EA says Mass Effect could come back as long as it’s ‘really relevant’ and ‘fresh’

EA’s vice president, Patrick Söderlund, has said that Mass Effect as a franchise isn’t necessarily dead and he believes it could make a comeback, as long as the game is ‘in a fresh, exciting place’. He also thinks that some folks were overly harsh on Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Speaking to GameReactor at Gamescom 2017, Söderlund said that he sees ‘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’. However, he also said that if the series is to come back it’d have to be taken in a better direction. ‘That’s my job, and that’s Casey’s [Hudson] job, and BioWare and the Mass Effect team’s job,’ Söderlund  said, ‘To figure out what that looks like, and that we don’t know yet, but we will’. In Hudson we trust, I suppose.

He also took the time to discuss Mass Effect: Andromeda and his thoughts regarding the critical and commercial response to the game. ‘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,’ Söderlund said. 

Söderlund believes that Andromeda is still worthy of a purchase (and he’s right) regardless of the flack it received. He’s well aware of the game’s many issues, saying that, ‘Yes, we have to acknowledge the fact that there were some things that maybe we could have done better, absolutely’. It would also have helped if the game wasn’t put out to pasture then unceremoniously shot, of course.