'Star Wars: Battlefront 3' Reportedly the Reason 'Mass Effect 5' Was Cancelled

Hannah covers horror, sci-fi, and games at Collider, where she writes news and features, reviews new releases, and interviews the people who make them. She’s helping build out Collider‘s gaming coverage, with Pokémon as one of her specialties. If she isn’t writing about a monster, she’s probably watching one on a tape from her VHS collection.

A new Star Wars: Battlefront should be something to celebrate. The series lets players participate in the galaxy’s biggest battles without requiring everyone to be the hero, and the wait since Battlefront 2 has left plenty of room to imagine another installment. Reports of a third game gave fans a reason to hope those enormous multiplayer fights would finally return.

Mass Effect fans have spent years waiting for their next adventure, too. BioWare’s sci-fi RPG series built its reputation on a different kind of attachment, giving players companions whose conversations could be as memorable as the missions. Following reports that the next game was canceled, a new account suggests the futures of these two franchises became directly connected inside EA.

EA reportedly chose to prioritize Star Wars: Battlefront 3 over the next Mass Effect, contributing to the decision to shut down BioWare. Bloomberg’s reporting describes executives reviewing two sci-fi projects each expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. They reportedly considered Star Wars the more predictable investment, leaving BioWare’s future on the losing side of that decision. The report adds that Battlefront 3 had not yet begun development when executives made that assessment. That makes the comparison more painful for anyone who had followed the next Mass Effect’s years of updates. EA was reportedly choosing the potential of another Star Wars shooter over an RPG fans had already spent considerable time anticipating.

Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.

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Why Did EA Reportedly Choose ‘Battlefront 3’ Over ‘Mass Effect 5’?

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    Image via BioWare</figure>