'Mass Effect: Andromeda' trailer, plot and gameplay: Watch BioWare's new cinematic release

Impact

You have only a few months before the release of Mass Effect: Andromeda, when your next adventure awaits: You'll play as an elite N7 agent exploring an entirely new galaxy and discovering new alien threats.

Today, developer BioWare released a cinematic trailer for Mass Effect: Andromeda that shows off some of those aliens for the first time and gives us a glimpse of what might be the game's villain. The film was released as part of BioWare's annual "N7 Day" celebrating the Mass Effect series.

What we learned from the new cinematic trailer for Mass Effect: Andromeda

Actually, we didn't learn a hell of a lot. It's only the first in what will assuredly be a long line of cinematic trailers released between now and the release of Mass Effect: Andromeda in March 2017. They'll tease the story without actually explaining much.

Still, let's break down what we see. 

This thing below could be the human exploration ship Hyperion — or maybe BioWare did some tricky editing to make us believe it is. We clearly see the ship name "Hyperion" during the trailer's opening montage. If this is a human ship, it's unlike anything we've seen before in Mass Effect, short of a vague resemblance to the Mass Relays that are central to the game's universe.

BioWare/Mass Effect Andromeda

Here, below, is ostensibly our hero, though obviously his or her face is going to change based on how players design them during character creation. One has to wonder if using a male avatar as the default for the Mass Effect Andromeda trailer is going to rustle any feathers.

BioWare/Mass Effect: Andromeda

Is this (below) the bridge of the Hyperion? Probably. The orange lights on either side of this frame look an awful lot like the Alliance displays we've seen many times in human ships in the Mass Effect series.

BioWare/Mass Effect Andromeda

We've already seen from earlier trailers that the explorers in Mass Effect: Andromeda will be encountering some sort of alien ruins. Is this our hero accessing a computer system inside one?

BioWare/Mass Effect Andromeda

This below would appear to be another scene within an alien structure, and it's probably meant to freak out Mass Effect fans a little. It's eerily reminiscent of the scene in the original Mass Effect where Commander Shepard and his team first spoke with the alien Reapers, the villains of the original Mass Effect trilogy, via a hologram they discovered in an alien base.

BioWare/Mass Effect Andromeda

Meet the aliens of Mass Effect: Andromeda — and then run away

We don't have any sense of scale here, but this monster sure doesn't look small. From all the blue glowing lights around the "head," it appears to possibly be mechanical.

BioWare/Mass Effect Andromeda

This monster, on the other hand, is definitely both huge and a machine. Maybe this is what the monster in the previous still looks like without being obscured by all the dust? 

Perhaps Mass Effect players will once again find themselves matched up against some sort of machine race? Or maybe this is just a weapon of war fielded by the game's villain?

BioWare/Mass Effect Andromeda

Speaking of which, this green dude is probably our chief bad guy. The fact that he's approaching a bunch of people who seem bound by some sort of energy restraint is a good sign that we're looking at Mass Effect: Andromeda's antagonist.

BioWare/Mass Effect Andromeda

Now it's time for BioWare fans to start ripping apart these images and analyzing what they may or may not be. We're probably going to have to wait for the next trailer to get any solid info, though.

In the meantime, PlayStation and Xbox fans can argue about whether Mass Effect: Andromeda will look better on the PlayStation 4 Pro (released on Nov. 10) or the new Project Scorpio console being developed by Microsoft. And hey, maybe Mass Effect: Andromeda will appear on the Nintendo Switch as well.