Every time another person comes forward about their experiences working on Mass Effect: Universe before the game was canceled and BioWare was shuttered, we learn new details that make the loss of the game feel even greater. This time, recently appointed franchise art director Nicolas Sparth Bouvier has chimed in, and like many others who had been working on the game, he says that the small team was working really well together before publisher EA closed down the studio last week.
For those that don’t know, Bouvier has done work for the Halo and Assassin’s Creed series, and taking a glance at his portfolio and Instagram account, it’s clear he has an eye for a broad range of science fiction aesthetics. Bouvier revealed on Twitter that he joined the team as Mass Effect art director in April, and in the six months he was part of the project, the group had become “tightly knit” and “good at working together.”
“During this time, it was a privilege to work alongside such a talented team, with the shared ambition of exploring new creative territories while staying true to the legacy and spirit of the Mass Effect trilogy,” he wrote. “Knowing that this work will never see the light of day is truly heartbreaking. We were good at this. We really were. I’m thinking about the team, the talent, what we could have achieved. In nearly 30 years in this industry, I’ve rarely seen a group so tightly knit, so experienced, and so good at working together. And I feel extremely honored to have been part of it.”
Though the project no doubt had its own issues, every account we’ve heard from developers and collaborators suggests the small team that remained at BioWare had gotten good at working together and that the ideas the group had were ambitious, but coming together. Developers have talked about how Universe would handle choices from the previous games, and it sounds like BioWare was looking to scale back after the open-zone structure of Mass Effect: Andromeda. The narrative team working on the game also seemed to be collaborating well, with writer Derek Künsken calling working with Mass Effect Andromeda: Annihilation author Catherynne M. Valente “the most energizing, in-the-zone collaboration” he’d had.
It sounds like a far cry from the studio’s more recent projects, with Mass Effect: Andromeda, Anthem, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard all being notorious for their various versions of development hell and corporate interference. Would things have stayed that way if the small crew had been able to expand into the full team that finally getting Mass Effect: Universe out the door would have required? Guess we’ll never know.
Right now, fans are putting their energy into an initiative to “save” Mass Effect, but even that push has been complicated by mixed messaging as some fans want ex-BioWare developers involved, while the most prominent petition suggests handing the game or IP to a new studio.
