Out of this year's E3 press conference came many new video game trailers, but one that has people buzzing for a different reason is "Mass Effect: Andromeda."

For those unfamiliar with video games and/or the "Mass Effect" series, it is a series of role-playing games (RPGs) set in a distant future with spaceships, new galaxies and planets, alien species, extraterrestrial threats, and anything else you'd expect from a space opera. "Mass Effect" comes to us from Bioware, a developer under EA that has also brought us games like "Dragon Age," "Baldur's Gate," and "Star Wars: The Old Republic."

As in most RPGs, in "Mass Effect" you can either choose to play as the game's default male or female protagonists, or you can create your own character using customization options. I, personally, always choose to create my own character. It makes for interesting gameplay; I can try to make a character that looks like myself, and see myself go through daring missions and interact with other characters, or I can create a character out of my own imagination and play through his or her story like I'm watching a very interactive movie. I can choose the character's facial features, race, sex, hair color and style, tattoos, and sometimes aspects of their personality. There are many possibilities. But this also poses a marketing problem: how do you market a video game with a protagonist of many faces?

In the past, Bioware has chosen to market "Mass Effect" using the game's default male character. The trailers and cover art featured him front and center, and for Mass Effect I and II, the default female character was left out of marketing completely. Fans – especially female fans – were frustrated with this; they felt as if Bioware was only catering to their male audience and ignoring anyone who wanted to play as a female character. In response to this, Bioware designed two versions of the cover art for "Mass Effect III" – one featured the default male character and the other featured the default female character. The cover with the female character on it was printed on the back side of the cover with the male character on it.

So if you're having trouble picturing this, imagine this: you're walking into Game Stop, looking for "Mass Effect III." It just came out and you're excited to finally play it. You see a Mass Effect sign above an end panel, and there you see it! Four shelves full of this:

You'd been playing Mass Effect as a female character throughout both games before this one. Though you're still excited, you also feel a little pang of disappointment that the same male character that you've seen in all of the marketing material for the series was used again. It isn't until you get home and open the game that you notice the default female character peeking through the game's transparent cover. You pull out the cover art to see this:

It's almost the same cover, but delegated to the back side of the first one. Bioware also released a version of the trailer of "Mass Effect III" with the above female protagonist.

And that was it for "Mass Effect" until this year at E3 2016. Bioware premiered a short teaser trailer for "Mass Effect: Andromeda", the fourth game in the series, featuring what is assumed to be the new default female character. You can watch that here.

Bioware has also said that the cover art for Mass Effect: Andromeda will be gender-neutral, along the same vein as the cover art for Dragon Age: Inquisition.

This may not seem like much, but this is a big deal for the Mass Effect series and for gamers who have previously felt ignored by the marketing for their favorite video games. When compared to the marketing for the franchise's past entries, this is the most progressive step they have taken and really the only one that has addressed the game's diverse protagonist options.

Bioware's general manager, Aaryn Flynn, told Eurogamer that when using only the default male protagonist in the marketing for the older entries, they were following “traditional entertainment marketing” values by picking one face to be the icon for the series. But things have changed.

“I think the whole industry, us included, have moved beyond that,” Flynn said. “Our games let you choose your main character, I think everyone gets that nowadays. You don't need to see a character to identify with, in the same way you might on a movie poster. People want to create their own characters, customize them, and we're embracing that.”

I'm looking forward to new trailers for Andromeda to see more of this new female protagonist and also, possibly, what the default male protagonist will look like. I don't know if both versions of the protagonist will be shown in marketing, but Flynn's statement and the teaser trailer leave me hopeful and excited for the future.

"Mass Effect: Andromeda" is slated to come out in 2017.