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BioWare goes back to the drawing board for an all-new action IP coming in 2018

Legendary role-playing game developer BioWare’s attention is set squarely on Mass Effect: Andromeda right now, but the studio has another project planned that looks to be a massive departure from its previous works.

During a financial report delivered by BioWare’s parent company Electronic Arts, CEO Andrew Wilson revealed that BioWare would be delivering an “all-new IP” by the end of fiscal year 2018 — or the end of March 2018. Unlike the role-playing games that the studio is best known for, the new project will be an action game, “bringing friends together to play in exhilarating new ways.”

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Wilson added that the game would be a “clean-sheet design with new concepts, new gameplay mechanics, and new stories set in a unique new universe.”

In a separate blog post, BioWare general manager Aaryn Flynn revealed that the game has been in the works since 2012, and that the studio wants to “draw upon 20-plus years of development knowledge and lessons to create something fun and new for you to enjoy with your friends.”

Aside from Mass Effect’s mature take on science-fiction, BioWare’s other major original franchise is Dragon Age, which saw its last installment, Dragon Age: Inquisition, release in 2014. Both series make heavy use of action game elements for combat, with quick, real-time attacks, and in the case of Mass Effect, a cover-based shooting system that can rival games like Gears of War and Uncharted. Leaning more heavily on these elements for an action game seems like a logical move for BioWare, though the studio’s famous dialogue and choice system would likely be omitted.

Before Mass Effect and Dragon Age, the last original IP that BioWare created was the martial arts role-playing game Jade Empire. It didn’t receive any sequels, and the studio then began its partnership with Microsoft on Mass Effect while also developing the game Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood for Nintendo DS. In 2007, BioWare was purchased by Electronic Arts, and Mass Effect became a multi-platform franchise. Mass Effect: Andromeda, the fourth game in the series, is out this March.

What kind of a game are you hoping to see from BioWare? The studio has already tackled science-fiction and fantasy extensively. Maybe next they can do something a little more realistic? Let us know in the comments!

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Nightingale studio lead explains the game’s BioWare roots, card system
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Survival crafting games have a habit of coming out of nowhere and being really enjoyable and popular. In 2021, Valheim took the gaming world by storm. This year, V Rising's vampiric take on the formula is one of 2022's biggest gaming surprises. Inflexion Games and Tencent's Level Infinite hope that Nightingale is the next one of those hits. This first-person survival crafting game makes players a Realmwalker, someone who forages, fights, creates, and survives in the Faewild realms of their own creation in hopes of finding the titular, mythical city of Nightingale.
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Digital Trends: Nightingale is much different than anything you worked on at BioWare. What are some of the biggest lessons you took from BioWare for this game? 
Arynn Flynn: One of the things we made sure we did, having learned some things at BioWare, was that around the topic of worldbuilding. We created a world of our own creation, full of interesting characters and relatable elements. That's why we chose a contemporary fantasy setting. When you do something more like high fantasy or sci-fi, you have to establish the rules of that universe more fully, so players understand them. With contemporary fantasy, we get more relatability from the get-go, and from there, we can layer on great worldbuilding, interesting characters, and stories to engage with. 
What are the biggest challenges you've encountered switching from creating traditional RPGs to a survival game? 
We've definitely learned a lot and are still learning. One of the most important elements in a survival game, in my mind, is player autonomy. Players get to go where they want to go and do what they want to do while engaging with the building and crafting. We need to make sure the player always feels like they always have options and have something to do is fundamental to the experience. 
When you think about it, great role-playing games also offer choice, right? And so we're trying to adjust a lot of the lessons we learned about giving players meaningful choices but put it closer to the gameplay and things that are important to survival crafting players. It's been an interesting challenge for us, but hopefully, players will really appreciate what we did. 
How has the recent success of games like Valheim and V Rising influenced the development of Nightingale? 
The success of Valheim and V Rising is very encouraging and is really great for those wonderful teams and inspiring for our developers. Unlike Valheim, which has the rich Nordic lore to draw upon, and V Rising, where pretty much everyone knows what vampires are, we have to establish a lot more background information so players can appreciate the Victorian gaslamp setting.
That's why we chose alternate history, where a lot of our world's history is present, but we added in the complications of magic and the Fae. That ultimately become the fun of worldbuilding again. 

Could you explain the Realm Card system that lets players create realms to explore in more detail? 
Realm cards are a way we give players more agency in their experience. We procedurally generate Nightingale's realms, so all of the realms you see in our trailers were created by our software stack after our environment artists worked hard to create the components of it. The Realm Cards allow players to manipulate, control, and change those things from a huge pallet of options. It lets players choose things like what biome they're going to go to, whether it's daytime or nighttime, what weather challenges there are, and what bonuses or buffs there might be.
When you open a portal and go through it, what's on the other side is reflective of what you played with the Realm Cards. It's also very social because if we were playing together, you could put a card down, I could put a card down, and they will be mixed together. So it encourages cooperative play and becomes the way we offer more agency to our players. 
So, does that make it a survival game where you're supposed to be constantly moving, or can players settle down and build if they want to?
We definitely want you to settle down so you don't have to move your estate. I think a lot of players will want to do that and keep growing it. One thing players can do is go through realms and bring back resources to continue building their estate. Or, you can leave your estate behind to build another one in a new realm with some friends. Both options are available to you.

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BioWare shared a quick update on its next entry in the Dragon Age franchise, Dragon Age 4, in a blog post on its site. Development on the game is going well, says the developer, and is currently "right in the middle of production."

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EA is one of the biggest publishers in the Western gaming market. They employ thousands of developers across dozens of studios to create games of nearly all sizes, types, and genres. Being around since nearly the beginning of the gaming medium itself, their catalog of games is one of the largest in the industry, and it only continues to grow as their teams produce more and more titles. However, they have earned a somewhat poor reputation in recent years among gamers for how they have treated some of their studios and franchises.

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