Rumors suggest that we’ll have to wait quite a while for the next installment of BioWare’s IP, and that we’ll even have to buy new hardware before the game arrives.

A new installment of Mass Effect is in the works, and BioWare is slowly moving towards it, with Dragon Age: The Veilguard due out sometime this fall. The studio (if it has indeed learned from the mistakes of Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem) is not really working on two games at once, and is trying not to rush development. Especially with Dragon Age 4, which went through two reboots (single player, then live service, then single player again…).

The new Mass Effect might wait until 2029. Jeff Grubb talked about this in the Game Mess Morning podcast. He says that the game is still a long way from being finished! With a bit of math (taking into account the time it took for Dragon Age: The Veilguard), he reckons that 2029 is the only time the long-awaited new episode of the franchise will be released, and by then we’ll surely see the PlayStation 6 and the next-gen Xbox in the stores. The latter is rumored to lack an optical drive, so it will only be able to run digital games (a la Xbox Series S, PlayStation 5 Digital Edition).

So it could take five years to develop the game. This means that, according to Grubb, the current concept for Dragon Age: The Veilguard started in the fall of 2019. There’s a reason for that, as that was the launch window for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, which was so successful that Electronic Arts realized there was a demand for single-player games (the model Respawn used), and so the Dragon Age concept was rebooted…

So if Grubb is right, the return of Mass Effect is a long way off. If the result isn’t bad, it will be worth the wait.

Source: Gamingbible