And not because of “doomposting,” but because the business and political reality around BioWare has fundamentally changed.
BioWare built its name on: Queer romance options, Player-driven identity, Moral ambiguity, Rebellion against authority, Stories about oppression, faith, politics, resistance, and personal freedom
Those themes directly contradict the values and censorship rules of the entity that now owns EA:
Saudi Arabia’s PIF (93.4% ownership pending deal)
A state where: LGBTQ+ identity is criminalized, Media is censored if it challenges religious/state values, Art and entertainment are used as political tools, Public criticism is dangerous, Female autonomy is restricted
BioWare’s brand is literally everything Saudi cultural authority rejects.
any future BioWare games like Mass Effect 5, any new IP, any Dragon Age game will require approval from an ownership structure that prioritizes: “Global market compatibility", “Brand safety”, “Cultural alignment”, “Risk minimization”
BioWare’s storytelling approach is the opposite of all of that.
Even before PIF stepped in: EA removed branching storytelling (“too expensive, most players won’t see it”), They cut replayability, They replaced choice-based design with linear action systems, They pushed Frostbite on every project, They caused the departures of nearly every foundational writer, creative director, and systems designer
BioWare was already surviving on legacy fumes.
Now? Their new majority owners oppose nearly everything BioWare stands for.
Does that mean BioWare will shut down? Not necessarily.
But the BioWare that existed, the BioWare of Inquisition, Origins, DAO, ME1–3, KOTOR is basically dead artistically.
Even if the studio name continues, the creative soul is gone or will be tightly controlled.
At this point, preserving the legacy of BioWare storytelling probably won’t come from EA at all, it’ll have to come from ex-BioWare talent forming independent studios or fan-driven projects and studios like Larian and Owlcat
I swear the genophage was setup in the beginning to narratively be a sort of mirror of what and why the Reapers were doing what they were (back with the original "the Reapers are the Anti-Spirals we have at home" story), to effectively hold up a mirror to the Council empires and go "look at yourselves, you are just little Reapers already" and then that got lost along the way as the Reapers were dumbed down into just being big caretaker machines that were supposed to preserve life but oh no the definition of "preserve" was too vague so they're just systematically eradicating it all after taking a semen sample and even their core control program is just like "damn we sure do suck huh, shame we don't have the ability to just stop doing this cause I didn't think to include any sort of off switch or 'hey we should revise the plan a bit' function in any of the giant murder bots I made to save people by eating them. Damn I don't even know what I was thinking that sounds so clearly wrong and stupid now that I say it outloud" and then you use the aftermarket off switch you made yourself to solve it all.
The really funny thing is that Mass Effect and Gurren Lagann were released in the same year. So the similarity in ME's apparent original plot is complete coincidence. It's also funny that Gurren Lagann just did the entire concept way better and way more coherently.
Another funny "wait this is literally just the Anti-Spirals but worse" example is the Witness from Destiny 2, which not only is ideologically just a more vapid rendition of the Anti-Spirals it's also aesthetically literally just a cheap copy of the Anti-Spirals.