Cancelled Mass Effect: Universe Was Connected to Amazon’s TV Show Based on Franchise

Last month, Electronic Arts announced the shutting down of BioWare, the studio behind franchises like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. As a result, Mass Effect: Universe, the fifth game in the series, was canceled, and it has now come out that the game was meant to be tied to another project.

That project is a TV series based on the franchise, announced in 2024 and being made for Amazon Prime Video. It was revealed by Michael Gamble, game director of the canceled game. According to him, the two projects complemented each other, so their stories were connected in some way.

Mass Effect 5 (known internally as “Universe”) was meant to compliment the upcoming Amazon Prime TV Show

• Former project director Michael Gamble revealed that the game and Amazon's planned live-action Mass Effect TV show were meant to complement and inform each other's narratives.
• Mass Effect 5 would have reportedly featured a multiverse mechanic allowing players to jump across timelines, making every ending from the original trilogy technically canon.
• Amazon's TV Adaptation was announced in 2024 with showrunners Doug Jung and Daniel Casey, the live-action series is progressing slowly but remains in development despite BioWare's shutdown.

An insider familiar with the franchise, who took part in the closed beta of Mass Effect: Universe, revealed that one of the game’s ideas was letting players create alternate timelines linked to the choices made in the original trilogy. Perhaps this was how the game planned to connect to the TV series by exploring alternative storylines, but that is only speculation. Despite the game’s cancellation, production of the Amazon TV series continues, though there has been no news about it for quite a while.

Jason Schreier also confirmed that EA has shut down BioWare and dropped Mass Effect: Universe in favor of Star Wars: Battlefront 3, which DICE and Respawn Entertainment are developing. Meanwhile, fans keep signing the #SaveMassEffect petition, which has already gathered more than 320,000 signatures.