After months and months of meticulous calibrating, Electronic Arts and BioWare are finally ready to commit to a release date for one of 2017’s most anticipated games, Mass Effect: Andromeda. In a post on the official Mass Effect blog on Wednesday, BioWare General Manager Aaron Flynn revealed that the long-awaited fourth entry in the Mass Effect franchise will launch on March 21, 2017 and in Europe on March 23, 2017 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. So go ahead and start devising elaborate excuses to get out of work now because we have a feeling you’re going to want to hole up in your own private Normandy and play the ever-loving heck out of this game. I already know that Nerdist science editor Kyle Hill is going to take the day off because he claims it’s his birthday. We all know he just really wants to get the best endorsement deals on whatever Andromeda‘s equivalent of the Citadel is.
Little is known about the actual story of Mass Effect: Andromeda so far, save for that it follows the story of Ryder, a pathfinder who is sent on a mission to search for habitable planets that can sustain human life some 600 years after the events of the original trilogy. Here’s hoping that we’ll see a few nods to the original, though. Maybe a statue commemorating the heroism of Marauder Shields, perhaps? What we do know is that the game will look absolutely breathtaking thanks to EA’s Frostbite engine and the lush, 4K environments it can create. In fact, new gameplay footage and environments will be revealed on Wednesday evening during NVIDIA’s CES keynote, which can be viewed live on the NVIDIA blog beginning at 6:30PM PT. In the meantime, though, keep drooling over this collection of 4K gameplay published in early December.
Will you be playing Mass Effect: Andromeda? What do you hope to see from the new franchise entry? Let us know in the comments below.
Image: EA/BioWare
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Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. Follow him on Twitter and ask him about all things anime (@Osteoferocious).
