Electronic Arts finally confirmed earlier this week that Mass Effect: Andromeda will not be getting any single-player DLC or new story content. Following the May decision to put the franchise on ice, and the more recent elimination of Andromeda developer BioWare Montreal, it appeared to mark a sad end to a series that not so long ago was one of the biggest and most successful that EA had ever produced.

But gone is not forgotten, and EA executive vice president Patrick Soderlund told Gamereactor UK that he expects it to come back—and that he doesn't think Andromeda really deserved all the criticism it got.

"I usually don't do this, but this is one of those places where I feel like the game got criticized a little bit more than it deserved. I think the game is actually a great game. Yes, we have to acknowledge the fact that there were some things that maybe we could have done better, absolutely, but as a whole, if you go in and you buy the game today with everything that's in it today, I believe that that's a game worth buying, personally," Soderlund said.

"So that's the first thing I'll say. The [second] thing I'll say is, for Mass Effect as a franchise, that has such a big fanbase, and you know I've seen people saying 'Oh, EA's not making another Mass Effect'. I see no reason why we shouldn't come back to Mass Effect. Why not? It's a spectacular universe, it's a loved [series], it has a big fanbase, and it's a game that has done a lot for EA and for BioWare."

Despite his own apparent enthusiasm for Andromeda, Soderlund acknowledged that when EA does bring Mass Effect back, it will have to ensure that it does so in a "really [relevant] way," and set it in a "fresh, exciting place." And Andromeda's infamous technical issues notwithstanding, that's the real difficulty facing BioWare in all this: What do you do after you've already combated galaxy-wide annihilation?