How Bioware Can SAVE Mass Effect On Next-Gen Consoles
It's time.
Of all the game developers whose reputations waned (or flat-out died) this generation, Bioware's hurts the most.
Because going into the PS4 and Xbox One era, they'd only just stumbled.
Mass Effect 3 ended in a landmark negative fashion, and considering their calibre as one of the best Western RPG devs of all time - with franchises like Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age under their belt - it was assumed they'd easily recover.
Oh, how wrong we were.
Dragon Age: Inquisition way back in 2014 was a solid enough affair - if not one marred by disastrous pacing that elongated opening levels to the point of putting millions of people off - but from there, we only saw one disaster after another.
New monster-hunting IP Shadow Realms was canned despite clearly being far along in development, internal fighting led to Mass Effect Andromeda being a total laughing stock at launch, and the Hail Mary that was Anthem felt like Destiny clone without that game's dedication to community and consistent rollouts of content.
All told, the last 7 years have been shockingly poor for Bioware, and whilst we can point the finger at EA for slicing Mass Effect 3 into various DLC chunks, the blame ultimately lies with poor management and lacklustre company direction.
Going forward, Bioware need to reconcile with the fact their founders have left; that many key staff including Mass Effect 2 writer Drew Karpyshyn gathered up more ex-members and started new dev team, Archetype. They need to remember what made the rest of those teams so special, and even if the golden years are behind them, there has to be something worthwhile on the horizon.
Where to start? With their biggest self-made IP, Mass Effect. And how?
Well, three steps.