This is an opinion piece from writer Jess Kinghorn. IGN’s opinion columns represent the personal viewpoints of the writer, drawing on their own experiences and research to explore the exciting world of video games.
Unless you’ve been camping out on some far flung space rock, you’ll have heard that EA shut down BioWare last month. 50 developers lost their jobs, and Mass Effect 5 was cancelled. It’s a disappointing end for the studio so foundational to the modern RPG.
BioWare’s final years were plagued by lengthy, troubled development cycles and messy final products. I’m left wondering what could’ve been – particularly when fellow genre titan CD Projekt Red continues to find success updating Cyberpunk 2077 and has even announced a new expansion to the decade-old The Witcher 3. Could BioWare have found a more secure future by developing expansions for its older, more beloved games rather than struggling on with Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Mass Effect 5?
Songs of the Past will be the third expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and by the time it drops in 2027, the original will be 12 years old. I don’t know about you but back in 2015 I was going out of my gourd over every fresh revelation throughout Life Is Strange’s first season, and making Undertale my entire personality. Point being, that might as well be ancient in video game years.
Add to that The Witcher 3 Remastered, Cyberpunk 2077 2.0, plus its Phantom Liberty DLC, as well as the brand new Edgerunners Season 2 update, and it’s clear to see CD Projekt Red always has the long term success of its games top of mind. Remasters and DLC not only fill the boots of existing fans, but no doubt charm gamers new to these realms. All of it leaves me longingly looking at my copy of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, wondering what could have been for BioWare.
Mass Effect has always been at its best delivering snappy, episodic adventures in the mold of classic TV shows like Farscape (big up my sexy blue ladies). The Legendary Edition, launched in 2021, could have been the start of a new era for the original trilogy, introducing a steady trickle of new missions, DLC packs, or perhaps even a CDPR-style expansion which would have kept the series front of mind. Who would say no to, for instance, a fresh string of missions revolving around The Shadow Broker – especially as the studio had seemed keen to lean on Liara hype to stoke interest in future entries (again: big up).
But instead of continuing to build on what Mass Effect fans already loved, the studio was locked into working the live service mines for a completely different sci fi project, Anthem. Following a troubled 2019 release, the game was completely shut down earlier this year. The ripple effects of Anthem’s misfire would be felt throughout the rest of BioWare’s existence. Case in point, Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Work on the original incarnation of this devisive RPG began about a decade ago, before being rebooted in 2017 as a live service game built with Anthem’s development tools. To be fair, the live service model is one way to sustain storytelling in an established setting, though this was not the fate fans had wanted for the world of Thedas.
The project was officially unveiled as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf in 2022, promising a conclusion to the arc of a certain bad boy elf in Dragon Age: Inquisition and its Trespasser DLC. The project was ultimately retooled as a single-player experience and released as Dragon Age: The Veilguard in 2025, a game that feels distinctly at war with itself.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition could have been the start of a new era for the original trilogy, introducing a steady trickle of new DLC packs.
Imagine a world where the Dreadwolf wasn’t sidelined in the very game that once carried his name. Imagine instead that my female elf inquisitor had been able to have the last word with everyone’s favourite evil egg years ago in one last massive hurrah for Inquisition, an expansion that had the space and focus to conclude the base game’s many threads. Imagine The Veilguard had been properly free to tell a new story all its own.
Instead, the ending The Veilguard offers us Solas romancers is…mostly fine. But, at the risk of skirting some major spoilers, I’ve no doubt it would have been all the more impactful to be in the driver’s seat rather than watching some NPCs walk off into the sunset. It’s yet another example of the weird clash at the heart of The Veilguard: it explores the northern reaches of Thedas for the first time, while the story is still trying to wrap up everything that went on down south.
After all of Tresspasser’s set up, chasing Solas through The Veilguard’s flashy opening ends up feeling like I’ve skipped over a whole other Dragon Age game. Hastily punting the bald baddie into the Fade and introducing new villains feels like a lapse of judgement, misunderstanding what fans were looking for after following this story across so many years. Inquisition and Veilguard launched 10-years apart (with The Trespasser DLC dropping just one year after Inquisition). Is it really too offbase an idea to suggest that 2014’s award-sweeping megahit could have gotten more DLC releases to bridge the gap? If games like The Witcher 3 can still get its hooks in with a new expansion, it seems like a massive missed opportunity here.
It’s hard not to see 2017’s Mass Effect: Andromeda as a similarly troubled false start. The Legendary Edition remaster could’ve been a fantastic platform for original space-faring stories with established characters. Unfortunately, BioWare began development on yet another fresh start taking place hundreds of years after Mass Effect 3 instead. As this project was cancelled with the studio’s closure, Andromeda’s infamy is left to linger over the series’ legacy like its very own accursed veil.
As nostalgia is not a particularly deep well to draw from, each attempt to reinvent BioWare’s RPG wheels are at least understandable. Still, pivoting a beloved RPG studio to live service games will forever remain a headscratcher. It’s hard not to wonder what could’ve been if BioWare had been allowed to tell smaller scope follow up stories instead – would the studio have avoided being on EA’s chopping block altogether? By all rights BioWare should have been in a position to match Baldur’s Gate 3’s success, rather than see that particular hype train and the wider genre revival chug along right past them.
It’s clear EA didn’t know what it had with BioWare. The studio we knew is gone – though perhaps not completely dead if recent comments made by Canadian MP Don Davies in response to a fanmade petition are any indication. If BioWare’s laid off developers are able to ‘buy back their studio’, here’s hoping it’s the fresh start that finally sticks the landing. In the meantime, the spirit of BioWare lives on in plenty of RPGs – though with former staff involved in Exodus, maybe evolution is more likely than a resurrection.
Jess Kinghorn is a freelancer writer who has written for PC Gamer, PLAY, and GamesRadar+.
