Mass Effect: Andromeda had had a rocky launch. It wasn’t well received by most critics – we gave it a 3/5 in our review – as well as longtime fans of the beloved sci-fi franchise, who lambasted the game’s buggy (and hilarious) animations, the loose narrative, and technical issues. It got so worse that the studio had to go as far as to stop the single-player support for the game with no planned future patches and DLC content. The series was also reportedly put on hold.
Whereas, we haven’t got any taste of Dragon Age game since 2014’s Dragon Age: Inquisition and it’s fair share for DLC content. And the recent reports of the series being rebooted to add “live elements” had raised some eyebrows within the community.
In a blog post, titled Mid-Summer Update, Casey Hudson, general manager at Bioware, thanked fans for their enthusiasm for Anthem and hinted some new contents coming to Star Wars: The Old Republic. While talking about Anthem and it’s shared-world experience he confirmed that a secret team is still working on Dragon Age and Mass Effect games.
“Our Star Wars: The Old Republic team is hard at work on some amazing plans for the coming year, with new features and surprises that I think makes it the game’s most exciting year yet,” wrote Hudson. “And yes–we hear loud and clear the interest in BioWare doing more Dragon Age and Mass Effect, so rest assured that we have some teams hidden away working on some secret stuff that I think you’ll really like–we’re just not ready to talk about any of it for a little while…”
Fans of the Mass Effect series should be relieved that, after all, the series isn’t going on a long hiatus, as was reportedly stated.
The blog post also shed some light on Anthem’s “Our World, My Story” solution.
“In the dynamic open world, everything is experienced in real-time by all Anthem players – day/night, weather, and world-scale events that shape the ongoing narrative of the setting,” wrote Hudson. “This is “our world,” which we share as a player community. Then when you return to Fort Tarsis, that’s actually a single-player experience, and it’s where you spend time developing relationships, making choices, and seeing consequences. That’s the “my story” part.”
He also promised to “go deep” and answer questions surrounding Anthem and it’s shared world during a PAX Panel in Seattle later this month.