Blur Studios: The Pixar of Video Games Trailers

When we play a great game, we know who to thank: the developers. But when we see a great game trailer, did you know that sometimes the developers had little or nothing to do with it?

Once a device used simply to market a video game, in recent years the humble video game trailer has evolved - like its silver screen sibling - into something more. Instead of being judged solely as a taste of a full, upcoming project, trailers are now seen as something which can themselves be considered art, and viewed - and appreciated - as something separate from the games they're representing.

When we play a great game, we know who to thank: the developers. But when we see a great game trailer, did you know that sometimes the developers had little or nothing to do with it?

Once a device used simply to market a video game, in recent years the humble video game trailer has evolved - like its silver screen sibling - into something more. Instead of being judged solely as a taste of a full, upcoming project, trailers are now seen as something which can themselves be considered art, and viewed - and appreciated - as something separate from the games they're representing.

Go on and make a list of some of the best animated, cinematic trailers and introduction sequences you've seen for a video game in the last five years. Would you have listed, say, the intro to Dawn of War? I would have. Would you have listed the Old Republic's "Jedi Temple" trailer, one of the most exciting Star Wars moments to ever take place outside a feature film? I would have.

Those, and many, many more, from games as diverse as Fable II to Halo Wars to Dragon Age to Warhammer Online, were the work of Blur Studio. Being such fans of their work, then, we thought we'd have a chat with Blur's CG supervisor, Jerome Denjean, and find out just what goes into making the game industry's own version of the short film.

"If the game we're working on is near completion, we'll usually use one the existing environments, add some modelling and texture detail, polish up the lighting and just concentrate on dramatic camera work", Denjean tells Kotaku. "If the game is just starting up, as is sometimes the case, then Blur gets called to do an early teaser. That is when we'll often turn to our excellent concept artists here to help develop rich environments and great characters to round out the overall designs."

"Sometimes a publisher or developer will come to us with something very precise, like storyboards, character and environment models and we'll work with them to deliver their vision. Brink was one of those instances. And on other occasions, clients will give us carte blanche and they'll just say 'Hey, we want you to do something amazing based on the universe we're working on, but we're really open to ideas.'

"Blur will then get immersed in their world, write a script, concept and model everything and come up with what we think would be exciting for viewers to see. We're really set up to be able to do both and everything in between, but each time we'll try our hardest to stay true to the universe that the video game has already created. It helps that everyone here at Blur loves games. The whole studio plays Quake everyday at 2pm. It's great."

"Sometimes a publisher or developer will come to us with something very precise, like storyboards, character and environment models and we'll work with them to deliver their vision. Brink was one of those instances. And on other occasions, clients will give us carte blanche and they'll just say 'Hey, we want you to do something amazing based on the universe we're working on, but we're really open to ideas.'

"Blur will then get immersed in their world, write a script, concept and model everything and come up with what we think would be exciting for viewers to see. We're really set up to be able to do both and everything in between, but each time we'll try our hardest to stay true to the universe that the video game has already created. It helps that everyone here at Blur loves games. The whole studio plays Quake everyday at 2pm. It's great."

Blur even occasionally step beyond simply putting other's people work into motion, sometimes helping with the game's design process. "We love it when we're able to contribute some designs, character models or animation to a particular game, and it often happens. But it's a very different job to develop the complex universes that our clients create with their games."

With such time, money and manpower going into trailers that are rarely, if ever representative of the game they're marketing, I asked if Blur is ever worried about setting gamers up for a fall? That such polished and exciting trailers will create a problem when people actually play the game, and find that it's not as shiny or cinematic as a trailer had led them to believe?

"Not really, because I think people's expectations and visual sensibilities have evolved over the years," he said. "They are able to really see the differences between what Blur creates and the game. We like to see it as 'an extra bit of coolness that would be very difficult to achieve for game companies pipelines,' not a way to confuse people".

"We really worry about making our cinematics consistent with the universe people will get to play, and we sometimes use the same models that will be put in the game. But our job is to tell a little story, design and develop fantastic characters and the environments and get people excited about the world they'll get to play in. We're actually more concerned about the quality of in-game graphics getting so much better year after year. It keeps us on our toes and forces us to always improve and surpass ourselves!"

While game trailers are Blur's "core" at the moment, it's not something the studio wants to be doing forever. The company's long-term objective is to create full-length animated feature films. It's well on its way to this goal, with Blur's work on The Goon movie dropping jaws at this year's Comic-Con.

Just because movies are in the studio's future doesn't mean games are in its past.

"We've been lucky enough to work on some fantastic universes along the years, and most of the games we've worked on would lend themselves well to feature length animated format," the man in charge of what we could call the Pixar of video games says. "Blur is definitely ready for that type of challenge, and we think we are perfectly positioned between Hollywood and the game world."

Source.

Halo: Reach My Review

I don't really cover the Halo series on my blog, even though it's undoubtedly unabashed science fiction, mainly because the emphasis is never on the science fiction aspects of the games - the story, characters etc. are generally relegated to second place in favour of fast and furious action geared towards multiplayer, rather than singleplayer.

