It’s starting to seem as though all we do around here is cover major departures from developers but this is a fairly significant one. Long-time BioWare employee and director of the Mass Effect trilogy, Casey Hudson, announced his departure from the company after 16 years.

For most gamers, Casey Hudson needs no introduction. He was recently the project director for the Mass Effect trilogy but got his started his tenure at BioWare as a technical artist on Neverwinter Nights and MDK2. Between point A and point B, he was the director of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. There are a lot of greatest games of all-time on Hudson’s resume.

However, Hudson’s time at BioWare turned very controversial at the end with the war between BioWare, gamers and critics over the ending of Mass Effect 3. Regardless of how you feel about it, the let down that was the ending to ME3 may forever define not only Hudson’s sixteen years at BioWare but his whole career.

In a statement on BioWare’s website, Hudson said that he was leaving BioWare to take a break and see what he wants to do with “the next phase of [his] life.”

Hudson is one of many prominent video game creators who have left their long-time companies or started new ones. In the last couple of years, we’ve Cliff Bleszinski leave Epic Games and Peter Molyneux leave Lionhead/Microsoft Studios to start their own studios among other devs leave big studios to start their own indie projects. It wouldn’t shock me to see Hudson start a smaller studio or join one to work on an indie game.

Immediately prior to his departure, Hudson was working on a new IP for BioWare. The project hasn’t been officially revealed about it but BioWare has let us know that its been in development since the doctors, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, left BioWare in 2012. On his way out, Hudson said that the project was ready to enter pre-production and “will redefine interactive entertainment.” Given vintage BioWare’s track record, that’s a big but not impossible to achieve promise.

Source: BioWare