BioWare Austin's Shadow Realms Cancelled
Multiplayer action-RPG canned
Electronic Arts only announced asymmetric multiplayer action-RPG Shadow Realms [official site] in August, but have now confirmed that they've cancelled it. Being made by BioWare Austin (the studio behind the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG, not the Mass Effect gang), it was to be a modern fantasy game with nasty monsters rattling around our world. One player would control a 'Shadowlord' on the side of the monsters, while four human players would murder the nasties, and they'd all level up and get loot and all that. But no, not any more.
BioWare Austin general manager Jeff Hickman said in the announcement:
"We've made the decision to not move forward with development of Shadow Realms. We fully recognize that this news is disappointing to some of our fans, so I want to explain more behind this decision.
"While the team did amazing work on the game concept and we got lots of great feedback from our fans at events and through other game testing, right now there are other projects for the team to work on within the BioWare studios for the coming year and beyond. We've got an incredibly talented team here at the Austin studio, and they are excited and already deep on new projects within the BioWare family, ones that will make some great BioWare games even better."
He goes on to explain that they'll be helping out on Dragon Age: Inquisition bits as well as BioWare's next Mass Effect and mysterious new game, "But the biggest focus for our team in BioWare Austin will be on Star Wars: The Old Republic."
They'll be doing things around the new Star Wars movie releases but oof, this doesn't all half dance around the real reason it was cancelled. No Star Wars expansion can be that exciting. In the end, I suppose EA simply didn't think Shadow Realms was good enough to warrant the investment.
Here's what might have been, as it was back in August:
