Former Mass Effect lead writer has revealed that the Legendary Edition's success helped to convince him: "I don't want to do any more Mass Effect after this."
Mac Walters, who worked at BioWare from 2003 - 2023, has given an insight into his career at the Mass Effect studio in an interview with MinnMax (thanks, PC Gamer). Walters talked about working on the Mass Effect Legendary Edition a few years ago and how its success helped to convince the writer that it was time to move on and start his studio - which he did earlier this year.
"One of the great opportunities I had, which kind of came out of the blue, was working on Legendary Edition," Walters explains. "That was a project I think we wanted to have greenlit for years. We've been asking to do it, and when the opportunity came up, EA came to us and said, 'Hey, can you do this?' and we were like, 'Yeah, we can do it' - but it wasn't on a roadmap."
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Walters explains that it was around this time the studio was also working on other upcoming games, including Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, which made things complicated for the team at BioWare.
"If you think about a lot of the planning that goes into these games, like with their cycles, that can be four years long," Walters explains. "You plan all that stuff out, and all of a sudden, we've got this project that's unplanned." The developer says he had to be "a little bit rogue" and "entrepreneurial" to keep Legendary Edition on track without disrupting the other teams.
"That process reminded me a lot of early days BioWare because we were a small scrappy team," Walters recalls, "there was a lot of camaraderie that was formed with that team, I think, because we stayed small." The Mass Effect writer then reflects on this experience, adding: "I was like, 'Yeah, this is the future; I think this is how triple-A gaming needs to go.'"
Due to the success of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, both financially and critically, but also in terms of how the team performed and got along during development, Walters says: "It just felt like this is the bow on my all the things I've done in Mass Effect […] I don't want to do any more Mass Effect after this. Why tempt fate?"
Walters says he then wanted to get stuck into a new IP again - especially after having the opportunity to work on BioWare's other IPs from the ground up, including Jade Empire and Anthem. The developer says they asked around to see if this would be possible at BioWare or EA, but "it became pretty clear [that] there probably wouldn't be, at least not for the foreseeable future. That's when I started thinking like, 'No, okay, I think I think I'm done."
Walters may have moved onto new things, but BioWare's sci-fi series is still ongoing - find out everything you need to know about Mass Effect 5 with our guide.
