BioWare is shutting down. A year ago, maybe two, especially after the dismal performance of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, it wouldn’t have been all that surprising. If this was the first real move Electronic Arts made after immediately going private – which, among other layoffs, is what this really is – it still wouldn’t be the world’s biggest shocker. A studio that’s been underwhelming for more than a decade is gone? Wow, who could have seen that coming?
Of course, that also means that the next Mass Effect is no longer in development. Whether EA decides to hand it off to another team or not, the fact that it still hadn’t entered full production five years after its announcement was a red flag. Electronic Arts restructured the studio to solely focus on one title, but nearly two years later, there was still no word on progress, or really anything to show for it.
But much like the circumstances that led to many of BioWare’s failures, the reaction isn’t so cut and dry. Even if this was all inevitable – and hindsight is 20/20 on all the points the studio could have turned things around – it’s still sad. One of the most prolific role-playing studios in gaming’s history is officially gone.
And that’s a tough pill to swallow, because as much as people want to clown on the studio for its failures – which were extensive, make no mistake – it’s easy to forget how influential it’s been on gaming as a whole. Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 essentially set the bar for a Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game, and also popularized the real-time-with-pause combat system seen in franchises like Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and its own Dragon Age: Origins.
Of course, you can’t forget Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which also featured the same combat system and to date, remains one of the few top-tier Star Wars titles. And no other Star Wars RPG has topped it, including the sequel (though it’s close). Which is more of an indictment of the industry as a whole, but I digress.
Then there’s Mass Effect, which took the branching choices and consequences of its previous games, alongside the ensemble cast of companions, and brought them into a big-budget sci-fi adventure. The real-time-with-pause combat evolved further, leaning more towards third-person shooter gameplay while still letting you pause and select abilities or command squadmates. Loyalty missions, as straightforward as they are as a concept, would serve as a key element in role-playing games for decades to come.
The fact is, many franchises and critically acclaimed titles wouldn’t have happened – or have ended up quite differently – if it weren’t for BioWare. Not only did it lend the Aurora Engine to CD Projekt RED to develop The Witcher, but it also offered a corner of its E3 2004 booth to showcase it. Baldur’s Gate 3, arguably the most critically and commercially successful D&D title of all time, would never have happened had BioWare not laid the foundation with its first two games. There wouldn’t have been The Expanse: Osiris Reborn or Exodus if Mass Effect hadn’t become so huge. No Fate of the Old Republic if KOTOR’s influence had waned.
Let’s not even get into all the memorable characters, from Minsc and Boo to Revan and HK47 to so many others in Dragon Age and Mass Effect – Morrigan, Leliana, Varric, Cassandra, Alistair, Hawke, Garrus, Tali, Liara, Thane, Wrex, the list goes on – that were brought to life.
Sadly, we can’t remember the good without acknowledging the bad. Many can doubtless claim Mass Effect: Andromeda as the beginning of the end, but BioWare’s development processes had become unsustainable and tenuous for a long time (see the crunch it underwent for Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition, among other titles). “BioWare magic” became a pejorative term describing the studio’s lack of planning and how waiting until the very end of development, with no time left, was viewed as a viable method to make games.
Anthem would be its most high-profile failure. Not because it featured none of the key elements that defined the studio, or because it launched in a crowded live-service market. It was simply a terrible game, one that even those desperate for looter shooter action couldn’t stomach. And while it’s true that Electronic Arts is to blame for demanding the project – because that’s what you should put your studio known for single-player-focused role-playing games on – plenty of stories have circulated about how thoroughly BioWare bungled development.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a much more complicated story, having shifted back and forth so many times between single-player and live-service. In the end, the team did what it could with the remnants of all these pieces. The results were unsatisfying and so thoroughly unlike Dragon Age, but the fact that it even coalesced into something playable is a feat unto itself. Not a particularly good one, but still.
It’s easy to point the finger at EA for its meddling and mishandling of the studio, as it is at BioWare for how its practices ultimately collapsed in the triple-A development space. While it may seem justified for the publisher to shut down the latter, claiming it took a “hard look at its business” over the past several months, this feels more like simply justifying what it would have done anyway. That it has a $20 billion debt following its buyout is even greater motivation.
As much as one can point out that EA is only really good at killing studios rather than nurturing and building them up – which is certainly true across too many points in history – the fact is, it saw nothing of value in BioWare. That was obvious when it restructured the studio and laid off so many developers, and even more so in how it thought of role-playing games in general. For all intents and purposes, the two were a terrible fit for a long time.
What happens next? Many fans have been clamoring for EA to sell off Mass Effect and Dragon Age IPs to developers who would do them justice (and give a damn). But as former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah noted, even if it were possible, the publisher is “more likely to just try to forget that they ever existed and bury them in the vault.” Think of the sheer number of other IPs it’s done the same with, from Command and Conquer and Burnout to Ultima, Dead Space, SSX and so on.
For executives who only really care about the bottom line – and neatly placed themselves in a situation where they should, if they want to pay back a mountain of debt – adding BioWare’s IPs to the pile is just another day at the office.
Even if they’re relegated to history and never see the light of day, either with remakes or sequels, the studio’s influence on the industry remains. The world may have moved on from BioWare as a whole, even as it awaited the next Mass Effect with bated breath, but it won’t soon forget how it shaped the genre as we know it. While it hasn’t always been the best ride, especially for long-time fans, its legacy will live on, even if the name is eventually forgotten.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
