BioWare has cancelled its co-operative fantasy RPG, Shadow Realms. Development studio BioWare Austin will instead shift focus on to several new and ongoing projects, including Star Wars: The Old Republic, the next game in the Mass Effect series, “and other new IP”.
In a post on the Shadow Realms website, BioWare Austin GM Jeff Hickman thanked everyone who signed up for the game’s closed alpha, and promised to reveal more about what the team is working on in the next few weeks.
It’s not entirely clear why BioWare pulled the plug, other than to focus on its established brands. Hickman writes that although 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.”
Though the Austin studio will work on several projects, including on “additional enchancements” for Dragon Age: Inquisition, it’s Star Wars: The Old Republic that they’ll be concentrating on in particular.
“As every Star Wars™ fan knows,” writes Hickman, “this is a massive year in the Star Wars universe. We have some great plans for expanding this epic game this year, and look forward to sharing the news about those plans with our players in the coming weeks.”
Shadow Realms was intended to be a co-operative action fantasy set in a universe that mixed the modern world with a dark parallel universe. The idea was to have monthly campaigns with an ongoing storyline, with one player taking on the role of the antagonist, The Shadowlord, and battling against a team of four heroes.
By the sound of things the game has some interesting ideas, but the footage released at Gamescom 2014 was a little… underwhelming. Since then we’ve barely heard anything about the game, so it’s not a massive surprise to hear that it won’t be happening. According to Hickman we should find out what BioWare Austin’s been working on with regards to The Old Republic within the next month or so.
