BioWare and Mass Effect veteran Mac Walters has discussed his reasons for departing the studio after 19 years to begin work with a fresh team on a new sci-fi franchise.
In an interview with MinnMax, Walters detailed the various factors involved in his departure, from the desire to work on something brand new and not feeling able to within BioWare or EA, to the positive experience of working on the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition trilogy remaster with a small and “scrappy” team acting as a reminder of his early days at the studio and serving as a positive moment to make his exit.
Discussing the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition project, Walters described its approval by EA as something relatively “unplanned”, compared to the careful assignment of teams long in advance to work on the studio’s typical fare: mammoth big budget RPGs. This led to a different way of working which brought back fond memories, he said.
“The way to make that successful was really for me to be little bit rogue,” Walters said. “A little bit sort of entrepreneurial in how we were going to build this out with the people we had and people we could get without disrupting other teams in the meantime.