After the release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard in last year, developer Bioware has made the next installment of the acclaimed Mass Effect series, namely Mass Effect 5 it’s main focus. The pre-production stage for the Action RPG had already started even before The Veilguard’s launch, but it seems right now the studio is shifting gears and making further progress into Mass Effect 5’s development under some of the veteran devs from the original trilogy.
In a recent Blog post, general manager Gary McKay from Bioware has assured fans that development for the newest Mass Effect title is underway and the team is focused on “delivering the best experience to our fans.”
“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.”
This is definitely promising for the upcoming game as well as making the fans have faith on the new Mass Effect as some of the key developers who had worked on Mass Effect 1-3 have now joined Bioware. This will definitely help Mass Effect 5 to retain some of the best elements that made the original trilogy one of the greatest videogame experiences ever, while also evolving many of it’s core aspects in completely new directions.
This balance was largely missed in the previous game in the series, Mass Effect Andromeda which despite taking several gameplay elements to new heights, suffered from a ‘less-than-stellar’ narrative and lack of memorable characters, both of which were hallmarks of what made the earlier Mass Effect games so special and endearing.
However, Bioware has also hinted at some of the restructuring that’s currently being made by EA through moving some of the staffs from the studio to other projects of the publisher, though the blog post has clearly mentioned that this won’t affect the development of Mass Effect 5 in any shape or form.
“Given this stage of development, we don’t require support from the full studio,” Mckay wrote. “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.”
Though it’s currently unknown how many people at Bioware are being moved to work for other projects at EA or whether there will be potential layoffs in the studio. However a spokesperson from EA has told IGN that despite the changes in staff, the development process of the next Mass Effect game won’t be affected.
“The studio’s priority was Dragon Age. During this time there were people continuing to build the vision for the next Mass Effect. Now that The Veilguard has shipped, the studio’s full focus is Mass Effect.
“While we’re not sharing numbers, the studio has the right number of people in the right roles to work on Mass Effect at this stage of development.”
It’s important to note that the recently released Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s lower than expected financial numbers have also played a part in the current predicament of Bioware. At this point it certainly looks like a period of uncertainty for the studio, though the success of the next Mass Effect game could change the course for the developers in hugely favorable ways.
