Composer Jack Wall wrote the music for Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, but he did not return for Mass Effect 3 and has not worked with developer BioWare since. What gives? We don’t know the whole story, but Wall said in an interview that Mass Effect director Casey Hudson “was not particularly happy with me at the end.”
Despite that, Wall told The Guardian he was “so proud” of the score for that game, going on to note that it received a BAFTA nomination, even if the game overall “didn’t go as well as [Hudson] wanted.” The music for Mass Effect 3 was written by a team including Sascha Dikiciyan, Sam Hulick, Christopher Lennertz, Cris Velasco, and Clint Mansell.
Discussing what sounded like a strained relationship with Hudson, Wall admitted, “Fallouts like that happen; it’s just part of the deal.” This type of working experience was a rarity for Wall, though. “It’s one of the few times in my career that’s happened, and it was a tough time, but it is what it is,” he said.
As for Hudson, he left BioWare after the disappointing launch of Anthem. He started a studio that was making a new IP before the game was canceled and the studio shut down.
Also in the interview, Wall discussed Mass Effect 2’s much-heralded Suicide Mission, saying helping put it together was the “biggest mind-f**king thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.” He said the developers were “freaking out trying to finish the game,” so he didn’t have much help on the music side. But he praised the developers at BioWare for turning in something special in the end.
“They had to do a lot of massaging on their end in order to get it to work, but they did it … and the result is still one of the best ending sequences to a game that I’ve ever played. It was worth all that effort,” he said.
After Mass Effect 2, Wall began his work on the Call of Duty series, starting with 2015’s Black Ops 3. He also wrote music for Black Ops 4, Black Ops Cold War, Call of Duty: Vanguard, 2023’s Modern Warfare 3, and Black Ops 6 most recently.
As for the Mass Effect series, BioWare is now working on the next entry in the franchise. The studio’s last game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, failed to meet EA’s expectations, leading to layoffs.