A trio of former BioWare devs are making ‘a neon-noir supernatural mystery game set in a stylized Canadian cityscape’

Former BioWare developers launching their own studios may not be the biggest news of all time—lots of them have done it, to varying degrees of success—but the premise of the debut project in the works at Studio Reset has me intrigued: It’s “a neon-noir supernatural mystery game set in a stylized Canadian cityscape.” It’s not a sequence of words that goes together in that particular order very often, and it’s pushing my buttons.

Studio Reset was founded by Kaelin Lavallée, Kris Schoneberg, and Francis Lacuna, all of them veterans of multiple BioWare blockbusters ranging from the original Mass Effect to Anthem. Their ambition for the new operation is a “smaller, more intentional” approach to making games, though, with a focus on original ideas, sustainability, and “experiences shaped around the players they are made for.”

“Studio Reset is smaller by design,” said Lavallée, who will serve as producer and creative director at Studio Reset. “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.”

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All that and a toonie will get you a cup of bad coffee at Tim Hortons, but the ideas underlying the studio’s first project are interesting enough to be, well, interesting. First is what the studio calls “Parallax Deduction,” which is essentially that each individual investigator has a unique perspective that, through gameplay, informs player perceptions, interpretations, and beliefs; and second is a desire to avoid “Moon Logic,” a term that describes arbitrary puzzle solutions that force players to guess at a designer’s intent.

“We’re interested in mysteries that trust the player,” said Kris Schoneberg, design director at Studio Reset. “A good mystery should make you feel clever, not confused. With Parallax Deduction, we want players to understand that perspective is part of the evidence. Who is looking at the case matters, because each investigator brings their own expertise, history, instincts, and blind spots.”

And of course that promised setting, which I, a loyal citizen of the Dominion—did you know that Canada is a Dominion? Now you do—am constitutionally obligated to dig. I hope the team throws a bit of a curveball at it, though: Instead of the usual Toronto or Vancouver cityscapes, let’s take this mystery to, say, Saskatoon. Or North Bay. Or Moncton, maybe, where the Cityspeak is a mashup of English, French, and f-bombs. The possibilities are endless! I look forward to seeing where they lead.

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