If fans were already sad about BioWare closing down, they’re shattered after watching the leaked trailer for Mass Effect Universe. Sure, the trailer was short and a little cheesy — but it could have also signaled a return to form for the stagnant franchise. And at the heart of every good Mass Effect game is a crew of characters that you get to know as the adventure unfolds.
Because the trailer was leaked, and the game was canceled, we can’t judge how well the footage reflected the final vision. Fans were happy to see a familiar face in Liara T’Soni, but they were especially thrilled at the prospect of new buddies. In particular, series devotees were intrigued by the prominent appearance of a male Quarian throughout the trailer. The helmeted alien could well have been the series’ first-ever male Quarian star.
So far, the series has only featured a single female Quarian, Tali’Zorah, as a recruitable character. Yet as much as the fandom loves Tali, people were ready to stop arguing over what the nomadic alien should actually look like. Plus, fans have been begging for a male Quarian for ages now, as evidenced by this Reddit post from nine years ago. At the time, some people were skeptical Mass Effect might ever pull it off.
“The population of the Citadel is almost as much as the entire Quarian race,” one Mass Effect fan argued. “Considering you have races with populations of tens or possibly hundreds of billions, the Quarians are a footnote in the galactic population.”
Mass Effect almost gave us a male Quarian years ago
Mass Effect’s writers have been toying with such an idea for a long time now, though.An old internal BioWare document detailing conceptsfor potential squad mates inMass Effect 2outlined two unused male Quarian characters. One of them was a bloodthirsty yet whimsical fellow who wanted to join Commander Shepard just for a chance at killing Geth. The Geth — a synthetic race created by the Quarians — rebelled against their creators and nearly drove them to extinction.
The other concept was for a “rogue” Quarian who may have fit well in Mass Effect Universe, a game that at least partially revolved around espionage. As described in the design document, this character was determined to find evidence it was now safe to return to the Quarian home world. Despite his advanced tech skills and charming personality, this character was prone to disaster.
Other aliens in the trailer are commanding plenty of attention as well. Fans are fixated on the Asari, for example, because the new designs undo controversial facial changes seen in Mass Effect Andromeda. The mono-gendered race now looks more like humans — which, for horndog players, was really what they wanted all along.
Viewers also took note of the Krogan accompanying the protagonist and Quarian. Though little is known about the character, the fact that they exist at all has some exciting lore implications. Either this universe cured the Krogan genophage or this character is one of the last of their kind.
The character people are mourning most is the Quarian, however. On social media sites like the Mass Effect subreddit, there are multiple threads fantasizing about what could have been.
“We’d have all married him,” one popular thread declared.
“God, if there was one thing I was wanting for any of the Mass Effect games or Andromeda, it was this,” another thread about the Quarian read.
Perhaps the still-in-development Mass Effect TV series will finally give the fans want they want (if it ever comes out).
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