The ending of the third game aside, most people agree that the Mass Effect Trilogy is one of the greatest sets of games ever made. The bold sci-fi tale made by Bioware in their prime proved that you could make an epic saga of a tale with loveable characters, diverse missions, and yet ensure that every game felt special and unique in its own way. Not surprisingly, Bioware wanted to keep its expansion going and thus make a game for the super-popular Nintendo DS called Mass Effect Corsair.
Former BioWare producer Mark Darrah told MinnMaxthat the game was meant to be a “Mass Effect meets Star Control” kind of game. Mass Effect Corsair would have you being a pilot in the wider Mass Effect universe and you’d go and do things like deliver cargo, get information, and so on.
So why didn’t it get made? The answer was apparently size and cost. They wanted this game to feel like something from the universe but it would cost them to do so, including putting it on a cartridge for the handheld. The price of doing all of it meant that Bioware would apparently get a very small chunk of the profits, and EA felt that it would only sell 50,000 units.
So thus, it got “Swallowed Up” and a big “What If?” came about. This is very true to this day given the state of Mass Effect and Bioware’s “plans” for it.