Was Mass Effect 4's Story Just Leaked By A Survey?

There's a chance that a whole bunch of details pertaining to Mass Effect 4 have made it onto the internet, as one Reddit user is claiming to have taken part in a survey offering up all kinds of insight. Since this is the internet, they of course then posted all of those details for the world to see.

For starters, the new Mass Effect game will supposedly take place in the Helius Cluster, “far removed by time and space from Commander Shepard's heroic acts and the final events of the Mass Effect trilogy,” according to the post. You will apparently take on the role of a pathfinder, an explorer tasked with venturing out into the Cluster and finding a new home for mankind.

According to the original post (the poster's name has been deleted at this point), all of the following details came from an online survey they took to earn a little extra cash. The survey consisted of multiple scenarios and descriptions, then asked the person the level of their satisfaction with each of them. I'm not sure how survey programs work, but unless you can target specifically the type of stuff you're into, it seems odd that a random user would be asked about such specific things pertaining to a game that hasn't come out yet. The games industry is also notorious for being extremely secretive, so I also find it hard to believe that BioWare would just parade details out there like that for the world to see.

I'm not saying the post is straight-up fabrication, just that everything here should be taken with a very large grain of salt. Besides, E3 is about two months away, so we probably don't have too long to wait before receiving some official details.

The post goes on to claim that the new galaxy will be more than four times the size of Mass Effect 3, where you will spend your time “collecting resources and building colonies” while encountering “the savagery of untamed lands in the form of cut-throat outlaws and warring alien races.” It sounds like your goal will to keep building up your resources until you have the facilities and the ships to make a stand against the worst threat the galaxy has to offer.

As with previous Mass Effect games, the survey also claims that you'll be in charge of building a crew of unique individuals and then craft a story all your own as you try to lay down roots in unfamiliar territory.

“Explore each individual's backstory and develop your relationship with them through conversations and unique missions,” reads the post.

There are loads more details within the original post, so I recommend checking it out. Whether or not you choose to believe a word of it at this point is entirely up to you. No matter how skeptical I am, a couple of things keep giving me reason to pause and reconsider: The post is well written and boasts proper spelling and punctuation. That alone is a pretty strong argument against this simply being good old-fashioned internet trolling.