Now that Dragon Age: The Veilguard is about to launch, BioWare is expected to largely move on to the next Mass Effect game, the studio's next project. After all, as reported in March 2023, a sizable amount of the Mass Effect team temporarily helped with iteration and polish for the latest Dragon Age game; the favor is likely to be returned from now on.
Speaking of The Veilguard, some fans aren't too keen on the game's art style. Indeed, I had some criticism on that count myself in the otherwise highly positive review posted yesterday:
From a visual standpoint, the game succeeds in providing many different biomes to explore as the party treks across Northern Thedas, fulfilling BioWare's promise to bring players to more locations than ever before. The environments generally look great, while the characters are a bit more of a hit-and-miss in that some are almost photorealistic and others look more stylized. In that regard, more uniformity would have been ideal.
Michael Gamble, who has been the Executive Producer of the Mass Effect series for a long time, has now reassured fans on Twitter that the art style will be photorealistic, as it's been the case with previous entries:
Lots of people asking me about Mass Effect now that Veilguard reviews are out, and Oct 31 is close. Both are from the studio, but Mass Effect is Mass Effect. How you bring a Sci Fi RPG to life is different than other genres or IPs...and has to have different kinds of love. Mass Effect is photorealistic and will be as long as I'm running it.
Gamble also added that the sci-fi franchise would keep the mature tone of the original trilogy, although, on that note, I would say neither Andromeda nor Dragon Age have been any different.
It may be a long time before we see anything concrete about the next Mass Effect. Preproduction has been going on for a while, and we even got a very early teaser trailer showing off an aged Liara T'Soni back in December 2020. However, as insider Tom Henderson suggested a while ago, it will take at least three years of production from now on.
Based on the aforementioned teaser trailer and subsequent rumors, it seems BioWare will follow up on the original trilogy rather than keep the action in the Andromeda galaxy, given that the 2017 game hasn't captivated the audience nearly as much as the previous games. However, we'll have to wait until we hear from the studio to know for sure.
