After the divisive mess that was Mass Effect: Andromeda, a lot of fans of BioWare’s sexy space RPG were worried they’d never see a new entry rear its head.
It’s always been especially concerning to many, given that BioWare is owned by EA and Mass Effect Andromeda didn’t sell very well at all – so why would EA ever green-light work on a new one when it can have BioWare develop something more potentially profitable?
Thankfully, BioWare executive producer Mike Darrah seems to think that the franchise is far from over. He recently shared his thoughts with Polygon, revealing there’s still plenty to see in the Mass Effect universe.
He explained:
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.
While it’s nice to hear that BioWare still has faith in the franchise, we’re realistically a long, long way away from a new Mass Effect. The next game from the studio is the online shooter/RPG hybrid Anthem, which is a title I imagine EA is going to want BioWare to work on maintaining and improving for a good old while.
After that, I expect the next big release from BioWare will be the new Dragon Age, which was announced at the 2018 Game Awards.
By all accounts, it’s still early days for that one, so if development on a new Mass Effect doesn’t really kick off in earnest until after Dragon Age is out, we’re talking years.
Still, if you ever start to miss the mass effect franchise you can still go and play through the original trilogy. It totally holds up – unlike Andromeda, which aged badly about two days after launch.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.