Austin Wintory shares 22 minutes of music he pitched for Mass Effect 5

Composer Austin Wintory has put the Mass Effect 5 music he pitched to BioWare online, a week after EA closed the studio and cancelled the game. As VGC reports, the Journey composer uploaded about 22 minutes of music to his YouTube channel on 26 October under the title “My ideas for Mass Effect 5”. He recorded it last year, when he was in talks with the studio, and wasn’t commissioned to do it.

A pitch, not a score

Wintory describes the project as his “white whale” and says he’d spent the last couple of years in “serious conversations” with BioWare and EA about joining. His pitch treated the original game’s score by Jack Wall and Sam Hulick as a starting point, adding deeper use of physical analog synths and a more tightly woven orchestra. He calls the approach a love letter first, in the vein of his work on the Aliens franchise with Aliens: Fireteam Elite.

The music itself came about as a gamble. Wintory says he decided in 2025 to surprise the team with a production recorded in Los Angeles with synths, vocals and a large orchestra, and describes it as “nearly 20 minutes” of music. Because he hadn’t yet learned anything about the game’s story, he says the material was “pure musical exploration” and not a score written to scenes or characters.

The video’s description splits the upload into eight cues, which makes it easy to jump around.

How it landed

Wintory says he found out about the cancellation “alongside everyone else”, and called it a “deeply felt loss”. He adds that it has been hard to watch friends lose their jobs and see the franchise “seemingly vanish forever”. He also thanked BioWare and EA’s music department for letting him “dream in your sandbox”, calling even that much a privilege.

The upload follows EA’s announcement on 21 October. In a post on social media, BioWare said that “after more than three decades of shared adventures, BioWare is closing and early development on the next Mass Effect project is ending.” VGC reports, citing a staff letter seen by Bloomberg, that EA will cut about 400 jobs, including about 50 at BioWare. According to VGC, the closure came two months after EA’s $55 billion sale to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund completed.

Fans haven’t taken it quietly. VGC reports that a petition to save the series has passed 230,000 signatures, and that one group backing the #SaveMassEffect campaign funded a billboard in New York’s Times Square. Nothing in the coverage suggests EA is reconsidering. For now, Wintory’s upload is the only look at what the next game might have sounded like.