BioWare confirmed at the end of 2020 that it is already beginning work on the next mainline installment in the studio’s beloved sci-fi RPG series, Mass Effect. And while there’s still essentially nothing that we know about this project in a general sense, a new report has now emerged that tells us that the game should be looking to improve on Mass Effect: Andromeda in a pretty notable way.
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Spotted by GamesBeat, a recent job listing at BioWare has seemingly revealed that Mass Effect 5 (which is the unofficial name of the next installment in the franchise) could be using Unreal Engine 5 as the game engine for the title’s creation. While this typically wouldn’t be a big deal for many companies, EA is a publisher that has largely wanted all of its studios to work with the in-house Frostbite Engine instead. So to see that BioWare could be spurning Frostbite in favor of Unreal Engine 5 is actually a huge deal.
The way in which this could stand as a big improvement when compared to Mass Effect: Andromeda is because many of the issues that the most recent entry in the series had when it first launched were largely due in part to Frostbite. Andromeda was developed within the EA-owned engine, which stood as a pretty big change for BioWare since the first three entries in the series were all made in Unreal. As such, Frostbite proved to be a bit cumbersome for the team behind Andromeda and led to many of the bugs and other glitches that the game became infamous for.
It is worth stressing, however, that Mass Effect 5 being created within Unreal Engine 5 isn’t a guarantee at this point in time. As GamesBeat notes in its own report, though, multiple sources speaking to the publication have said that EA seems to be open to the idea of switching game engines for Mass Effect 5. If this change does come about, it might mean that the next game in the series could be all the more promising.
How would you feel about Mass Effect 5 returning to be developed within the same engine as the original games in the series? Let me know your thoughts either down in the comments or over on Twitter at @MooreMan12.
