‘It’s [our] job to figure out what that looks like’
It has been quite the tumultuous year for Mass Effect. The release of Andromeda was met with a tepid reception that the series isn’t used to. Then it came out that the majority of the game was made in the final 18 months and that the development cycle was dysfunctional and kind of directionless. It all went poorly enough that EA scrapped any planned single-player DLC (that Andromeda so transparently set the stage for) and effectively put Mass Effect on ice for a while.
But, and this is important, Mass Effect: Andromeda is still capable of driving revenue. That much was made evidently clear when the black sheep of the franchise still managed to lead EA to a good fiscal quarter. Business savvy dictates that you sell a product if there’s a market for it, and that means Mass Effect isn’t going on the shelf forever.
EA executive vice president Patrick Söderlund just said as much in a gamescom interview with Gamereactor. “I see no reason why we shouldn’t come back to Mass Effect. Why not? It’s a spectacular universe, it’s a loved [series], it has a big fanbase, and it’s a game that has done a lot for EA and for BioWare,” Söderlund said.
However, Söderlund seemingly understands that Mass Effect‘s current state isn’t the right fit for that revisit. He continued: “What we need to be careful though of is, whenever we bring Mass Effect back again, we have to make sure that we bring it back in a really [relevant] way, and in a fresh, exciting place. That’s my job, and that’s Casey [Hudson’s] job, and BioWare and the Mass Effect team’s job, to figure out what that looks like, and that we don’t know yet, but we will.”
Let this serve as confirmation to what we probably could’ve already guessed: Mass Effect isn’t gone forever. It just needs to lay low for a while.
Patrick Söderlund “sees no reason” not to return to Mass Effect [Gamereactor]
