In a studio profile published on February 11th, 2019 over on Polygon, the outlet managed to talk to various individuals from BioWare, including general manager Casey Hudson and executive producer Mike Darrah. Both of executives explained that in spite of Mass Effect: Andromeda ending on a rather financially sour note, the studio still has ideas swimming around in their heads. They also have plans on reviving the series at some point down the line, either with a brand new adventure or by continuing where an existing adventure left off.
According to Mike Darrah, he told Polygon…
“We’re definitely not done with Mass Effect. There’s a lot of stories to be told. We could pull on the threads we put down with Andromeda; we could pull on threads from Mass Effect 3. There’s a lot of interesting space to be explored.”
It’s interesting that Darrah specifically mentions the last two controversial titles in the series, one of which caused a lot of negative fan feedback due to the endings not necessarily being fleshed out to the expectations of those who took the multi-year journey since 2007, and the other became a laughing stock throughout 2017 for launching broken and seemingly incomplete.
What’s more is that one of the ways that Social Justice Warriors have attempted to mitigate poor perception of Mass Effect: Andromeda is by placing the blame on DICE’s Frostbite game engine, saying that it wasn’t designed for RPGs or capable of properly scaling for adventure games. Many uneducated activists posing as game journalists reiterate this talking point, constantly putting the blame on the Frostbite.
What places like Polygon, Kotaku, and PC Gamer failed to note is that the Frostbite was already used for an RPG before Mass Effect: Andromeda. Yes, BioWare had used the Frostbite 3 game engine to build Dragon Age: Inquisition, so it’s not like the Frostbite couldn’t scale outside of FPS games; you just had to have skill, talent, and know-how to make the engine purr, which is something that the staff at BioWare Montreal lacked.
In fact, while the Frostbite may have been built to accommodate games like Battlefield, other, more competent developers were able to reorient the engine for games like the latest Madden NFL outings, and even the most recent FIFA titles.
You can clearly see how the EA Sports team managed to improve upon the Ignite Engine and make the Frostbite elevate nearly every aspect of games like Madden NFL, as evident in the video below from YouTuber AltChar.
However, BioWare Montreal opted to blame the engine for the shortcomings with Mass Effect: Andromeda, and many uneducated game journalists hopped on board the blame train in order to divert attention away from the fact that diversity hires and ideological bias tainted the development of Mass Effect: Andromeda.
The inevitable poor sales of the game is what ended up prompting EA to put the series on ice for the time being, and earned the game a spot on the Get Woke; Go Broke Master List.
Nevertheless, Casey Hudson states that they still have plans for Mass Effect, they just have to find time to get around to it…
“In my mind, it’s very much alive. I’m thinking all the time about things that I think will be great. It’s just a matter of getting back to it as soon as we can.”
As Polygon points out, BioWare still has Anthem prepping to release soon for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. But after that the team still won’t have time to tackle anything Mass Effect related because they’re still working on Dragon Age: Dread Wolf Rises, which is set to come out for home consoles and PC. Once those two games are done, Mass Effect could be back on the docket at some point after 2021, assuming that Anthem isn’t a sales failure and BioWare doesn’t get shut down.
(Thanks for the news tip Ebicentre)
