BioWare Corp veteran Drew Karpyshyn has announced that he will once again be working for the studio after a three-year absence.

Karpyshyn was the lead writer on some of BioWare’s most memorable titles like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect 1 & 2, and he was a major contributor on several other games, including Jade Empire, the Baldur’s Gate series, and the MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic.

After working for BioWare for over a decade, Karpyshyn left in 2012 to focus on his Chaos Born fantasy book trilogy, but with that series now complete, Karpyshyn said he will once again be writing for BioWare.

“Working at BioWare was a challenging but very rewarding job, and it’s good to be back as part of the team,” Karpyshyn wrote in his personal blog. “The thing I missed most about BioWare was the amazing people I got to work with, and luckily for me many of them are still there! I suspect a lot of folks are going to wonder if this means BioWare is about to announce a new project tied to my return. The short answer: no. I originally came to the Austin studio many years ago to work on [Star Wars: The Old Republic] and – at least for now – that’s what I’m focusing on again.”

While Karpyshyn says he will be working on The Old Republic “for now,” BioWare may want to think about including him in the development of the studio’s return to the Mass Effect universe with Mass Effect: Andromeda. Karpyshyn served as the lead writer on the first two games, which are considered by many fans of the series to have far better stories than the third game in the franchise.

While Mass Effect 3 had its moments, it also had what many fans considered to be a rushed, anti-climactic ending full of plotholes. In fact, the Mass Effect 3 ending was universally unpopular that BioWare was basically forced to release a free content update that attempted to address the issue by adding a short epilogue scene.

Image courtesy of Electronic Arts Inc