

What’s in the trailer

• Title card: Mass Effect Universe, followed by a “coming soon” sting that now hits like a gut punch. That suggests it was the actual name of what everyone’s been calling Mass Effect 5.
• Disclaimer: it’s in-engine but uses pre-production assets, so treat it as a target, not what the finished game would have looked like.
• No gameplay: it’s pure cinematic.
• The lead: a human ex-Alliance soldier wearing the N7 trench coat from the 2020 teasers. He’s now in a “new line of work”.
• The plot: he meets an Asari in a bar. It goes sideways, and she turns out to be setting him up.
• The surprise: an older Liara T’Soni shows up, and a biotic bar fight kicks off. BioWare had already teased Liara’s return, so that part fits.
• The rest: flashbacks show gunplay, a hulking Krogan, a steamy human-Asari moment and a squad firefight. There’s also a ship design and a line about a “small team”.
• Setting: per Push Square, the game would have returned to the Milky Way thousands of years after Mass Effect 3.

Why it existed in the first place

November 7 is N7 Day, BioWare’s annual Mass Effect celebration, and Kotaku and Push Square both reckon this trailer was being lined up for it. That means the people who made it were probably two weeks out from showing it off when EA pulled the plug.

The writers clearly thought they had something. Writer Catherynne M. Valente posted “We were working on a great game.” She added that it’s a shame it’ll “never see the light of day”.

Expect takedowns. Once EA’s lawyers wake up, the Reddit copies and YouTube mirrors probably won’t last, so if you want to see it, don’t wait.

Our take

EA’s memo called this game “early development”. This trailer is what early development looked like at BioWare: Liara back, the N7 coat, a Krogan, a bar fight, and a cast that actually looks like Mass Effect. It’s not a finished game, but it’s not nothing either, and it’s a damning thing to watch the same week the studio got wiped.

And we can’t pretend we don’t get why someone leaked it. The people who built it are out of a job, the game’s dead, and the only thing it was ever going to do now was rot on an EA server. Officially, nobody should be leaking anything. Unofficially, if you’re the one who did it: cheers, mate.

The real kicker is the “coming soon” card at the end. Not anymore, it isn’t.

Watched it? Does it look like the Mass Effect you wanted, and is EA nuts for binning it? Tell us in the comments, or come grieve in the GetRekt Discord.

Sources

• Kotaku: A convincing trailer for what may have been Mass Effect 5 has leaked (updated: it’s real, per Jason Schreier)
• Push Square: Leaked Mass Effect 5 trailer is real (Schreier and IGN verification, Milky Way setting, Valente quote)
• Dexerto: Mass Effect 5 trailer leaks online a day after EA shuts down BioWare (Reddit origin, the EA worker’s comment)
• Notebookcheck: Mass Effect 5 trailer leaked as BioWare shuts down after 30 years
• Forbes: EA shuts down BioWare, cancels Mass Effect 5
• YouTube: Mass Effect 5 Trailer Leak (mirror, may be taken down)