BioWare has been surprisingly quiet lately.

Back at E3 2015, BioWare officially announced that it was working on the next entry in its long-running space opera RPG — and after that, the studio basically went silent. Save for a short teaser back in November, almost no new media for Mass Effect: Andromeda has been released.

Obviously, BioWare is being a bit more mysterious than fans have come to expect. When the first Mass Effect was getting set for release, the studio couldn't stop talking about it — now, it's been eight months since Andromeda was revealed and fans don't even know what the game's main character will look like.

At least not officially. While fans did catch a glimpse of Andromeda's updated N7 armor back in the E3 2015 reveal trailer, it was hardly an in-depth look, and the short teaser was over before fans could really pore over the details. However, thanks to BioWare artist Furio Tedeschi, fans can finally see what Mass Effect: Andromeda's new character looks like up close:

To be fair, the artwork isn't actually new: Tedeschi posted his hi-res concept art over at the ZBrush Central forums late last year. Why such a good look at unreleased assets was overlooked is anyone's guess — maybe BioWare just wasn't ready to make a work-in-progress public knowledge quite yet.

Better late than never: Tedeschi's "Pathfinder" model looks fantastic, and could be a worthy successor to the original trilogy's iconic armor. On the surface, it may look the same, especially considering its overall shape and hardened black exterior — but Tedeschi's armor actually sports quite a few notable aesthetic changes.

For one, it looks like the Pathfinder armor is more padding than anything else. The original N7 armor was typical video game fare: lots of overlapping plates with soft padding underneath. The Pathfinder armor, on the other hand, has more exposed padding than its predecessor — that's not to say there isn't any hard plating on the suit, but Andromeda's take on the series' signature armor looks to be a lot more flexible than anything else in the series thus far.

It's important to note that, as concept art, there's a chance that Tedeschi's armor won't make it into the game at all. Until BioWare shows off more of its next big game (which will probably happen at E3 2016), there's no way of knowing if Tedeschi's Pathfinder armor actually made the cut.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is supposedly set for launch early next year.