Details continue to emerge about the canceled Mass Effect: Universe, a project at BioWare that was eventually shelved. Following the studio's recent closure and the end of development on the next game in the sci-fi series, former franchise technical director Romain Toutain has shared insights into the ambitious narrative design of Universe. Toutain, speaking in French during a Twitch stream, elaborated on how the game aimed to allow players to "generate" timelines that acknowledged a wide array of choices made throughout the original trilogy.
Toutain confirmed that the game would have featured a customizable protagonist and elaborated on how the narrative system would handle player decisions. He explained that the game's title, Mass Effect: Universe, reflected its scope, which extended beyond the player's direct choices. The system was designed to allow players to effectively create parallel universes by plugging in save data from previous games, leading to distinct timelines.
"All the choices made in the first Mass Effect games were taken into account," Toutain stated. "You had different timelines, basically. You could almost generate timelines, kinda like Zero Time Dilemma."
He further clarified that this system was intended to be more far-reaching than typical save import features, drawing a parallel to Dragon Age Keep but with greater flexibility. Players could purportedly make decisions that contradicted previous actions, forcing the game to create branching paths or adapt to the consequences. "The game will make sure you can complete the mission. Or, if that’s what the designers have decided, well, no, the mission’s failed because you killed that guy," he explained, highlighting the system's capacity for dynamic narrative resolution.
This complex system was designed to give players "absolute autonomy," according to Toutain, though he acknowledged the significant technical challenges involved. The internal trailer that leaked, featuring Liara T'Soni and a new protagonist, was created to convey the game's mood to the studio rather than for public consumption, which is why it used external music instead of a BioWare-composed score. Toutain also revealed that an organic-looking asset theorized by fans was codenamed "Billy."