Austin Wintory, the Grammy-winning composer behind Journey and Sword of the Sea, has shared nearly 20 minutes of music he created for Mass Effect 5, a sequel that was scrapped earlier this month when EA shut down BioWare. The release gives fans a rare look at the score for a game that never reached players.
Earlier this month, BioWare confirmed that it had started work on Mass Effect 5 before the project was cancelled and the studio was closed by EA. The original Mass Effect launched in 2007, followed by two sequels in 2010 and 2012, and Mass Effect: Andromeda arrived in 2017. Across the trilogy, players guide Commander Shepard as they try to stop the Reapers from destroying the universe. After the cancellation was announced, one former BioWare employee shared a work-in-progress trailer for the new game, and more than 249,000 people signed a petition asking EA to commit to continued development or allow another publisher to take over the intellectual property.
Wintory described the project as the biggest dream of his career, calling it his white whale and the franchise his favourite of all time. He said he had spent the last couple of years in serious conversations with BioWare and EA about joining the team. His proposal was to use the original game’s score by Jack Wall and Sam Hulick as a starting point, then build on it with more physical, analog synthesizers and a more closely interwoven orchestra. He framed the work first and foremost as a love letter to the series.
Last year, Wintory decided to surprise the team with a finished demonstration: nearly 20 minutes of music, recorded and produced in Los Angeles with synthesizers, vocals and a large orchestra. He said he had not yet learned the narrative details of the planned game, so the material was pure musical exploration. He shared the music publicly after learning, alongside everyone else, that EA had cancelled the project and shut down BioWare entirely.
Wintory called the closure a deeply felt loss and said it had been hard to watch friends lose their jobs and a beloved franchise seemingly vanish. He thanked everyone at BioWare and EA’s music department for giving him the chance to work in the series’ creative space. Separately, IGN sources have reported that the Mass Effect TV adaptation is still going ahead despite the studio’s closure.