How Will Mass Effect Continue Without The Mass Relays?

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is set to follow the original trilogy, meaning that the ending of will bear important repercussions during the new game's start. All the endings for change the galaxy's balance completely, but one, in particular, has some destructive effects on synthetic and organic life. The "" ending, as it's often dubbed, sees Shepard kill every AI life form in the galaxy by emitting a lethal pulse through the mass relays.

Of course, this destroys the Reapers, EDI, and the Geth (if they are still around by the game's ending), but it also destroys something else: the mass relays themselves. Mass Relays allow galactic travel from cluster to cluster, and without them, galactic society would be quite different. How exactly is yet to be seen, but given what we know about the relays, we can figure out some of these changes.

As stated, the destroy ending of the trilogy saw the mass relays fall apart, being rendered ineffective. The previous role of these relays was to allow fornear-instantaneous jumps across far reaches of space, which was crucial in building a connected interstellar government. The Citadel itself acted as the center of these relays and the seat of the universe's leadership. With these structures gone, communication and travel from planet to planet will be much slower and more isolated.

Mass Effect 5 will need to acknowledge the three possible endings of the original trilogy, but one outcome is likely impossible to implement.

Players saw exactly how crucial these relays were to space travel in 's Arrival DLC when Shepard destroyed one in the Viper Nebula, delaying the Reaper's arrival on Earth by over six months. And that's for Reapers, who are noted as being extraordinarily fast in their space navigation; for the ships of humans and other organic species, the difference in time will be much greater. Not to mention how dispersed galactic forces were at the end of the Reaper War. The cosmos would be in chaos for years after the war's end.

The relays themselves were not