Efforts to start a blaze by huffing on the embers of BioWare’s legacy continue with the announcement of Studio Reset – a new Canadian independent whose members include veterans of Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Anthem. The key personalities are Kaelin Lavallée, lead narrative designer on Dragon Age: Inquisition (*smiles, nods) and Mass Effect Andromeda (*frowns), who has also served as a designer in different capacities on The Long Dark. Kris Schoneberg, meanwhile, is Anthem’s former creative director and a former Mass Effect level designer. Francis Lacuna, finally, is a character artist and later, character director who has worked across Dragon Age, Mass Effect and Anthem.
All three used to be part of Nightingale studio Inflexion, founded in 2021 by BioWare’s former general manager Aaryn Flynn. I wanted to like Nightingale much more than I did – it has lovely Alice in Wonderpunk art direction, but ultimately proved as gratifying as a drawerful of unpaired socks. Nonetheless, I’m prepared to get hopeful about Studio Reset’s debut project, “a neon-noir supernatural mystery game set in a stylized Canadian cityscape”. Though I suspect the high-handed talk of “modernizing” the adventure game is going to really wind up the likes of Dave Gilbert, who’s been tinkering within the genre for decades.
According to the press release, this isn’t one of those AAA veteran mega startups with lashings of overseas money that’s going to disappear in two years, or so the founders are hoping. “Studio Reset is smaller by design,” Lavallée observes. “We are not trying to recreate blockbuster development at a smaller scale. We want to build original worlds with focus, intention, and a team that can stay close to the work, the creative vision, and the players we are making it for.”
The studio’s first, currently untitled game will “channel the satisfaction of classic adventure mysteries while modernizing the form through bold 3D visuals, multiple investigators, intuitive clue-solving, mature themes, and meaningful replayability”. No, David, put the chair down! The children know not what blasphemies they utter. “The game is designed for players who want a mystery that feels strange, atmospheric, and deeply thought-out, without forcing them through arbitrary puzzle logic,” the press release continues.
The critical design boondoggle here is “parallax deduction”, which appears to be a fancy way of saying that there are several investigators and they’ll perceive and interpret the situation differently. “With Parallax Deduction, we want players to understand that perspective is part of the evidence,” says Schoneberg in the release. “Who is looking at the case matters, because each investigator brings their own expertise, history, instincts, and blind spots.”
They’re also avoiding “moon logic” in how they design the clues and puzzles, with no “arbitary” outcomes. “If a player uncovers a hidden motive, opens a locked path, or connects two strange details, the solution should feel like something they could have reasoned toward through observation, context, and deduction,” explains the presser. I’m most persuaded by Lacuna’s description of the game’s world as “the kind of place where the ordinary starts to feel like it is hiding something.” Going by the concept artwork above, the ordinary is hiding some really hench ghosts.
Whatever they call it, Studio Reset’s first game has funding from the Canada Media Fund, but the press release suggests it’ll need a cash injection to get beyond the “early stages” – hence, announcing their new game before it has a title. “BioWare showed us how powerful a committed core can be when it comes to building new IPs,” the developers write collectively in a Q&A sent to RPS. “We aim to do the same thing with Studio Reset and the new game IP. We want to start building the right community early.
“Mystery games benefit from players who think deeply, ask questions, and care about how a story unfolds,” they go on. “Bringing people in early helps us understand what resonates, while staying true to the experience we want to build. We are not trying to manufacture hype overnight; we are trying to build trust over time.”
I will definitely give Lavallée, Schoneberg and Lacuna credit for not making something that looks exactly like one of their BioWare projects. As for actual BioWare, they are busy working on Mass Effect 5 amid the heavily leveraged $55 billion acquisition of parent company EA.
