Like the child of a recently remarried parent, Mass Effect’s situation is dubious after EA purchased developer BioWare Corp. as well as Pandemic Studios yesterday. 1UP.com had some interesting speculation on the matter, taking into account EA’s relations with Pandemic and with previously purchased studios.

Mass Effect will still be published by Microsoft and remains exclusive to the Xbox 360. However, things aren’t so simple: BioWare plans to make Mass Effect the first game in a trilogy, and Microsoft has no contracted claim to the remaining games. EA is already set to publish Pandemic’s upcoming Mercenaries 2 game, and there’s no reason to doubt that they won’t want the same deal with BioWare.

Neither Microsoft’s statement nor an interview by 1UP with the CEO and the President of BioWare revealed anything definitive. So we turn to comparison. As the 1UP article points out, EA has already moved to put Valve’s The Orange Box on the PS3 even though Valve only developed an Xbox 360 and PC version internally. EA did so despite the outspoken criticisms of Sony by Valve’s Gabe Newell, and EA ported the Orange Box to the PS3 independently. Meaning: It’s possible that future games set in the Mass Effect universe could come out on other platforms.

Of course, the whole business of BioWare/Pandemic selling themselves to EA reeks of something. Close to two years ago, BioWare allied with Pandemic Studios under Elevation Partners, presumably to resist control by big publishing companies like EA, which has a reputation for stifling creativity in favor of generic but marketable products (not to mention for working their developers to the bone). But this isn’t a business blog.

So why does this matter?

Because BioWare is a tried and true team which has been making outstanding games for years, and EA is a polyglot borderline monopoly who’d rather make an extra buck than add depth and art to a gaming experience and who give little to no support to a game after launch.

Perhaps I’m overreacting. EA may recognize BioWare’s prowess and give them the leeway they deserve. BioWare execs said in an interview that their creativity was not threatened. But BioWare has always been one of my favorites, and I’d hate to see them go bad.