Anthem is officially dead, with BioWare closing servers for the failed looter shooter and not providing any options to play offline. The timing certainly isn’t the best for the studio, which already came off the failure of 2023’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
As of now, all eyes are on the next Mass Effect, tentatively referred to as Mass Effect 5, to pick up the pieces. However, even by former executive producer Mike Darrah’s estimates, it may take a “long time.” In an interview with Destin Legarie, Darrah – who released an extensive post-mortem about the failure of Anthem – discussed BioWare’s shift to a “one-project studio” as a positive development.
“Mass Effect 5 team did what we should have done when we moved the Dragon Age people on to Anthem, which is…everyone wins.” And while that means a longer gap between releases – not to mention that the current set-up has its “own problems,” he believes it’s a “different set of problems than what BioWare has been up until arguably 2022.”
In the past, the studio had “several projects fighting for attention and resources, and like bumping into each other and elbowing each other and causing unintended effects on each other. That’s not the studio that it is now. As near as I can tell, 100 percent of what they’re working on right now is Mass Effect. That’s probably for the best.”
It’s hard to disagree – development problems with Anthem resulted in the Dragon Age team having to cancel Project Joplin (Veilguard’s previous incarnation) to help out. This, in turn, ended up contributing to problems with The Veilguard, though the sudden changes in direction from multiplayer to single-player didn’t help either.
As for Mass Effect 5, a release date remains unknown. Rumors claimed it wouldn’t arrive until 2028 or 2029 at the latest, and as of January 2025, full production hadn’t even begun. On the bright side, there could be a proper reveal at some point in the near future, especially with project director Mike Gamble stating that all the N7 Day teases would connect.
