Trivia
Regarding the corporate enclave planet with an arctic climate -- Noveria, where the normal laws of Citadel Space do not apply -- the name of the planetary capital, Port Hanshan, is a romanization of the Chinese for "cold mountain," a reasonable name for a city on an arctic planet. On Earth, there are currently at least two geographic areas in China which have that name, and in ancient times there was also a poet who used that pen name. Perhaps the first people to lay claim to the planet, or to underwrite the colony, were representatives of a Chinese corporation. The actual Chinese would be 寒山端口 (Hánshān Duānkǒu).
At the event "GameStar/GamePro Leserpreis 2007" (March 28, 2008) Mass Effect received the trophy "Best Console RPG in 2007" after the reader's voting of German gaming magazine GamePro.
Drew Karpyshyn, writer/designer at Bioware, has written two books set in the Mass Effect universe so far, Mass Effect: Revelation and its sequel Mass Effect: Ascension.
The game was initially banned in Singapore, because a female character is able to pursue a same-sex love scenario (spoiler alert) with another female alien character. The ban was eventually overturned by the same government censorship body itself and it now carries an M18 rating.
The game's street date was broken multiple times. In the United States, several K-Mart stores started selling the game on 9th November 2007, eleven days before the official release date. The same happened in Australia, where EB games started distributing it on 16th November 2007. Other retailers quickly started selling the game early as well.
