BioWare was shut down by EA earlier this week. While the studio had struggled through a long stretch without putting out a genuine classic, it’s no lie to say it was behind some of the best RPGs of all time. At its peak, with games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins, BioWare was a pioneer of not only building worlds, but filling those worlds with characters I (and so many others) actually cared about.
But BioWare went so much further than just writing some witty dialog and calling it a day. I always think back to the Mass Effect 2’s climactic suicide mission, where, unless you’ve completed all of your companions’ loyalty quests and built up those relationships, there was a real chance they would just die, never to return in the trilogy’s final chapter. BioWare built personal, heartbreaking consequences into its stories.
The games BioWare made in its heyday were incredibly influential, but I don’t think there are any games from other developers that tried to build on those successes that truly hit the same level. Even BioWare struggled to capture that same magic in its latter games. But while I don’t think there is anything out there close to the ultimate quality of the Mass Effect trilogy or the first three Dragon Age games, the spirit of BioWare’s best work does live on in the work of the games they inspired.
Just in the last few years, there have been plenty of games that draw straight from BioWare’s well, and there are quite a few projects in the works, including two that look like they could just be new BioWare games. So if you’re hunting for more BioWare in the wake of this terrible news, here are six games to keep in mind.
Baldur’s Gate 3
Now, obviously BioWare made the first two Baldur’s Gate games, so of course they had a massive influence on the third one. But each time I go back to Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3, the influence from Mass Effect and Dragon Age becomes more obvious. The way it introduces your companions and encourages you to build close relationships, for example, is extremely BioWare.
That’s not to mention the complicated web of different romance options in the game. I ended up wooing Lae’Zel, and spent hours building her into a reliable tank to carry me through the late game. And then I made a really bad decision involving a mind flayer, and she just straight up left my party for good. I had to figure out how to adjust my party (and my broken heart) from there.
Earlier in that playthrough, I ended up accidentally killing a potential companion, just because of some choices I made when trying to help some fellow paladins in Act One. It wasn’t until my next playthrough that I even realized they were someone I could recruit, and when I did realize it, I felt awful. In many ways, this chain of action and consequence mirrors what I love so much about Mass Effect 2’s suicide mission, but in Baldur’s Gate 3, it spans the entire game.
Even outside your little web of companions, the choices you make are core to what makes Baldur’s Gate 3 tick. From the outset, the game throws seriously consequential decisions your way that can come back to bite you in the ass depending on what you choose to do with them. Early on, there’s a commune of druids that are having a spat with some visiting Tieflings, and the way you handle that doesn’t just affect the scenario, but begins a domino effect that extends through the whole campaign. There are some pretty dark ways that situation can play out, too, and that’s just one of the dozens of encounters you have to deal with that shapes your character and playthrough.
The Outer Worlds
Most of the time, The Outer Worlds feels like Fallout: New Vegas in space. That’s a pretty natural conclusion, considering it’s developed by New Vegas studio Obsidian Entertainment. But just like Baldur’s Gate 3, The Outer Worlds frequently feels exactly like a BioWare game, thanks to the way it handles its six companions. No matter how many wild situations the game puts you through, the thing that always sticks with me when I go back to The Outer Worlds is how fleshed out the companions are.
All of them have their own distinct needs, leading to side quest chains that will ultimately decide their fate. And, similar to both Mass Effect and Dragon Age’s decision-tallying finales, there’s an entire tree of different endings that change depending on the choices you make. A lot of the questlines that dictate those endings cross over each other too, creating this tangled web of possibilities that can potentially make every playthrough just a little bit different.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered
CD Projekt Red and BioWare go way back, with the original Witcher game being built on the same engine as Neverwinter Nights. So, it’s not surprising that The Witcher games have carried the spirit of BioWare’s approach to storytelling for years. And that feels a little weird to say, because when I think of BioWare, I think of RPGs with a protagonist that you create yourself, and companions that surround you for the entire course of the game – two things The Witcher doesn’t have. In all of the Witcher games you play as Geralt of Rivia and, occasionally, other characters from the books, and the allies you gather aren’t party companions in the BioWare sense of the word.
I go back and forth with myself all the time over which of these games I love the most, but The Witcher 3 is probably the best example of CDPR taking BioWare’s legacy and running with it. You spend most of your time in The Witcher 3 on your own, trying to find Geralt’s adoptive daughter, Ciri. But even though you are by yourself most of the time, there’s a huge focus on doing side missions for supporting characters to build up allegiances ahead of when – spoilers – the villainous Wild Hunt attacks your fortress home of Kaer Morhen. Right off the bat, that leaves a lot of potential for an ending reminiscent of Mass Effect 2’s iconic final mission, but unfortunately not a lot happens if you fail to recruit friends to help defend the Witcher fortress.
