One of BioWare’s most prominent writers, Drew Karpyshyn (also known for being the lead writer on Mass Effect 2) recently left the studio (again), and amid this news, questions have started surfacing whether this will have any kind of an impact on the quality of the story in the upcoming Anthem. One fan took to Twitter to directly ask Casey Hudson, BioWare’s General Manager, whether the loss of such an important and accomplished writer will have a detrimental effect on the game’s narrative, but Hudson has moved to assure fans that such shall not be the case.
Hudson responded to the fan in question by saying that story has been and will continue to be an important part of any BioWare game, and that Karpyshyn only moved on from the studio after he had completed his work on Anthem. In addition to that, the upcoming game’s lead writers and their teams are continuing their work, as per Hudson, and are still “developing the world, story, and characters”.
Anthem is a decidedly different experience from what we usually expect to see from a studio such as BioWare, and given its focus on online play, questions have been raised whether it will still have the kind of focus on narrative and storytelling as BioWare games recently do- there’s no doubt that the news regarding Karpyshyn would have only compounded such doubts. It’s good, then, that Hudson has moved to clear any such doubts so quickly, but whether or not the game itself will actually be affected by the leaving of Karpyshyn remains to be seen.