The next chapter in the Mass Effect franchise, for now known as Mass Effect 4, is on the way. Based on the trailer released at The Game Awards, it seems likely to take players back to the Milky Way as seen in the original trilogy. There is also evidence, however, that suggests that BioWare may have found a way to integrate characters and species from Mass Effect: Andromeda.
The events of Mass Effect: Andromeda take place hundreds of years after the end of the original trilogy. However, based on cut storylines from the original trilogy, Dark Energy could be the key to getting Ryder and the Andromeda crew into Mass Effect 4.
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There’s evidence to suggest that Mass Effect 4 won’t just leave Andromeda and its characters behind. Originally, the leap through time and space to the Andromeda galaxy 600 years after the original trilogy helped BioWare tell a story which wasn’t dependent on the outcome of Mass Effect 3’s ending.
The reception of Mass Effect: Andromeda, however, was disappointing, and it seems BioWare intends to resolve this by closely linking it back to the oriinal trilogy with ME3. The Game Awards trailer for it shows dead Reapers, Liara T’Soni, and a piece of N7 armor all indicating that player will be back in the Milky Way and maybe even the shoes of Commander Shepard in the next chapter. All of this also indicates that Mass Effect 3’s “Destroy Ending” in which Shepard wiped out all synthetic life in the galaxy is canon.
However, it has also been hinted that BioWare may be finding a way to link Andromeda and Mass Effect 4 despite the time difference between the third game and Andromeda. At the end of the trailer from The Game Awards, Liara looks out to the horizon, and a ship with several silhouetted figures is visible behind her.
This background is almost identical to the “mud skipper” image released by BioWare. On closer inspection, one of the silhouetted figures is clearly based on Jaal the Angara from Mass Effect: Andromeda. The Angara are natives of the Heleus Cluster in the Andromeda Galaxy, and were only discovered by the Citadel races during the events of Andromeda.
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If there’s an Angara in Mass Effect 4, then it’s possible for Ryder and other Andromeda characters to return in the next game as well. There is a precedent for time manipulation in a cut plotline from the original Mass Effect trilogy.
At first, the Mass Effect dev didn’t have a clear idea for how the Reaper plot would end, but it did begin to develop some threads in Mass Effect 2 which would later be cut short. The recruitment mission for Tali in Mass Effect 2 involved a sun affected by “Dark Energy,” but the concept was never really realized in full. In one idea, Dark Energy would have affected the space-time continuum in some way connected to the use of Biotics. This would cause time to move quicker, bringing about the end of the universe. Since only organics can use Biotics, the idea was that the Reapers wanted to exterminate them to prevent this.
If Dark Energy and biotics hold the key to time travel they could be instrumental in linking the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, and Ryder and other Andromeda characters to Mass Effect 4. How exactly this is pulled off based don the teases and the other effects a discovery like this might have on Mass Effect 4's story, if it were to happen at all, remains to be seen.
A new Mass Effect is currently in development by BioWare.