Fans have tangled with a mix of emotions knowing that it’s unlikely they’ll ever get to play a new BioWare-developed Mass Effect again. But, if you ask the voices of Commander Shepard, they’re oddly optimistic about the future despite the circumstances. Polygon recently spoke to Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale, the voice actors for Shepard, about the strength of Mass Effect’s community, the closure of BioWare, and the studio’s legacy.
“My first response was sadness and concern for everybody who worked at Bioware,” Meer said.
After gutting the studio a year ago, EA laid off BioWare’s remaining around 50 employees on Oct. 21, bringing an end to its 30-year legacy. Meer noted that BioWare was a source of pride in Canada, and especially in Edmonton, where the studio was based. Canadian fans are even petitioning their government to save BioWare, and that petition will be presented in the House of Commons, meaning the Canadian government will formally address it in some way. “They were such a force in gaming and they were such a legend,” Meer said.
“BioWare was, in some beautiful, quiet ways, a very Canadian company,” Hale said. “Their games were inclusive. Their games bucked against tradition and [BioWare] did it their own way, quietly, but excellently. And they moved us forward, not by shouting and preaching, but simply by doing it in a very cool way.”
Hale was once overtaken by a wave of sadness about BioWare, but hers occurred some 20 years prior, when the studio was acquired by EA, which meant it became beholden to the whims and projections of shareholders and was no longer able to operate independently. EA’s 2025 sale to private investors, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, only further clashed with “the original spirit of BioWare,” as Hale put it. (BioWare reportedly was asked to remove LGBTQ-adjacent imagery from a video presentation, for example.)
“So, when I heard about the closure, I got wildly hopeful,” Hale said, acknowledging that optimism “sounds weird” at this moment. Like in her initial reaction to the closure, Hale described her optimistic vision for the future, one where EA is willing to part with the Mass Effect IP and that the fans “come together to own this IP as kind of a Mass Effect collective for the fans by the community, because there’s some incredible devs in this community, incredible creators.”
Much has been made of if EA will sell off BioWare as a way of paying off the debt it’s taken on as a result of its sale. Though BioWare is closed, all its assets and franchises — from Mass Effect to Dragon Age to Jade Empire — still belong to EA. Former BioWare executive Mark Darrah thinks it’s possible EA could sell off BioWare IP, while former technical director Romain Toutain thinks it’s unlikely EA would sell anything. Regardless, that won’t stop people like Hale and Meer from hoping. “That was my dream that happened right away,” Hale said. “I like to hold onto the fiction that makes me feel good, because you never know.”
That’s a sentiment the community will surely share, especially as the shock of BioWare’s closure hasn’t completely gone away yet. Fans are still sharing their grief and love online, and the Shepards have noticed.
“The outpouring of love for those games, it was something to behold,” Meer said. He and Hale both support the #SaveMassEffect petition (which has more than 300,000 signatures), but noted they do not have any sort of organizational role in the campaign. “Ultimately, I think it’s people showing that they’re not really ready to let this universe go, and they would like to see more of it,” Meer said. “If it is just them showing how much it’s meant to them, I think that’s valid as well.”
All of this has happened on the eve of N7 Day, an annual celebration of all things Mass Effect that falls on Nov. 7. (Chosen because of Shepard’s in-universe N7 designation — it essentially means they’re the cream of the crop among humanity’s soldiers.) Cast members from Mass Effect have gathered on N7 Day the past few years, and this year will be no different.
“I don’t think [N7 Day is] going to go away,” Meer said. “The fans have been doing it themselves for the last few years. So I think that you’re going to see that continue.” He’s excited to see the fans post about Mass Effect, especially the cosplayers, and will gladly share them.
“Mass Effect hasn’t needed a company behind it for a few years in order to have the kind of community power that it has,” Hale said. “Nobody has switched off the light or cut off the electricity, because the community is the electricity. Maybe there’s not another game itself in development at the moment, but Mass Effect has a life of its own.”
Hale has been in the video games industry for decades, and acted in BioWare games even before Mass Effect, as did Meer. She’s seen how much things can change, and how the industry is currently in a cycle of corporations trying to get bigger and bigger. Companies are absorbing and purchasing each other at rates that are unprecedented compared to even a few years ago. “It’s very hard to make creative turns” at the sizes they’re at, Hale said. She compared the current state of corporate culture to the mobile game Slither.io, where you play as a snake gobbling up other snakes until it becomes too large and easily dies. “And then all the little worms take over. It’s kind of like that,” Hale said.
She’s hopeful indie studios will be those “little worms” rising up, and you can see some of that already. Mass Effect director Casey Hudson left BioWare years ago, and eventually co-founded Arcanaut Studios (also based in Edmonton). He’s directing Arcanaut’s upcoming Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic. Next year’s I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-Mass-Effect Exodus is the first game from Archetype Entertainment, a studio that’s home to several BioWare veterans.
Those games and more will carry the BioWare torch forward. “There is this real thirst for games that really have storytelling and a narrative,” Meer said. He named that rich storytelling and “characters that people really took into their hearts” as BioWare’s legacy. Because even if the studio is gone, the memories players made with characters like Garrus, Tali, Joker, Liara, and more aren’t.
“Things have their seasons,” Meer said. “Hopefully we shall see the season for Mass Effect again.”
