Former BioWare employee and lead Mass Effect writer Mac Walters explained why he left the company after nearly two decades. Walters left the company of his own volition earlier in 2023, though BioWare laid off other long-time writers, including some who worked on the hit space game trilogy with Walters and on Dragon Age as well.

Walters told the MinnMax show that he decided it was time for a change after working on Mass Effect Legendary Edition, the remastered package that brought all three Mass Effect games together for modern consoles (thanks, Eurogamer). Walters said that, unlike BioWare’s other projects, Legendary Edition was comparatively unplanned and only had a “small, scrappy” team working on it, something that reminded him of days gone by.

“That process reminded me a lot of early BioWare, we were a small scrappy team and people wearing lots of different hats,” Walters said. “The way to make that successful was really for me to be little bit rogue, a little bit sort of entrepreneurial in how we were going to build this out with the people we had and people we could get without disrupting other teams in the meantime.

“This is the future – this is how AAA gaming needs to go when you look at how complex and challenging it is,” he said. “And so a lot of that was reminding me of… y’know, call it the good old days, or whatever.”

Walters said he wanted to work on new projects and fresh IP, but that there wasn’t any room at EA for his plans. When it became clear that the opportunities he envisioned just weren’t possible at BioWare anymore, he said he realized it was time to move on.

Walters founded a new studio with NetEase after he left, Worlds Untold, and is currently working on an unannounced sci-fi project. BioWare, meanwhile, is still teasing Mass Effect 5 and Dragon Age 4, both of which aren’t anywhere near launching after several years of development.

Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF