New Mass Effect details from ComicCon, Mako returns and more

The Mass Effect panel at San Diego’s ComicCon has proved to be of far more interest than the underwhelming showing at E3 2014. Unlike that rather rubbish E3 video, this event had actual information about the next game in the Mass Effect series.

There was still plenty of vagueness and hints of course, but a couple of concrete details were mentioned. Incidentally, IncGamers is not at the San Diego event so I’m getting this all second hand from the Nerd Appropriate twitter account (who was watching the panel.)

First up, as the headline notes, the Mako is returning. That strongly suggests more planetary surface exploration, in the manner of the first game. Here’s a picture (snapped by Nerd Appropriate.) Apparently those at the panel got a short demo video of the Mako driving around, too.

Producer Mike Gamble was apparently adamant that this game is not called Mass Effect 4 and reiterated that this will absolutely not be Shepard’s story, but something brand new. It was implied that there would be “some old with the new” and that known characters from the previous games may appear. There was no announcement of what the actual name would be, but I strongly suspect Mass Effect: Subtitle of some kind.

Another slide showed some N7 armour on what looks like a male, human model. It’s concept art so may not be in the final game. You can see that below.

Don’t worry if you prefer to play as a woman though, because the panel confirmed that gender choice would very much be in the game and is an important part of the whole Mass Effect series.

According to Nerd Appropriate’s reporting, there was a distinct lack of confirmation over what the player race choices might be. A comment was made that Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer came about from the idea of playing as different races in the universe, so (and this is my own speculation, not confirmation) the next logical step may be a single player alien race option.

Speaking of multiplayer, the panel said that co-operative multiplayer was “bigger” for them than competitive.

That’s about it, but it’s a fair bit more than E3 had to offer. If the panel was filmed it’ll no doubt show up online in full at a later date.