Next Mass Effect game to explore 'new directions,' powered by Frostbite

BioWare Montreal will be making changes in the next installment in the Mass Effect franchise, including eschewing Unreal Engine for Electronic Arts' Frostbite, Yanick Roy, studio director at BioWare Montreal, wrote on the BioWare Blog.

BioWare previously announced that the Frostbite graphical engine will power another of its role-playing games, Dragon Age 3, and Roy wrote that the next Mass Effect will be "enhanced by many of the systems that the Dragon Age 3 team has already spent a lot of time building."

BioWare Montreal also intends to make changes to gameplay and story.

"The other thing I can tell you is that, while it will be very respectful of the heritage built over the course of the first three games, with the original trilogy now concluded and the switch over to a new engine, we are exploring new directions, both on the gameplay and story fronts," Roy wrote. "You can still expect the pillars the franchise is known for to be fully intact though, including diverse alien races, a huge galaxy to explore, and of course rich, cinematic storytelling."

BioWare Montreal previously worked on cinematics and post-release content for Mass Effect 2 and the multiplayer in Mass Effect 3, including the impending Omega DLC, which Polygon played recently. The studio will need to grow to build the next Mass Effect, and you can check out a list of job postings, which include slots for a lead artist, senior technical animator, lead gameplay designer and more.