Mass Effect 1 and 2 lead writer Drew Karpyshyn is working on Anthem

Karpyshyn’s credits at BioWare also include KOTOR, Jade Empire, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Drew Karpyshyn spent 12 years at BioWare, working on as a designer and writer on everything from Baldur’s Gate 2 to Star Wars: The Old Republic, and of course the first two Mass Effect games, on which he served as the lead writer. He left in 2012 but returned in 2015, saying that he was going back to work on The Old Republic.

Earlier this year, however, Karpyshyn acknowledged that he was working on a new game. I speculated at the time that it might be a new KOTOR game that was rumored to be in development, but it turns out that I was wrong.

Yes. Yes I am. 🙂

— Drew Karpyshyn (@DrewKarpyshyn) June 13, 2017

Unsurprisingly, Karphyshyn is maintaining radio silence about the project, but his presence has to be an encouraging sign for anyone hoping for more from it than ‘flying armor shoot-guys making humanity’s last stand.’

While Anthem’s shared-world approach may not seem like an obvious fit for a studio like BioWare, an injection of its storytelling DNA into the action-adventure genre could lead to a very interesting game.

We don’t know a ton of detail about Anthem’s systems or story at this point, but the gameplay reveal at Microsoft’s conference gave us an extended look at the co-op shooting.