A former Mass Effect lead has said that Clair Obscur is a good example of what a team could do with a lower budget Mass Effect 5.
Last week BioWare co-founder Trent Oster said that saving Mass Effect 5 – after EA abruptly closed the beloved RPG studio last month – would cost over $200 million to happen due in part to fan expectations of a premium AAA experience, with him noting this would also factor into having "a bigger plan in place for the IP."
Christina Norman – who was the lead cinematics programmer on Mass Effect and lead gameplay and systems designer on Mass Effect 2 and 3 during her tenure at Bioware – reacted to this in a Tweet by sharing a report about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The article in question was about the game's budget being under $10 million, with the record-breaking RPG being able to deliver scale and visual fidelity on a budget that is way below a lot of AAA games these days.
You can always spend more but clever small teams can get it done.November 8, 2026
Norman adds "This is a good example of why I think another mass effect game could be made for well under 200 million." She adds, "I mean 5x the budget of Claire Obscure[sic] Expedition 33 should be more than enough." And while you have games like Marvel's Wolverine with a rumored budget of up to $300 million which didn't necessarily land with players, Clair Obscur proves, in Norman's words: "You can always spend more but clever small teams can get it done."
Unfortunately, as anyone who is a fan of Command and Conquer, American McGee's Alice, Burnout, Dungeon Keeper, Dead Space, SSX, Wing Commander, Sim City, Syndicate, Ultima, and a number of other franchises that help me inflate my wordcount will tell you, EA likes to hang onto its IP. So unfortunately, the idea of a new Mass Effect developed independently of EA seems low, no matter the budget.
