BioWare's annual "Mass Effect"-related celebration, N7 Day, used to be a fairly large event. In the years since "Mass Effect 3," however, its significance has waned, and the lackluster reception of "Andromeda" has failed to reverse that trend. There did not seem to be any major news at this year's November 7 event, but a bit of audio decoding revealed a big surprise. [Project Director Mike Gamble, in his annual N7 Day message, said, "Through the four games and further expansion, no matter when you joined us, we are doing this because of you, and N7 Day is a reminder of that! It is a wonderful thing."

"As we look forward, every day is a fun and exciting challenge for our team. We love bringing this universe to life and there is so much more we want to share with you, but that is a story for another time.

"For now, here's something for you to see." We intercepted a strange video from a surveillance station that may be nothing, but it's ......."

And that's it:

If you have a good memory (or have time to Google these things), you'll notice that this is almost verbatim from BioWare's 25th anniversary book from 2020 (opens in a new tab), but it is more It is rendered in much more detail. Vacuum dock and relay construction records/monitoring station operated by Green Dagger Ltd. property of Deep Space Dow SAV/captain: vice-captain Soa'Rhal Zhilian-Jones."

I have played and enjoyed the "Mass Effect" trilogy, but I am not an avid enough fan to glean secrets and surprises from the images. It continues to look like a mass relay under construction to me and doesn't say much; when this image was first released two years ago, some fans speculated that the relay might suggest that a new location in Andromeda would be opened up for exploration: or as a means of returning to the Milky Way galaxy. It could be used.

Gamble actually commented on some of that speculation in 2020, but of course did not elaborate or even specify which parts were "wrong."

The Derek in question is presumably Derek Watts, the original "Mass Effect" art director, who has returned to BioWare (open in new tab) to work on a new project.

However, in a follow-up tweet, Gamble suggested that this was Mass Relay and that it was going somewhere new. The concept art is old, but as BioWare suggested in a tweet, there is more than meets the eye; Soundcloud user Mosaic Horse (opens in new tab) worked his audio magic on the video and discovered a hidden audio message: 21 ]

"That's right, Congress will be furious, although you already know not to underestimate human rebellion."

In-house audio enthusiast Tyler Wilde reproduced the effort described by _baundiesel_ and confirmed that the hidden audio track is there. Indeed, it sounds like Liara T'Soni, one of the famous companions of the original trilogy, with the sounds of Geth in the background; although BioWare, and more specifically Liara's face model, Jillian Murray, had previously stated that Liara would return in the new film ( open in new tab), ironically voice actor Ali Hillis was unaware of such a development; two years later, it appears that either BioWare has found an impressive lookalike or Hillis has looped in.

Just to be sure, Gamble confirmed on Twitter that the voice in the message was Liara. I think that concept art is new as well.

So that's a deeper tease than it first appears, but it's still a shame that we have nothing more substantial to go on at this point. Especially since we still don't know much about the next installment of "Mass Effect" other than that it's coming out, that at least some characters from the trilogy may reappear, and that it will apparently be produced with Unreal Engine 5 (opens in new tab). In case you missed it, here's BioWare's N7 Day 2021 trailer. The trailer contains "at least five surprises (opens in new tab)," all of which seem to point to a wonderful future for the "Mass Effect" universe.

For a closer look at the embedded N7 Day image, see the full-resolution image. Click on the icon in the upper right to see it in all its glory: