Image credit: BioWare / Mass Effect

Oof. I expected this day to come but the news has left me winded nonetheless; BioWare, the creator of so many beloved role-playing series and games - Mass Effect , Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate , Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - has been closed. EA decided it had no place for it under its new Saudi and private investment ownership . So Mass Effect 5 has been canned, and a studio that helped shape an industry and popularise role-playing games over the course of 31 years is no more.

But it's a shock rather than a surprise. BioWare's days were numbered after the fizzle of Dragon Age: The Veilguard , although really, the studio was rocked long before then. The twin blows of Mass Effect: Andromeda in 2017 and Anthem in 2019 left it reeling, and even had Anthem been a success, BioWare would be irrevocably changed by it. We know all this. We've pored over BioWare's many shifts and misfires countless times over the years. Why?…