This week at Gamescom in Cologne Germany, Gamereactor conducted an interview with Electronic Arts Executive Vice President, Patrick Söderlund.
While the interview was centred around all things EA, Söderlund had some interesting comments about the future of the Mass Effect franchise. He had the following to say:
“Well I think, my personal opinion is, I think that the game… I usually don’t do this, but this is one of those places where I feel like the game got criticised a little bit more than it deserved. I think the game is actually a great game. Yes, we have to acknowledge the fact that there were some things that maybe we could have done better, absolutely, but as a whole, if you go in and you buy the game today with everything that’s in it today, I believe that that’s a game worth buying, personally.”
“So that’s the first thing I’ll say. The [second] thing I’ll say is, for Mass Effect as a franchise, that has such a big fanbase, and you know I’ve seen people saying ‘Oh, EA’s not making another Mass Effect’. I see no reason why we shouldn’t come back to Mass Effect. Why not? It’s a spectacular universe, it’s a loved [series], it has a big fanbase, and it’s a game that has done a lot for EA and for BioWare.
“What we need to be careful of, though, whenever we bring Mass Effect back again, we have to make sure that we bring it back in a really [relevant] way, and in a fresh, exciting place. That’ my job, and that’s Casey’s [Hudson] job, and BioWare and the Mass Effect team’s job, to figure out what that looks like, and that we don’t know yet, but we will.”
Mass Effect: Andromeda was already in the headlines for all the wrong reasons this week. Bioware announced that they would no longer be supporting the single player portion of the game with additional content.
Söderlund‘s comments at Gamescom, in light of Bioware’s announcement, make it appear like EA are cutting their loses with Mass Effect: Andromeda and are looking towards the next project in the franchise.
I guess all that we fans of Mass Effect can do is wait and see what direction the franchise goes next.
