Following the announcement that BioWare is being shut down and the in-development new Mass Effect game has been canceled, former developers from the studio have started taking to social media to discuss what the project could have been. Along with two of the writers having spoken about it earlier, we now also have cinematic supervisor Tony de Waal discussing the project.
As caught by IGN, de Waal took to LinkedIn to say that the Mass Effect game was going to be “something special”. He also said that it would give players “a level of autonomy and choice that no other game has been able to match.”
It is worth noting that Mass Effect has been traditionally defined by how players can make choices that could have major impacts on the overarching narrative. To that end, BioWare was seemingly paying close attention to what studios like CD Projekt RED and Larian had been doing with the RPG genre for some inspiration.
“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 wrote.
“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.”
Writers Derek Künsken and Catherynne Valente had previously spoken about working with BioWare on the story of the Mass Effect project, with Künsken talking about how everyone he met at the studio was “an expert in their field, and was ambitiously imaginative about what a future experience of BioWare could be.” He went on to say that “what we were cooking was really cool.”
Responding to another social media user, Valente simply said that “We were working on a great game.” Künsken, on the other hand, praised Valente for the time he spent working with her to “pitch story and character and lore and sci-fi wonder for this next chapter of the Mass Effect world.”
“There are too many great people to mention right now. All fifty deserve to be lauded and to land safely in new jobs,” he continued. “I hope you support them. I also hope to say more in a few weeks. The emotional dust needs to settle. I need to find out what I can and cannot say. I need to look for a new job in video games – how does LinkedIn even work?? And I’m way behind in promoting my newest novel.”
In the meantime, despite BioWare having been shut down, reports have indicated that EA is still going ahead with its planned TV adaptation of Mass Effect, and that work on the project is continuing at Amazon MGM Studios. However, no other details have been revealed about the adaptation.
