The Grammy-winning composer was in talks to score the next Mass Effect. Now the game is dead, he's shared 22 minutes of the music he wrote for it.
Austin Wintory, composer of Journey and Sword of the Sea, has posted about 22 minutes of music he wrote for the next Mass Effect.
He says he spent a couple of years in talks with BioWare and EA, but no deal was finalised.
He wrote and recorded it in 2025 as a surprise pitch, before learning any story details.
It builds on Jack Wall and Sam Hulick's original Mass Effect score, with more analog synths.
It follows EA closing BioWare and cancelling Mass Effect: Universe on 21 October.
Just when the Mass Effect wound was starting to scab over, along comes Austin Wintory to rip it right back open. The Grammy-winning composer behind Journey and Sword of the Sea has dropped about 22 minutes of music he wrote while in talks to score the next Mass Effect, the game EA cancelled when it shut BioWare down on 21 October.
GameSpot is calling it another leak to break your heart, and the heartbreak part is spot on. It isn’t really a leak, though. This is Wintory’s own pitch music, written before he’d seen a word of the story, and he’s chosen to share it now there’s no game left for it to belong to.
Wintory posted the music on X and Bluesky on 26 October, then put the full thing on his YouTube channel. The title card says it all: Mass Effect Universe, the music that might have been.
Wintory says he started from Jack Wall and Sam Hulick’s score for the first Mass Effect, the synth-heavy, very 80s sci-fi sound that still gives anyone who heard the Galaxy Map theme in 2007 goosebumps. From there he leaned harder into physical, analog synths and wove the orchestra in tighter, and he called the whole thing a love letter first and foremost.
That’s the right instinct. Mass Effect 1 sounded like nothing else in gaming, and the later games drifted toward a more generic Hollywood action score. Going back to the Vangelis-and-Tangerine-Dream roots was exactly what a lot of fans wanted from the series’ next chapter.
Wintory isn’t some hopeful sending demos into the void. Journey was the first video game score nominated for a Grammy back in 2013, and he finally won one at the 2026 Grammys for Sword of the Sea. He’s also scored Abzû, The Banner Saga, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, The Pathless and Aliens: Fireteam Elite. He’s had a couple of BAFTAs on the shelf since 2013, too.
So BioWare had one of the best composers in the business lining up for its next game, keen enough to record a full orchestral pitch before anyone had even asked. That’s how much people wanted to work on this thing.
To even dream in your sandbox was a privilege.
Austin Wintory, thanking his friends at BioWare and EA
On YouTube he called the cancellation and closure “a deeply felt loss” and said it’s been hard watching friends lose their jobs.
This is the latest in a brutal run. The game’s internal trailer leaked a day after the closure, then the franchise tech director explained how Universe would have honoured every choice from the trilogy. Meanwhile, fans have put #SaveMassEffect on a Times Square billboard, and the petition has passed 230,000 signatures, according to VGC.
Every few days we get another glimpse of how much care was going into this game, and every time it makes EA’s decision look dumber. A trailer that looked great. A choice system built to finally fix Mass Effect 3’s ending. And now the composer of Journey, who’s since won a Grammy, revealing he recorded an orchestral love letter on spec because he wanted the gig that badly.
Credit to Wintory for sharing it instead of letting it rot on a hard drive. It’s a lovely listen, and it’s also a better case for the series than anything EA’s marketing team has made in the last decade. Go give it a spin, then go back and play the Legendary Edition, because right now that’s the only Mass Effect we’re getting.
Have a listen and tell us which track hits hardest in the comments, or come grieve with the rest of us in the GetRekt Discord.
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