Are The Reapers Coming in Mass Effect 2 Expansion?

Everyone knows those creepy-crawly planet-slaying Reapers are earthbound in Mass Effect 3, but maybe the alien invasion actually happens before the game arrives sometime this holiday. Place your bets?

I’m talking about that new screenshot up top, mysteriously tweeted by BioWare as from Mass Effect 2, and which may just be a peek at upcoming expansion ‘Arrival’. Developer BioWare still hasn’t announced the pack officially, but accidentally leaked it’s existence last month when it forgot to pull the pack’s trophies out of a patch for the PlayStation 3 version of the game.

Arrival. It sounds so impending. We know from the Mass Effect 3 trailer that a bunch of floating sky-squids are ripping the world apart. And I’m sitting here with a copy of Dragon Age II pried open, holding a flier that reads “N7: The Arrival Has Begun” over one of those orbital shots of a planet, presumably the Earth, pockmarked by explosions.

So what do you think, Techland readers? Is that shot above from a rescue mission? Are they holding someone who knows about the invasion? Does the green button conjure electric shocks, or ring someone for cake? Are they torturing him/her? Or is it really just a clever new chiropractor’s tool to render lumbar-precise adjustments?

More on TIME.com:

The Reapers Abound In “Mass Effect 3″

Awards Season: Is ‘Mass Effect 2′ a Better Game than ‘Red Dead Redemption’?

Review: Mass Effect 2 Hits Its Mark

C. Arthur Young

Mattski,

I think you’re onto something here bredrin.

Notedly, Visceral has been spoiling Dead Space 2 fans with oodles of content including the expansion game Severed. If Bioware wants to have half the fan hype and satisfaction they better do something pronto. So a prelude to ME3 would be a real treat for us and money their pockets (cause I would get no questions asked).

That said, I hear being revived via the Lazarus Project really ruins your whole spinal column dealio, so it could be a Shepherd getting a little MedicAid. That would be interesting in a kind of health-care debate kind of way…
http://sarahtherebel.wordpress.com sarahtherebel

Ooooh I hope so! I just can’t wait! But I will say that Bioware is known for plot twists and trickiness…. so I wonder if it may be the Arrival of something else, since the Reapers would be our first guess?