Happy N7 Day to everyone who celebrates the annual day marked in many a gamer’s calendar to geek out over the “Mass Effect” franchise. The original trilogy of video games remain one of the standout examples of what role-playing games could truly be capable of, helping pioneer the idea of narratives that respond entirely to player choice. Though a fourth game titled “Andromeda” mostly just came and went back in 2017, interest in the continued adventures of Commander Shepard and their motley crew has never entirely waned. That’s basically what inspired the announcement of a “Mass Effect” series adaptation on this exact same date a year ago, though details have been sparse in the time since.

Maybe we just need to wait for November 7 of every year to get drips and drabs of information. After no shortage of speculation among fans, today brings us confirmation of certain highly-regarded information concerning the planned television show for Amazon. Questions have loomed over several aspects of this production, largely revolving around exactly when the show’s story will be set and which characters it might follow. Thanks to an official blogpost by Mike Gamble, Executive Producer at BioWare and Project Director on the “Mass Effect” games, we finally have the answers to (some of) those questions. After confirming the next game currently in development, Gamble pivoted to the Amazon series, writing:

“The writers room is going strong, and we’ve got a lot figured out about how it fits within the ‘Mass Effect’ canon, and where it sits in respect to the new game. The show will explore a brand-new story within the universe’s timeline, and will be set after the original trilogy. It won’t be a retread of Commander Shepard’s story — because after all … that’s YOUR story, isn’t it?”

By now, you hardly even need to be an obsessive gamer to know about the internet-breaking controversy that followed the release of “Mass Effect 3” in 2012. The entire trilogy had been building to this climactic threequel, where the relentless and primordial extraterrestrial villains known as Reapers set their sights on Earth and the total eradication of organic life in the galaxy. Given the storyline’s malleability, depending on the choices each player makes over the course of the campaign, it only made sense for the ultimate conclusion to take the form of the most impossible one yet in order to save the galaxy: destroy the Reapers along with all synthetic life, take control of the Reapers by sacrificing Shepard’s very humanity, or merge literally all life into some weird organic/synthetic hybrid.

Naturally, none of those options left fans feeling very satisfied, but that’s the legacy that Amazon’s “Mass Effect” show will have to contend with moving forward. By setting the action after the main trilogy of games (albeit focusing on different characters), the series’ writing team ironically has no choice but to settle on a “canonical” ending … and, in the process, take that decision out of the hands of vast swaths of gamers. We’ve been wondering about this inevitable crossroads from pretty much the moment a “Mass Effect” show was first rumored, but there’s no indication yet as to how this may be resolved.

Yeah, if you thought your favorite franchise had it tough, imagine having to be part of the creative team tasked with figuring out the official ending to one of the best — and most polarizing — video games ever made. Maybe they can ring up noted “Mass Effect” fan Henry Cavill for suggestions?