Space. The final frontier… Sorry, wrong interstellar saga. Mass Effect might not be the voyages of the Starship Enterprise and it's continuing mission to, yada, yada, yada (you know the rest), but with just one game in the can, BioWare's epic sci-fi franchise has already shown the potential to branch out into a universe every bit as rich and densely layered as a Star Wars or Star Trek.
Art books, novels, comic books and more have all hinted at a vast and intricate world far beyond the confines of the game, which is why it's utterly futile to try and resist the powerful gravitational pull of Mass Effect 2.