BioWare teasing mystery game

Until recently, BioWare used its official site to tease a "New Next Gen Game" as being in the works. In summer 2009, the Canada-headquartered developer posted a job listing for an "unannounced AAA project," which was described as a "new IP."

Now it looks like that new IP may in the process of being outed. Today, BioWare leaked a teaser image (attached) via Twitter, which showed a man in futuristic battle armor leveling a sniper rifle out a broken window. Though the man has the same close-cropped look as the default Commander Shepard in Mass Effect 2, the rifle looks significantly lower tech than the expandable weapons used in the sci-fi shooter.

The image was just the first clue from BioWare. The developer then used its Twitter feed to leak two bar codes, the first of which translated into a length of binary text that according to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, converts to 55.845--the atomic weight of iron. Given iron is the main component in steel, the number has led to speculation that the game in question is a reboot of Shattered Steel, BioWare's 1996 mech combat game.

A second BioWare-posted barcode scanned by Rock, Paper, Shotgun offered up -128.5 Fahrenheit. That's the lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth, in Vostok, Antarctica, July 21, 1983. Since there is a star system called Vostok in Mass Effect, some are taking this clue to mean the game being teased is, in fact, Mass Effect 3.

Finally, a few seconds of footage of the new game were featured inside a TV spot promoting the Video Game Awards on December 11. The footage shows the man in gray armor leaning out a window covered in broken glass to snipe something on a greenish field. According to the TV spot, the title is BioWare's "next big game" and will be revealed during the VGAs next month.