A former Mass Effect 5 developer has said that BioWare had seen what RPG powerhouses Larian and CD Projekt were achieving with their games, and was responding by taking Mass Effect to “the next level.”
Yesterday, EA sent shockwaves through the industry with the announcement that the next Mass Effect game was canceled and its developer, BioWare, was shutting down. Around 50 people were reportedly working on the game before development ended.
Since yesterday’s dramatic news, a number of people who had worked on Mass Effect 5 talked in vague terms about the game it was shaping up to be. On X / Twitter, New York Times bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente responded to a user who said, “A game industry that cannot figure out how to make a sequel to the literal best game of all time is a game industry that is fundamentally broken,” with: “We did figure it out. We were working on a great game. Just saying.”
One person who was laid off from BioWare, cinematic supervisor Tony de Waal, took to LinkedIn to say Mass Effect 5 would have been “something special,” offering players “a level of autonomy and choice that no other game has been able to match.”
“We saw what Larian and CD Projekt were bringing to the table with their latest offerings, and started down a path to bring Mass Effect to the next level while remaining true to the Trilogy,” he continued.
“I'm sad you won't ever get to see what we were cooking, and sad for the small, talented group of devs who were all punching above their weight to make something special. Please consider those who stayed with BioWare until the very end. They are truly some of the most talented people I've had the pleasure of working with throughout my career.”
Both Larian and CD Projekt have enjoyed enormous success with their RPGs over the last decade, while BioWare struggled with a series of disappointing releases that failed to meet EA’s expectations. After the franchise-best sales of Dragon Age: Inquisition, BioWare sought live-service success with Anthem, then spent the best part of a decade on the troubled Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Both underperformed. Mass Effect, meanwhile, has seen mixed success. Mass Effect Andromeda is widely considered a disappointment among fans, though the series' more recent Legendary Edition remaster was well-received.
BioWare had spent the past half a decade teasing the next Mass Effect's setting and story. We'd had it confirmed that Mass Effect 5 would have been set hundreds of years after Mass Effect 3, and feature a narrative that re-centers the action on the franchise's original Milky Way setting, long after the Reapers were defeated.
Meanwhile, CD Projekt has released The Witcher 3, which is considered by some to be the greatest fantasy RPG of all time, Cyberpunk 2077, which after a disastrous launch is now considered one of the best sci-fi RPGs ever made, and is set to follow both up with various sequels that are among the most-anticipated video games on earth.
Larian saw critical and commercial acclaim with its Divinity: Original Sin games, but 2023’s Baldur’s Gate 3 propelled the studio into the stratosphere, selling millions of copies and resetting expectations around what a role-playing game could be.
It’s hard to say what Mass Effect 5 might have been, but based on comments from former developers, it was being made with the likes of The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, and Baldur’s Gate 3 in mind. The line about “a level of autonomy and choice that no other game has been able to match,” is quite the claim, but to me is clearly in reaction to the likes of Baldur’s Gate 3, which reacts to player choice and experimentation in a way that goes above and beyond most games ever released.
We have much more on the dramatic news of BioWare's closure, including reaction from fans and the video game industry, IGN's Ryan McCaffrey on why BioWare was the greatest RPG developer ever, and the thoughts of one former BioWare developer on the possibility of Dragon Age and Mass Effect living on.