An internal Mass Effect 2 trailer has surfaced, giving an even earlier glimpse of the game than fans had seen before.
The lead animator on Mass Effect 2 shared an unreleased video that was never meant for public eyes and was only viewed inside BioWare.
Described as a demo reel of cinematics still being built, the trailer dates back to April 2009. It appears to have served as a way to show what the animation team was developing for Mass Effect 2, and sharp-eyed viewers may recognize several scenes that later reached the finished game.
Here is something for N7 Day that had not been shown before: a very pre-alpha internal trailer made to spotlight the cinematics being created in Montreal. The faces were averages of customisation sliders in Maya, and every scene was run with every possible squamate while polishing.
Shared by Jonathan Cooper, a game developer with experience at BioWare, Ubisoft, and Naughty Dog, the trailer offers an extremely early look at several characters and key moments from Mass Effect 2. Although part of it is challenging to see clearly, fans can still spot companions such as Miranda, Garrus, and Jack.
Cooper did not reveal much about the trailer itself, but he did describe what working on it felt like.
- The team had plenty of arguments and drama.
- A great deal of time was also devoted reading scripts.
- He also remembered feeling excited about imagining how well Shepard could be shown through those story moments.
Mass Effect 2 marked a major shift from the opening game, and this in-house trailer shows that difference obvious. It begins with Shepard’s death, then moves into a very early-2000s action-film style monologue from the Commander before introducing the new Normandy crew.
If the background track caught your attention, it is C’Mon Try A Little Bit by Melodrone. It does not seem to have appeared in the promotional material shared with fans at the time, and it has around 64,000 plays on YouTube.
Overall, this is far from the cinematic trailer players would later receive, but it still reflects the tougher, more action-heavy tone the sequel was aiming for compared with its more hopeful predecessor. That tone still connects with fans today, since Mass Effect 2 is often praised as BioWare’s strongest release.
Those same fans are now working to defend the series they care about. After EA closed BioWare and the scrapped Mass Effect 5, the fan community launched the Save Mass Effect campaign, asking the publisher to support the franchise in some form, whether by funding new games or licensing it to another studio. Some supporters also want Mass Effect returned to the people who helped create it.