The Mass Effect: Andromeda "Golden Worlds" trailer that BioWare rolled out yesterday contained a tantalizing little reference that completely eluded my old ears. But fortunately, the sharper hearing of Reddit caught it: A reference to Habitat Five being a perfect home for the mission's Quarian colonists.
The relevant bit starts at 2:10, and goes like this: "For our Turian and Quarian colonists, Habitat Five appears to be a perfect home for dextro-protein life." That's the extent of it, and no, it's not an iron-clad guarantee of good times ahead for your emergency induction ports. But it is, as far as I know, the first hint out from BioWare that the Quarians will have a presence in Andromeda.
Quarians were a major race in the original Mass Effect trilogy—they created the Geth, provided a popular love interest for Commander Shepard, and inspired a Getty Images controversy, among other things—but they were also a stateless people, portrayed as outcasts that nobody really wanted to deal with. The Quarians can reclaim their homeworld in Mass Effect 3, but Andromeda begins before the events of that game, so the Quarians are still restricted to the Migrant Fleet when the mission gets underway, and their attention is focused elsewhere.
BioWare has never explicitly stated that the Quarians won't appear in the game, and in fact has very obliquely hinted that they'll be involved somehow: At the 21:50 mark of this interview, in response to a question about their possible presence, creative director Mac Walters said only, "We're not talking about that just yet." But he also noted that the Nexus, unlike the Arks, is a "multi-species effort," and that support crews could be multi-species as well, leaving the door open to pretty much anyone BioWare would like to bring on board.
Thanks, Eurogamer.
Update: The trailer in question, which I mistakenly thought I'd linked to in the post, is embedded below.
