Mass Effect 5 development update is enormously bittersweet

The production of Mass Effect 5 is well underway at BioWare with a new development update having just been revealed, although it's one that comes with a bittersweet sting.

Much like Dragon Age, the Mass Effect series is one of EA’s biggest properties developed by BioWare.

What began as somewhat of a spiritual successor to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic became a sci-fi powerhouse when the first Mass Effect was released in 2007, staking its claim as one of the best sci-fi RPGs of its generation.

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Mass Effect would spawn two major sequels with the last numbered entry arriving in 2012 followed by the ill-fated Mass Effect Andromeda in 2017 (which is a much better game today). So, it’s fair to say that fans of the series have been patient whilst waiting for the series' next entry which was announced during The Game Awards in 2020.

BioWare’s most recent release, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, was largely a critical success but did not garner the revenue numbers that EA had hoped. Now, following two commercial failures (the other being 2019’s Anthem), BioWare has undergone another restructuring at the hands of EA.

As reported by Bloomberg, following an investor call, EA confirmed that Dragon Age: The Veilguard had missed its projected sales target by 50%, shifting only 1.5 million copies.

In comparison, 2014’s Dragon Age: Inquisition achieved around 12 million copies sold during its lifetime with The Veilguard unlikely to get anywhere near those numbers.

Understandably, EA is now extra cautious when it comes to the success of the next Mass Effect and sadly, despite some BioWare employees being fortunate to be moved elsewhere in the company, many others have found themselves to be out of work.

“Hello everyone," began a statement from BioWare general manager Gary McKay posted on BioWare.com. “Today, we are turning towards the future and preparing for the next chapter in BioWare’s story.”

“As we announced in August 2023, we are changing how we build games to meet the needs of our upcoming projects and hold ourselves to the highest quality standards,” he continued. Now that Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been released, a core team at BioWare is developing the next Mass Effect game under the leadership of veterans from the original trilogy, including Mike Gamble, Preston Watamaniuk, Derek Watts, Parrish Ley, and others.”

He continued, “In keeping with our fierce commitment to innovating during the development and delivery of Mass Effect, we have challenged ourselves to think deeply about delivering the best experience to our fans. We are taking this opportunity between full development cycles to reimagine how we work at BioWare. Given this stage of development, we don’t require support from the full studio. We have incredible talent here at BioWare, and so we have worked diligently over the past few months to match many of our colleagues with other teams at EA that had open roles that were a strong fit.”

“Today’s news will see BioWare become a more agile, focused studio that produces unforgettable RPGs. We appreciate your support as we build a new future for BioWare,” the statement concludes.

The bittersweet news to take from the statement above is that while it’s never nice to see people out of work, it appears that EA and BioWare’s motivation to ensure that the next Mass Effect is not only a critical success but also commercially has seemingly intensified with many of the series' OG devs heavily involved.

At the time of writing, the next Mass Effect does not have a release date but it might be safe to assume that it could be a next-gen title at this point.