Bungie is between Scylla and Charybdis, two words I spelled correctly on my first try. What are these two things? We don't need to go into all that - just know that they're both unwelcome, and you don't want to be there. Bungie's thing is to make its own weird and peerless shit, they've been doing it since the Mac, and maybe on some level there might be a perceived loss of face or identity associated with hauling somebody else's rope. Fuck allat. This is Live To Fight Another Day shit. Get the skunkworks popping while Lucasfilm keeps the stove warm and fends off Sony with a chair and a whip. The deal is bigger than paper, as choosing to slot work with the leading console manufacturer is just a good thing to have in your back pocket. And we already know Bungie would crush it: Renegades, their collab/crossover/Star Wars fic, was sick to death. Indeed, I propose that this is so cosmic, powerful, and correct that it represents an auspicious stellar configuration - something as good as Scylla and Charybdis, whatever they may be, are bad.
Because the drive for virality is so high, I will often see high-profile searches for things that I doubt very seriously are true even though people make videos about them. I will still check it sometimes, most of the time, I will still click or tap on them a hundred percent of the time, just in case Dolly Parton really has died.
So, Bioware's real shutdown was first introduced to me as one of these lures about ten minutes ago. EA's acquisition was always going to result in graves, but the configuration of the Jenga tower going into this was not favorable for Bioware. I didn't like Andromeda, I really felt like they missed a step there, but it turned a profit; management enforced live-service mania arguably derailed the entire studio. Anthem was Anthem; hard to know where to start there, except for at the end. Remixed from what was functionally another product concept, Dragon Age: Veilguard seems to have been a lethal high-wire test of the studio post-COVID. I mean, there's nasty things you could say about it but it was meant earnestly and now they all lost their jobs so what punishment are we trying to devise? If somebody gave me budget to talk my shit, brother - you'd better believe my shit is gonna get talked.
I read that Mass Effect 5 was cancelled as part of all this, but it isn't, and they can't - it's just called EXODUS now, and it's outside their reach. That spirit flew away and lit in little places here and there, in games at varying stages of development, in the hands that made them, and in the other games they inspired. Look for Bioware everywhere but the tomb.
(CW)TB out.
