Mass Effect is finally getting its Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Trek (2009) sequel/reboot treatment, and a new trailer is giving fans the first decent taste of what that’s going to look and feel like.
Publisher Electronic Arts and developer BioWare released the “cinematic reveal” for Mass Effect: Andromeda this morning. The video established its extragalactic setting while also teasing a fresh cast of characters and a new threat. Andromeda launches in the spring for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
The look at Mass Effect actually reminds me a lot of the kind of trailer that you would get for a new Star Trek movie — with the exception that none of the characters look familiar. For a franchise that established itself on its personalities across a trilogy of games on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, EA and BioWare will likely have to do a lot more work introducing players to the new heroes before the game launches.
For now, however, today’s teaser provides a glimpse at a lot of sights that still do look familiar. That includes the general design of the armor, weapons, and vehicles. While the Normandy, your spacecraft home in the original games, is no more (at least as far as we can tell in the trailer), you’ll end up on a similar-looking vessel called Hyperion. It’s Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Enterprise D versus the original series Enterprise NCC-1701.
Now, we’ll have to see if the new heroes of Andromeda are as memorable as Jean-Luc Picard and Data.