It appears that the next Mass Effect project may not use the Frostbite Engine, but will instead be built using Unreal Engine. The primary source of this news is a job listing for a technical director on EA’s website. It has also been corroborated by GamesBeat’s Jeff Grubb.
The technical director job listing is specific to BioWare and lists “Experience with UnrealEngine4+ is an asset” under the Requirements section. Additionally, Grubb noted that he “confirmed through multiple sources that this is because everything is on the table when it comes to tech for a new Mass Effect — and that includes potentially replacing EA’s in-house Frostbite engine with Unreal.”
BioWare switched to EA’s Frostbite Engine for Mass Effect: Andromeda after using Unreal Engine for the first three games in the series. Talking about the initial switch, Grubb noted that “Frostbite’s appeal was about saving money. Since it owned the tech, it wouldn’t have to make any licensing arrangements with Epic or other outside firms.”
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While there’s no word on when we’ll see the next game in the Mass Effect series, the Legendary Edition filled the void perfectly for long-time fans, as well as newcomers. The collection sold pretty well since its launch and EA was pleased with its performance. “The remaster of the first three Mass Effect games, reignited the passion of fans around the world, driving sales performance well above our expectations,” said EA CEO Andrew Wilson on an earnings call last month.
It wasn’t just the EA and the players that were happy with the Legendary Edition, the modding community also got to work on recreating some of the original mods and creating new ones. One modder by the name of beccatoria, restored the original ending of Mass Effect 3. Back in 2012, fans were disappointed with the abrupt ending that BioWare had originally created. It was very short and barely took the players’ decisions throughout the series into consideration.
The Extended Cut DLC would later fix the ending via a free download to everyone. It lengthened the ending, added some consequences depending on player actions throughout the series, and gave an epilogue for the Normandy’s crew. It wasn’t all that great, but it was better than the original. However, the Unextended Cut mod would take you back to the original if you so wanted.