Tuesday 18 September 2012

BioWare confirm a new MASS EFFECT game and a new IP

The co-founders of BioWare, Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka, today announced that they are retiring from the company they set up almost twenty years ago. Whilst that in itself has sparked a storm of debate online about why they are leaving - some fans citing the arguably declining quality of their games since BioWare was taken over by Electronic Arts - even more interesting is a statement by Aaryn Flynn, the head of the company's Edmonton and Montreal studios.



Flynn, in a clearly calming-the-waters move, reveals that BioWare are currently actively developing three projects. One of these is the recently-confirmed Dragon Age III: Inquisition, which looks set to launch in late 2013.

Secondly, he confirms that the Mass Effect team is, as expected, working on the long-awaited Omega DLC, which will round off the trilogy's last remaining major unfinished storyline. However, he also unexpectedly confirmed that the team is also starting work on a new, full game set in that universe. Based on previous tidbits, it appears that this new game might be a prequel set centuries or even millennia before the existing trilogy. If true, this will fascinatingly open up the possibility of a game featuring no human characters at all (as the trilogy is itself set only thirty years after humans make contact with the Citadel races).

Finally, he also reveals that BioWare are developing a whole new IP and ficitional universe, based on all-new tech. I'd wager that this game is probably in the earliest stages of development and may be aimed at the next generation of consoles.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Any possibility that DA3 will not be even worse than DA2?

locusmortiis said...

The retirements could be down to the failure of the Star Wars: The Old Republic. I know a bunch of people who do technical support for the game and they say that they're being moved on to other EA games because demand is so low.

Anonymous said...

Please use "titbit" instead of the prudish, blushing Americanisation "tidbid"

Adam Whitehead said...

A lot of DA2's more notable problems can be put down to the rushed production schedule. DA3 has been in production for two years already, apparently, and has another year to go before release. That should overcome the problems of repetitive dungeons and reused areas. We'll have to see about the others.

Shane said...

No American has ever said the word "tidbid."

Anonymous said...

To Anonymous of 6:57 GMT:

Tidbid is the word's original form as it appeared in England. Titbit is a much later form. The retention of the original English 17th century form in North American English has nothing to do with prudishness, as your arrogance would have it, and everything to do with the lexical conservativeness of North American English.

Anonymous said...

i don't think, that reusing of locations and dungeons was the biggest problem of DA2. gameplay and plot quality was very low.

the whole thing with church, templars, mage circles and demons doesn't seem very interesting to me. of course, religion makes medieval setting more realistic, but all this stuff with 'bad magic' (blood magic) and demons doesn't worth to bring the whole plot to it.

THEDAS is such an interesting setting, elves, dwarwes, constant danger to be possessed by demon while using magic. and DA2 and (perhaps) DA3 are exploring the silliest part of it.

the even biggest problem is gameplay. it'll be more like DA2 gameplay, rather than DA:O. so no raunds, and some kind of slasher, this is sad.

i just hope that good things from DA2 will remain: combat grafics, design of locations. heavy friendly fire was pretty realistic, but it was deleted in later versions of the game.