It’s official! The next installment in Bioware’s glorious Mass Effect series has a release date – March 21 2017 for the US, and March 23 2017 for Europe.
Bioware’s general manager, Aaryn Flynn, made the announcement today in a blog post – which also revealed a few more tidbits of info about the game.
The full statement reads:
On behalf of our teams across Montreal, Edmonton and Austin, I’m excited to announce that Mass Effect: Andromeda will be launching in North America on Tuesday, March 21, 2017 and beginning Thursday, March 23, 2017 in Europe. We appreciate your patience (and in fact, even your lack of patience in some instances) as we’ve been focused on completing the game. Here’s a little bit of context into how we’ve gotten here.
Mass Effect: Andromeda is our most ambitious Mass Effect game to date. We’re telling completely new stories, creating new characters, new planets, new species, and introducing new gameplay systems. And for the first time, we’re bringing Mass Effect to the Frostbite game engine, an incredible engine that’s delivering a tremendous graphical jump from the trilogy to Mass Effect: Andromeda. To deliver on this, we’re taking all the time we can to make sure you’re getting the best possible experience.
Over this holiday break, developers at BioWare took home a version of the game in what we call the “holiday build”. This is a longstanding studio tradition that goes back to the early days of the original Mass Effect. Many load up a PC or console and go home to play as much as possible at their leisure. Coming back from holiday, the feedback has been great. Getting the endorsement from members of our studio, many of whom played key roles on the original trilogy, was definitely a key factor in helping us lock in on the date.
Even more exciting for us over the last couple of months has been seeing the excitement build in the community as we’ve started to share more about the game. The passion you have for the franchise continues to drive us. And now, we’re just a couple of months away from delivering a brand new Mass Effect experience to you for the first time in five years – richer, deeper and ready for exploration. We’re excited about how far we are going with the franchise, and we hope you find it’s been worth the wait.
See you in Andromeda,
Aaryn
*gurgling noises*