‘It’s [our] job to figure out what that looks like’
It has been quite the tumultuous year forMass Effect. The release ofAndromedawas met witha tepid receptionthat the series isn’t used to. Then it came out that the majority of the game wasmade in the final 18 monthsand that the development cycle was dysfunctional and kind of directionless. It all went poorly enough that EAscrapped any planned single-player DLC(thatAndromedaso transparently set the stage for) and effectively putMass Effecton ice for a while.
But, and this is important,Mass Effect: Andromedais still capable of driving revenue. That much was made evidently clear when the black sheep of the franchise still managed tolead EA to a good fiscal quarter. Business savvy dictates that you sell a product if there’s a market for it, and that meansMass Effectisn’t going on the shelf forever.
EA executive vice president Patrick Söderlund just said as much in a gamescom interview withGamereactor. “I see no reason why we shouldn’t come back toMass 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 thatMass 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 bringMass Effectback 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 theMass Effectteam’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 Effectisn’t gone forever. It just needs to lay low for a while.
Patrick Söderlund “sees no reason” not to return to Mass Effect[Gamereactor]
