Another piece of the canceled Mass Effect 5 puzzle has fallen into place, as Journey and Stray Gods composer Austin Wintory was apparently in talks to compose the soundtrack for the game that would have been Mass Effect: Universe . While it wasn’t finalized (and that’s part of why the internal trailer that’s been leaked uses a licensed song), Wintory revealed in a YouTube video that, last year, he created some musical concepts for the game and recorded them with a Los Angeles orchestra. Having listened to them, I feel they’re pretty evocative of the orchestral electronic music that was synonymous with the series, but they’re also pretty string-heavy in a way that previous compositions for the games weren’t.

Crucially, Wintory says he didn’t know anything about what the game’s story was going to be , so while the titles for these tracks make references to original trilogy protagonist Commander Shepard, this was mostly a vibes thing rather than a reference to anything that was going to be in the game.…