Mass Effect Discovery Has Big Implications For New Game

A new discovery about Mass Effect 3 has big implications for the new game, assuming the theory behind it is accurate. With Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, BioWare made several tweaks to the trilogy of games. For example, it removed some very specific angles of a very specific body part of Miranda. It also slightly tweaked one of the endings of the game in a very subtle way, and some fans can't help but think it's deliberate and meaningful. 

The "Perfect Destroy Ending" in Mass Effect 3 concludes by showing Commander Shepard, in rubble, and clearly not doing too hot, taking a breath in before it cuts to credits. The implication is he/she survived the ending of the game. This isn't new. This is in Mass Effect 3. What's new are some details in this scene. For example, there is blood on his/her N7 dog tag. Meanwhile, while in the original Mass Effect 3 Perfect Destroy Ending there looks like smoke in the background, in Legendary Edition it looks a lot more like snow. It doesn't look like smoke at all, in fact.

Why is this relevant? Well, as YouTuber MrHulthen points out, in the announcement trailer for the new Mass Effect Liara is on a snowy planet, and what does pick up? A piece of N7 armor, which of course is naturally associated with Commander Shepard. So, the implication here is that Commander Shepard is returning in some capacity. 

Of course, this is just a theory, so take it with a grain of salt. It's a compelling theory, but it harkens on the fact that BioWare changed the aforementioned scene to show snow rather than smoke. And it does look like it did this, however, the change in the visual appearance of the smoke could just be caught up in the visual upgrade. Sometimes when you make wholesale upgrades and improvements to a game it manifests unexpectedly in certain parts of the experience. Whatever tweak they made to the game's visuals could have very just had this effect on the smoke in the scene in question. Further, there's also another fairly simple explanation, and that's that isn't snow, but ash.