Mass Effect was my first assignment at Xbox. It was a first-party game and an Xbox exclusive. I'd arrived near the end of a very long development cycle. My job was to make sure it landed well with retailers, critics, and fans. And it really did. The relationship was over almost as soon as it began. EA acquired BioWare just weeks before Mass Effect shipped, and management of the title was handed over in 2008. I got to visit BioWare's headquarters in Edmonton and see the shelves crammed with every kind of role-playing game imaginable. It was an old-school creative culture producing something the world had never seen, both technically and as a work of storytelling. What Drew Karpyshyn achieved as a writer, and the team achieved as world-builders, has never been quite equaled. I'm glad I got to be a small part of it, however briefly.