Mass Effect 5 is set to follow the original trilogy, meaning that the ending of Mass Effect 3 will bear important repercussions during the new game's start. All the endings for ME3 change the galaxy's balance completely, but one, in particular, has some destructive effects on synthetic and organic life. The "destroy" 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.

A Galaxy Without Relays Will Be More Divided

Space Travel Must Be Much Slower

As stated, the destroy ending of the Mass Effect trilogy saw the mass relays fall apart, being rendered ineffective. The previous role of these relays was to allow for near-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.

Players saw exactly how crucial these relays were to space travel in Mass Effect 2'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 Fallout Of The Loss Of Reaper Technology

The Discoveries That Shaped Civilization, Lost

The relays themselves were not originally built by the organic denizens of the galaxy. They were made by the Reapers, or at least by the species that made the Reapers. Their technology shaped the development of hundreds of thousands of organic societies, including those of humans, Turians, Asari, and even the Protheans. The loss of this technology would not necessarily mean its secrets are lost forever. After all, many spacefaring species collected the information necessary to understand the technology at a certain level.

While the destruction of a relay in the Arrival DLC wiped out all life in the nebula, that does not seem to be the case with the third game's "destroy" ending. Meaning that at least the galaxy was spared a mass extinction event that could have finished the Reaper's work for them.

Still, the effects of destroying the relays and all other synthetic life in the galaxy would be akin to a universe-wide blackout, requiring years of work from every civilization just to get back to the point they were at before the Reaper war. Depending on when the next Mass Effect game takes place, galactic society could still be struggling with this rebuilding process.

Mass Effect Will Need To Introduce A New Method Of Galactic Travel

A New Universe Needs New Navigational Strategies

Given their centuries of research on the structures, it is unlikely that the remaining species in the galaxy could build their own mass relays. However, the process would take some time and would leave massive swathes of space out of reach for years to come.

This might be one way the new game could divide the map, keeping certain planets and clusters out of the player's reach until they can help reconstruct mass relays. If the new game goes for something of an open-world exploration mechanic, this could be a neat way to do it while also helping to rebuild a broken galaxy. It could also lend the new game to a smaller focus, sticking to one or a few clusters and providing more detail for a smaller number of worlds.

Very little is known about the plot or characters of the fifth game in the Mass Effect franchise, so the possibilities for where the story could go are quite open-ended.

There could even be a mechanic where the player's ship can travel faster than other spacefarers, making them uniquely qualified to explore the galaxy, search for lost tech, and fight new threats. Any of these could be interesting starting points for a game building off of the original trilogy's finale, should the developers choose to go off of the ending where the relays are destroyed.