With Dragon Age: The Veilguard coming to a close with Patch 5, BioWare could turn all of its attention on Mass Effect 5.

BioWare has stated that the company has no plans to offer DLC for the most recent Dragon Age game and is instead concentrating on Mass Effect 5. Although Mass Effect now has access to more personnel and resources, fans may need to control their expectations over how this will affect the release schedule. The game’s production will pick up speed, but it doesn’t imply it will be finished anytime soon.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard was released on October 31, 2024. | Credit: BioWare.

The next Mass Effect game may not be released by BioWare anytime soon, even though they have finished Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Since the first teaser was released in 2020, fans have been anticipating more information on the sequel to the original trilogy, but not much has been revealed. After production on The Veilguard concluded, many people thought the next Mass Effect would be released soon, but it might take longer than anticipated.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard has received its final major update

Patch 5 is the last major update for Dragon Age: The Veilguard. | Credit: BioWare.

With the release of the game’s Patch 5 this week, BioWare seems to have said goodbye to any more Dragon Age games in the future. The update’s patch notes express gratitude to players for their support of Dragon Age: The Veilguard over the previous few months as a few minor quality-of-life enhancements were included.

BioWare continues by saying that it is now relieved that the game is in a “stable place” and that, should any complaints of game-breaking problems arise, it will switch to monitoring. “Dareth shiral!”—which translates to “farewell” or “safe journey” in the game’s Elvish language—marks the end of the patch notes. It sounds like this is the one.

After Dragon Age: The Veilguard “engaged” 1.5 million players between October 2024 and the end of the year, “down nearly 50 percent from the company’s expectations,” EA announced earlier this week that the game had fallen short of the publisher’s internal goals.

Fans have responded in shock to the abrupt termination of any additional minor enhancements, even though BioWare had already ruled out the possibility of DLC and major updates to Dragon Age: The Veilguard were not anticipated. For instance, there had been some expectation of additional cosmetic possibilities for character outfit designs and the addition of a New Game Plus mode.

The final quality of life update in Patch 5 is that “Recommended levels have been added to side quests that players may receive at significantly lower levels.” Other changes include several minor bug fixes. Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Dareth Shiral! On the plus side, hopefully, this will speed up BioWare’s work on Mass Effect 5.

Is Dragon Age: The Veilguard‘s farewell really speeding up Mass Effect 5?

BioWare still has a long way to go for Mass Effect 5. | Credit: BioWare.

With Mass Effect 5 as its only known ongoing project, one BioWare veteran claims that the developer has found itself in a peculiar circumstance since the release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Yet, he feels that the planned sci-fi role-playing game “isn’t ready” to take on a big staff all at once, therefore they will be searching for alternative employment within EA for the time being.

Mark Darrah worked as a consultant on Dragon Age: The Veilguard and as an executive producer at BioWare for nearly 24 years until 2021. As noted on ResetEra, he has now made public one of his members-only videos from the previous year about BioWare’s future plans now that The Veilguard has been released. The video touches on the developer’s history of concentrating on several projects at once, which now appears to have completely changed.

Darrah claims that “Mass Effect isn’t ready to suddenly have a team of 250, 300 people working on it.” He points out that in the past, the developer was “up and running at full speed” and “had enough existing infrastructure that it was able to absorb everything” when it transferred expertise from one of its projects to another so that it could concentrate on it.

Even though the game was announced years ago, there are still very few details available about the upcoming Mass Effect, which contributes to Darrah’s remark that things aren’t exactly moving at full speed just yet (though it’s important to remember that this video was first released in November for his channel members). The exact release date of Mass Effect 5 is still unknown.