Yesterday was November 7—N7 Day, in the parlance of Mass Effect fans, an occasion to celebrate all things about BioWare's hit sci-fi series. To mark the special day, BioWare released a "Ten Years of Mass Effect" video looking back on the history of the series and the things that made it special—and, despite the failure of Mass Effect: Andromeda to meet expectations, expressing hope for the future.
The video features a number of BioWare mainstays, including the Shepard and Ryder voice actors, reminiscing on the making of the series, and the impact it's had on them personally and professionally. There are the requisite bits of trivia, like how the Vorcha voices were made and why the "SSV" designation for the Normandy was rejected. But while much of it feels like a eulogy, it's a line at the end that fans will want to hold onto.
"The future of Mass Effect, I think, is really bright. People just want to know more about this place, these characters," the narrator says. And then someone else takes over: "I think people keep coming back because it feels like home."
It's an interesting way to wrap up, because it's an implicit rejection of the entire premise of Mass Effect: Andromeda, which was all about finding a new home. That attitude is evident throughout the video, in fact, in the way it very clearly focuses on the original trilogy despite coming in the same year as Andromeda's release. But the promise of a bright future, vague though it is, is encouraging. Andromeda may have flopped, but Mass Effect? Yeah, that's good stuff.