Still, The Witcher 3 is a game I’ve played through four or five times, and even though I know there’s not much of a gameplay purpose to recruiting everyone, I still try to get all my friends into that castle in the mountains, even if it just means unlocking dialog that makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
Exodus
It’s no secret that for the last decade or so, even before EA shuttered BioWare, things were rough for the studio. A lot of talented people jumped ship, especially in the run-up to Anthem. One of the studios that formed from these talented ex-BioWare folks is Archetype Entertainment, and its first game, Exodus, is due out on April 7 next year.
We’ve actually got the chance to play a bit of Exodus early, and from what I’ve seen and read from my colleagues, it looks as much like a new Mass Effect game as yesterday’s leaked trailer. It’s a squad-based sci-fi RPG, and one of your squadmates is an octopus in a giant mech. That sounds ridiculous, and it is, but just look at the wild and wonderful companions we got in Mass Effect. In the trailer we got at Gamescom, there were scenes that made it look like we’re going to meet their family. So, it at least seems like there’s going to be some suitably wild companion quests in the game.
Crucially, though, Exodus has Drew Karpyshyn as its Narrative Director, and that is more exciting for me than any amount of marketing. This is the guy who wrote the original Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic, two of BioWare’s all-time best games. Karpyshyn leaving BioWare was, as far as I’m concerned, the biggest red flag that Anthem wasn’t going to turn out well, and while I’m not happy that my gut feeling was right there, at least we can see what he’s been working on for the last five years in just a few months.
The Expanse: Osiris Reborn
Just like Exodus, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is another spiritual successor to Mass Effect, although its scope is maybe a little less fantastic. It’s based on, well, The Expanse, the popular hard sci-fi novels and their TV show adaptation, so it already has a deep well of lore to draw from, and there’s a ton of potential there. Probably. I’m going to be honest, I haven’t read any of the books or watched the show, so I don’t really know much about the world of Osiris Reborn.
But I am familiar with Owlcat Games, which has been making some of the biggest cult-favorite RPGs of the last few years. Most recently, it made Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, an excellent, deep CRPG set in Games Workshop’s 40K universe. But while Owlcat knows how to make a rich RPG, Osiris Reborn is the studio’s first foray into making an Action RPG with realtime third-person shooter combat, and its wearing Mass Effect’s influence on its sleeve for all to see.
It does look like Osiris Reborn is going to be a bit more narrow in scope compared to Exodus, with less aliens and time dilation shenanigans, and more of a focus on politics and your own personal struggle. But from everything I’ve seen of the game, it still feels like a Mass Effect game, from the way you choose dialog options to the squad-based combat.
I’m not sure when The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is actually going to arrive. Right now, it just has a vague ‘Q2 2027’ release date on Steam, so hopefully I’m able to get my hands on it before summer. But, even if it does get delayed, maybe it’ll give me a chance to actually watch the show and read some of the novels to brush up on the lore.
Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic
Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic was revealed nearly a year ago at The Game Awards 2025, and at this point we still don’t know much about it. The teaser looks awesome, and shows a jedi on some desolate planet looking angry as she walks into some mysterious room. Not a lot to go on there. So it would usually be a bit too early to really say that this game will carry on the spirit of BioWare, but it just so happens that it’s helmed by Casey Hudson, who directed the original Mass Effect trilogy and Knights of the Old Republic.
In the press release shared by the newly-founded Arcanaut Studios when it announced the game, it says its “crafting an adventure about choice, destiny, and the timeless struggle between light and dark.” And even without seeing any of the gameplay or how conversations with NPCs will look, it sounds like it’s a true successor to Knights of the Old Republic. It’s important to remember that in a lot of ways, Mass Effect was also a spiritual successor to KOTOR, and I expect a lot of the DNA from that game is going to carry over into this new Star Wars RPG.
The catch, though, is that while Osiris Reborn has some shaky ‘Q2 2027’ release date looming over it, I have no idea when Fate of the Old Republic is going to see the light of day. Hudson did come out and respond to people that were memeing about the game not coming out until 2030, where he said it’d be coming out a bit sooner than that. But with a game of this scope, I’d be surprised if we saw it before 2028.
Regardless, the prospect of a big Star Wars RPG directed by Casey Hudson with everything he learned from Mass Effect is exciting. It’s still early, but even though I’ve seen very little, this is probably the one I’m most excited about, it just sucks that it’s the one we have to wait the longest for.