The day after the closure of BioWare and cancellation of the next Mass Effect game, a purported trailer for Mass Effect: Universe has surfaced on Reddit. The authenticity of the trailer is unknown at this point, but at the very least it sure looks legit.

Straight to it, here's the video:

Man, that sure looks like Mass Effect—and sounds like it, too. The music is right, and at least two PC Gamer employees are pretty sure that's Liara's actual voice. Shepard's out, but the new guy seems suitably Shepard-like, although I can't help but notice the absence of the N7 logo on his uniform. Maybe the new guy was meant to be a rawer, rougher kind of troubleshooter—more of a housecleaner than a world-saver—or perhaps the ascent to the rank was meant to be part of the character's progression, which would've been cool.

There are no obvious AI telltales here, at least none that I can see, and adding to the trailer's "real deal" potential, a redditor claiming to be an EA employee said yesterday that a trailer for the new game had been produced, and suggested that it was not as early in the development process as was widely believed.

Whatever the case—and we're still working on verifying its provenance—the trailer is also just the right blend of sexy, violent, and corny: Even if this isn't a real trailer for what BioWare was working on, it's a Mass Effect we would definitely play.

Ubisoft continues to insist that Beyond Good & Evil 2 is real game that exists, despite the fact that it was announced more than 18 years ago and we haven't seen hide or hair of it this decade. A new report suggests that the reason it's taking so long is that the devs keep going back to the drawing board, most recently transitioning from a live-service Fortnite killer to a single-player first game.

That's according to French outlet Origami, which reports (via machine translation) that Beyond Good & Evil 2 was being developed as a "highly multiplayer and connected game" between 2019 and 2022, taking direct inspiration from Fortnite and Destiny. Players would create their own characters and take on activities that would be generated on the fly, with large group sessions that would be matchmade organically.

Over time, the plan shifted to something more "open-ended," to four-player team-based action and then to two-player co-op, the report continues. In its current form, Beyond Good & Evil 2 is apparently set to be a "solo-first" game with Marvel's Spider-Man-style combat and no mandatory internet requirements, but it still includes optional co-op.

But perhaps the most surprising detail in the report is that the game is apparently still in pre-production. This, the report claims, is part of a long-standing pattern in the project's development. Beyond Good & Evil 2 has apparently missed all of its internal creative milestones not because the devs are failing to make deadlines, but because the milestones themselves keep changing as the project continues to change shape. Never mind the finish line – the devs don't even really know what the starting line is meant to look like.

I can't help but think of what's now BioWare's final game amid all this. According to multiple reports, Dragon Age: The Veilguard bounced back and forth between being a live-service multiplayer title and a single-player RPG, and after years of development uncertainty it's no wonder the final product felt as uncertain and unfocused as it did.

Maybe Ubisoft's big restructure will be what Beyond Good & Evil 2 needs to finally see the light of day, since the new corporate organization is meant, in part, to offer a clearer creative vision for projects in development. But Skull & Bones offers the most recent example of Ubisoft finally pulling a game out of development hell and onto store shelves, and I think it's safe to say that's not the most thrilling precedent of success.

Here are all the upcoming Ubisoft games you need to know about.