The Mass Effect universe keeps on expanding beyond the videogame world. Titan Books announces the publication of four Mass Effect novels that will connect the first trilogy with Andromeda and beyond.
Good news for all N7 followers who happen to enjoy reading more about the Mass Effect universe. Titan Books has confirmed that there are four canonical novels in the pipeline. The first one, Mass Effect: Andromeda Initiation, is arriving already in August and has fantasy author N.K. Jemisin behind the lines. The other three are planned for release in March 2017, September 2017, and March 2018. The last one will be written by creative director Mac Walters himself.
We can expect to delve into prequels and sequels to the events in the original trilogy, thus connecting the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. As with previous Mass Effect novels, these will revolve around key characters and “answer the many questions fans have been asking”.
We cannot but wonder here how are they going to tackle the different Mass Effect endings – if they decide to go around that touchy subject at all. Maybe they won’t. We cannot but remember that in the Dragon Age: Origins comics, the Bioware team decided to go for a canon ending that did not consider your previous decisions within the original game. We certainly hope it does not come to that!
[blockquote cite=”Bioware on their official blog”]”We are still in the midst of the creative process, but we are working with a talented group of writers to bring these exciting new stories to our fans”.[/blockquote]
Mass Effect: an Expanding Universe in Book Format
Bioware’s top sci-fi franchise belongs to the family of videogames that have fully relied in other media in order to expand their narrative and, somehow, fill in the blanks. In that way, they provide with background stories to those characters that could not afford Sheppard’s prominence during the games.
Revelation delved into the relationship of Anderson and Saren Arterius prior to the events of the first game, explaining a little bit better the animosity between these two characters and giving hints as to Saren’s motivations for his subsequent behavior. Ascension took us some months after that and had the Cerberus paramilitary corporation and some badass biotics as protagonists.
Retribution took the topic of Cerberus and their weird researches once again. Set after the events of Mass Effect 2, the book showed to which extent Cerberus’ investigations on Reaper technology were getting too out of hand. And last but not least, Deception gave more insights about the Illusive Man and had a powerful biotic, Gillian Grayson, seeking vengeance amidst the impending arrival of the sentient Reapers.
From the Bioware Blog we know we’ll be getting more juicy details at a later date. Probably this will come hand in hand with the general update that awaits us someday in autumn.
[Source: Titan Books]
