A brief internal trailer for Mass Effect: Universe, the next entry in the franchise that was first teased in 2020, has leaked online. It offers the clearest picture yet of a game that has now been cancelled.

The footage emerged a day after the closure of BioWare, the highly praised and influential developer behind the series. Fans mourning the studio also had to absorb the news that its upcoming Mass Effect project would not be released.

The montage runs roughly two minutes and describes itself as "in-engine footage from our small team" that "uses our pre-production assets." It centers on an ex-military officer in an N7 trenchcoat, similar to the one seen in the 2020 teaser, who meets an Asari at a bar.

The man speaks of his frustration with military life, saying that "by the time you put out one fire, another had already started." He then describes his new line of work as "stopping [the fires] before they start" and "making the choices no one else is willing to make. Going where others are afraid to go."

The Asari then reveals that she is the one who metaphorically "start[s] the fires." N7 allies step in as backup, and the cutscene moves directly into a large group gunfight inside the bar. Some hostiles are trapped in place by mass effect fields, while others are crushed under furniture brought down on top of them.

Short scenes from elsewhere in the game's universe are woven through the bar sequence. They include a hovercraft racing across an icy planet, an examination of a very large alien suspended in a glass cylinder, and a team studying a holographic map marked with dozens of points of interest.

An anonymous Reddit poster first revealed the existence of the internal trailer on Wednesday. IGN confirmed it early Thursday morning. The video appeared on Reddit shortly before noon Eastern time, and moderators there said they could not "independently verify the authenticity" of the clip but that it "seems legitimate."

Within hours, both IGN and Bloomberg's Jason Schreier confirmed that the trailer was real and had come from someone inside EA.