There's a new book out called BioWare: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development. As you'd expect from the name, it's a big coffee table book full of art and interesting stories from BioWare developers. It's the perfect gift idea for the BioWare fan in your life this holiday season.
But we're not here to plug BioWare's new book. We're here to talk about what's inside the book, which got posted to the felassan Tumblr account (who is clearly a Dragon Age fan).
We've got three new pieces of concept art that are reportedly for the next Mass Effect game. As noted by Eurogamer, one of the images has a previously released ship called the Mud Skipper inside of it, which lends it an extra level of credibility.
We'll start with this Mud Skipper image. On the top is the picture released on N7 Day, and below is the new image in the coffee book. Note the identical portals of the two ships. Also note the presence of the Angaran, a species only native to the Andromeda galaxy. This has led Mass Effect fans to believe that the next game will return to Andromeda following the most recent Mass Effect title.
The remaining pictures are more about establishing architecture than species. One shows what appears to be a new type of Mass Relay--the giant portal-like devices that send spaceships between various sections of the galaxy or even to other galaxies entirely. This MR7 relay might even connect the Milky Way to Andromeda, bringing the old trilogy and the newest game together.
And below that, we have a bunch of inverted spires that appear to be Remnant structures. Remnants were introduced in Andromeda as a mysterious culture that disappeared long before visitors from the Milky Way arrived. They left advanced technology guarded by single-minded robots that attack anyone attempting to discover their secrets.
Of course, this is all just concept art and doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll see all of it represented in the next Mass Effect game. We don’t know much about it other than it was announced during the N7 celebrations a little while ago. We do know that a remastered Mass Effect trilogy will arrive next Spring and feature upgraded graphics for the Xbox One, PS4, and PC.