There’s been a lot of change over at BioWare recently. Dragon Age III: Inquisition was announced yesterday and BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk announced their retirement. All in all, September 18th has brought on mixed feelings for those of us enamored with the developer.
Now we have news that another full fledged Mass Effect game is at least on the drawing board. Here’s the quote from Aaryn Flynn’s blog post about upcoming developments at the company:
“MASS EFFECT – Executive Producer Casey Hudson and his team are coming off an amazing eight-year run with the Mass Effect trilogy. But they’re not done yet. We are releasing more multiplayer content and we have more single-player stories coming throughout the next six months, including Omega which is coming in the Fall. But the Mass Effect universe is vast, and Casey and our teams have plans for another full game. “Where to go next?” with such a project has been a question a lot of us have been asking, and we’d all love to hear your ideas.”
It’s no surprise that Mass Effect isn’t over. The epic franchise has managed to capture the imaginations of many gamers. Even though I personally grew bored of the game (and one of our writers decided to boycott it), I had a hunch that more Mass Effect 3 DLC would be on the way after Leviathan.
What do you guys think? A romp through the classic Omega location sounds fun, and news of another Mass Effect game is undoubtedly exciting. Will the loss of Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk hurt these followup titles or will there be room for further creative growth?
For now it’s just a wait and see feeling. Losing the doctors has to be a hard transition for BioWare right now. I believe that it will allow the chance for others to rise to the occasion and new creativity from other team members to come through for Mass Effect and other titles. However I’m more interested in the chance of seeing a new franchise from BioWare with the doctors gone and see if they go back to any old franchises. Perhaps there is even a chance Jade Empire 2 could be a reality (that however is pure speculation).