Last week, EA shut down Mass Effect and Dragon Age developer BioWare, which resulted in the cancellation of the fifth Mass Effect game that was announced in 2020. As the fallout from this closure settles, famed video game composer Austin Wintory has shared that he’d been working on a potential soundtrack for the now-canceled game and has publicly released early versions of this score.
In a Bluesky thread, Wintory, who has composed soundtracks for games such as Journey, Sword of the Sea (for which he won a Grammy), Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, and The Banner Saga trilogy, writes, “Mass Effect was my ultimate white whale, my all-time dream project. For the last couple years I’d been in discussion w/ BioWare & EA to take on the project & as part of that I wrote close to 20 minutes of music to explore where the franchise can go next, may as well share it!”
Wintory uploaded a 20-minute video consisting of eight tracks to his YouTube channel. The video begins with a message further elaborating on the partnership between BioWare, EA, and him. “For the past several years, I’d been in dialogue with people both at BioWare and EA to potentially jump into Mass Effect 5. As part of these conversations, I decided to surprise the team by writing/recording a gigantic love letter to the franchise, with my idea of where it can go next.”
Wintory adds that he composed the music in 2025 and that he “knew nothing” about what Mass Effect 5’s story entailed when he did. As such, he describes the music as “narratively speculative.” He adds that this conceptual soundtrack was a direct homage to Jack Wall and Sam Hulick’s soundtrack on the first Mass Effect “while leaning even harder on true analog synths, and a more complex integration of the orchestra (almost akin to the hybrid nature of The Matrix),” he writes. Each music track features a message by Wintory explaining his inspiration for its production.
“Receiving the news alongside everyone else that EA had decided to not only cancel the project but shutdown BioWare entirely was a deeply felt loss,” Wintory writes in the video’s description. “It’s been hard to see dear friends lose their jobs, and this beloved franchise seemingly vanish forever. Thank you nonetheless to everyone at BioWare and EA’s music department for gifting me the chance to dream in your sandbox. It was a privilege to do even that much.”
Wintory’s music is the latest piece of potential Mass Effect 5 content to emerge since BioWare’s closure. A day after the shutdown announcement, an unreleased but reportedly legitimate cinematic trailer for the canceled Mass Effect leaked online.