Canceled Mass Effect Universe was a spy thriller, says a BioWare advisor

Mass Effect Universe, the next Mass Effect that was in development at BioWare, would have been a spy game. That's according to YouTuber and lore creator Dantics, who's shared details on the project after news broke that EA is shutting down the studio.

Dantics says he was part of a private "Mass Effect Council," a feedback group of content creators who advised BioWare's small team on the game. None of what he describes has been confirmed by EA or BioWare.

By his account, the game was set over 600 years after the Reaper War. Instead of a soldier like Commander Shepard, you'd play a customizable N7 "agent" working to take down a sinister force operating in the shadows of a galactic cold war.

The loadout was going to be much smaller, too. Dantics says the goal was to make players feel like a "cross between John Wick and James Bond," leaning on cunning to get through encounters while still having firepower when things went loud.

He also says the mass relays, destroyed at the end of the Reaper War, had been rebuilt by the time of the game.

That tracks with the trailer for Mass Effect Universe, which GameSpot notes hinted at a big shift in tone away from the galactic warfare of the first three games and toward covert ops, espionage and the odd barroom shootout.

IGN's rundown adds more: handcrafted missions with what it calls Hitman-style freedom, the ability to hack the environment, brutal close-range executions, and the return of Liara.

It's a genuinely interesting direction for the series, and a tough one to read about now. IGN reports the game was canceled last week alongside the closure of BioWare.