Bioware Brings in New Blood for Next Mass Effect

Bioware has revealed some of the development team for the next installment in the Mass Effect series as part of its annual N7 Day celebration.

Through a post on the Bioware Blog, the studio revealed that the next game in the series would be written by former 343 Industries writer Chris Schlerf, who joined Bioware back in November of 2013 to work on the project.

“As a writer, I write for characters,” Schlerf says. “To me, it’s always about what makes my characters tick and what stories I can tell through those characters that will actually engage people about their own lives. It provides a mirror to that player’s experience [so that they are] not just sitting back in an armchair.”

In the post, Producer Fabrice Condominas further reiterated that the next Mass Effect game can’t simply be Mass Effect 4, saying that wouldn’t be true to Bioware’s desire to pursue something more ambitious with each game it puts out.

“If we were just doing Mass Effect 4, we would be failing in a way,” he says. “You can see even in the trilogy how the games differ from one to the next, and if we were less ambitious we could have just done the same thing and it would have worked. But we want to take the risk and deliver something new and exciting.”

Creative Direct Mac Walter echoed Condominas’ sentiment, explaining that the studio hopes to add a sense of exploration in the next game.

“We’re opening up this whole new world for players to explore,” Walters says. “I spent almost a decade working on the Mass Effect trilogy, so coming back to the universe after being away a few years has this feeling of coming home. It’s so familiar, but it also has new things, which is exciting, so I’m really looking forward to it.”

Bioware Montreal Studio Director Yanick Roy says that the team is hoping that the next Mass Effect will stay with players similar to how the original trilogy has.

“We’re not going to satisfy ourselves with simply sticking a BioWare logo on the box,” he says. “My favorite game of all time is KOTOR, and to this day I remember how I felt when I played that game. And to me, to be a true BioWare game, you need to touch people to that level. When you talk to them about their experience with the game years later, they need to emotionally remember what that experience was.”

Bioware will be hosting a developer roundtable for the Mass Effect series today and more details on the upcoming fourth installment may be revealed within it.

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