The future of Mass Effect could be secured with a key learning from the beloved Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a former BioWare veteran has suggested.
In the days since EA announced it was shutting down its storied RPG game studio and killing its in-development Mass Effect Universe project, discussion has turned to the costs behind creating another AAA-budget entry in BioWare’s space opera series, following a report that EA decided to invest in Star Wars instead.
Last week, BioWare co-founder Trent Oster suggested that EA would likely have been on the hook for at least $200 million in development costs to finish Mass Effect Universe at a level that fans expected.
“Rough ballpark (based on contemporaries) is $200m+,” Oster wrote on X/Twitter. “That is a big number to commit up front. There has to be a bigger plan in place for the IP to make the math work.” (To be fair, there is still that Mass Effect TV series in the works. And there certainly won’t be any bigger plan in place for the IP if its flagship next game is cancelled.)
Now, Mass Effect lead programmer Christina Norman has said the game could be made for around $50 million — a figure that is five times the budget spent by the makers of Clair Obscur.
Highlighting a report on the French-made RPG’s overall budget, which was pegged at less than $10 million, Norman wrote on X/Twitter that this was “a good example of why I think another Mass Effect game could be made for well under 200 million.
“I mean 5x the budget of Claire obscure expedition 33 should be more than enough,” she continued. “You can always spend more but clever small teams can get it done.”
Norman spent more than six years at BioWare working on the original Mass Effect trilogy, firstly as a lead programmer responsible for creating the franchise’s conversation system, before moving on to become lead designer for Mass Effect 2 and 3, working to improve the series’ gameplay.
In the years since, Norman served stints at Riot Games and her own co-founded startup, before becoming a full-time machine learning engineering consultant focused on LLM-directed character conversations. Still, there’s no suggestion that LLM technology would be needed to turn in Mass Effect Universe on a smaller budget.
Even Oster has said he believed a new Mass Effect could be made for “cheaper” than $200m, though it “wouldn’t be what the team described in the Universe concept,” he wrote in a follow-up post. Alas, Oster also highlighted another big blocker to a new Mass Effect being made — that EA still owns the franchise’s rights, and may never want to give them up, even if it’s not actively using them. “The big push would be getting the IP free,” he concluded. “The fans deserve more.”
Last week’s annual N7 Day celebration of the Mass Effect franchise featured the Normandy’s cast and crew teaming up for a video message asking fans to help save Mass Effect. This followed an array of footage and details for the canceled Mass Effect Universe appearing online, and a petition for EA to reconsider its decision which has gained more than 325,000 signatures. A Canadian politician also started a government petition to save BioWare just last week.
