New Mass Effect Officially In Development With Veteran Team

Many of us assumed that BioWare was going to announce a Mass Effect trilogy collection during N7 Day today, but we didn't expect this other piece of news: A new Mass Effect game is in development.

Details on the project are extremely scarce, but BioWare is working on the "next chapter of the Mass Effect universe" and it will feature a "veteran team" from the company. It's unclear who will be involved in the project, as original creative director Casey Hudson now leads the entire studio. Mass Effect: Andromeda creative director Mac Walters appears to still be with the company and served as a writer on the original games as well as Jade Empire. The latter game was an original Xbox exclusive. It never received a sequel but is considered one of the studio's better games.

Andromeda wasn't as well-received as the earlier games, with criticism directed at its story, character animations, and quest design. In GameSpot's Mass Effect: Andromeda review, critic Scott Butterworth also found technical issues and disliked the characters. BioWare's next game Anthem was also a flop, and it's being reworked into a completely different experience. Whether that is successful in the long run remains to be seen.

The series highlight is generally considered to be Mass Effect 2, which received a 9/10 in GameSpot's review.

As the studio is still in the very early stages of the next Mass Effect game, it's unlikely we'll see too much from it for a long time--possibly years. In the meantime, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is set to release in Spring 2021 on Xbox One, PS4, and PC, with enhancements available on Xbox Series X and PS5. It will feature improvements to things like character models, textures, and shaders, but will not drastically change the experience compared to the original trilogy.