Halo: Reach is the last of the "Bungie" Halo games - from now on they will be working on other projects for Activision, and the series will be carried forward by 343 Industries (Microsoft's own, internal, Halo team.) and instead of pushing the series onwards with a more traditional sequel - a Halo 4, if you will - they decided to do a prequel to the main series, focusing on the Fall of Reach, predating even Halo 1, and the planet that was the Bastion of Earth's defences and home for the various Spartan super-soldier projects.

Up till now, the Halo games have traditionally followed John-117 - the Master Chief Spartan II, for Halos 1-3 - a veritable one-man army, fighting the alien Covenant. The previous Bungie game (originally designed more as an add-on) was Halo 3: ODST, which had you play a far more 'normal' human: an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, and they were far more experimental with the game design there - instead of charging into combat, you had to be very careful and play far more stealithly, using the cover of night for most of the game. Reach itself kind of straddles both gameplay types - As a Spartan III (and more often than not with one of your squad of 6) you are far more hardy than an ODST, but not quite as gung-ho as the Master Chief (especially on higher difficulty levels).

Initial impressions of the singleplayer are good: a subdued start, with nicely increased detail on the graphics, but massive amounts of motion-blur at times (surely to cover up a very unsteady framerate), your are dropped - after a semi-expositary cut-scene) onto the proverbial planet 'Reach' to investigate why an area has dropped out of contact. the lovely vista you are presented with really is a sight, especially given the rather sombre tones in colour pallette and the added light drizzle which constantly falls. Initially it is suspected that human militants have caused the outage, but the previous team sent to investigate also disappeared into the 'black zone', so it is up to your squad of Spartan III's (and one Spartan II - Jorge) to investigate. It takes precisely 2 buildings, in a surprisingly linear level, before the Covenant announce themselves in an ambush, and you split up to find some surviving soldiers hiding out in the level before evacuation.

This first level displays some of the best and worst attributes of the game - and series: the graphics are nicely detailed and the vistas expansive, however you are generally confined to a very limited area - unless vehicles are in play - and then the graphics suffer a loss of detail because of the different viewpoint assumed, and also necessity of much larger level design - losing a lot of their immediate detail (and your appreciation of it). Bungie also relies far too much on their (admittedly) superb AI to ramp up the challenge - the actual level design is bland in the extreme, despite some nice architecture and the aforementioned locations. seemingly they design basic levels and just drop the AI in and let it go. it works, but barely. It is also to worth noting that on the hardest difficulty (Legendary) they rely on the old trick of enemies being absolute bullet-sponges, whilst you are 3-shot dead. This did have the benefit of making me excellent at headshots to take down most as quickly as possible, though.

This pattern of gameplay repeats throughout the levels over the course of the game - with much the same highs and lows repeated before they must even have run out of inspiration again and just repeated the same levels as earlier - reach singleplayer at least feels rushed (surprisingly) and quite uninspired - repeating levels? that wasn't acceptable during Halo 1's time, let alone now!

There are a few exceptions to the rule: One level starts with you assaulting a beach, which is superb with drop-pods dropping off Elite Covenant enemies, before taking to space(!) in a 'Sabre': here they clearly copied the X-wing model of old - it's quite arcadey, and forgiving, but makes for a lovely diversion and changes things up - especially when you then assault a Covenant Corvette in low-gravity. the Covenant environment is also nicely improved from previous games, and this was among my favourite (although crushingly hard on Legendary) levels of the entire game. You also get levels flying a Helicopter through the ruins of a city - again beautiful, and other driving all manner of ground vehicles. The trouble is still the level design - other than in space, it's all samey-samey; you run through narrow corriors (with different textures) to a more open area, where you have many enemies, you clear it, and then rinse/repeat.

Tellingly the game doesn't really build up to anything - the last level in particular sets up Halo 1 nicely - but we already saw that (and new how Reach would end), but it doesn't do anything to make your actions feel particularly inspired, or that they matter. Your squad are generally more-or-less interchangeable and only come alive in the brief cut-scenes, only one has any real personality: Kat, the female intelligence/tech expert who has a pretty cheap death to say the least. Bungie, by picking up a prequel story feel into the trap of having nothing really matter because the end is already know: humans lose, Reach is glassed, and only the escape of one ship saves the day (more-or-less) in the already-explored future. They could at least have had the deaths of Noble squad really matter (your actual mission where you actually 'make a difference' isn't actually apparent till the end of the penultimate level).

An epilogue level shows you the final fate of your character in a rather cool way (you certainly don't go out like a punk), and is possibly the one bit of inspiration Bungie actually had for the singleplayer, and i expect that to be copied by the Modern Warfare's sooner or later.

It may sound like i am down on the game quite a lot - i'm not: it is great and it has some very enjoyable and rewarding moments - the planet itself is lovely, the space bits are nice, the storyline is quite well-told and the cut-scenes (short though they may be) are all well-done, but for Bungie's swansong i was expecting a whole lot more than some slightly prettier graphics and the exact same thing again. Tellingly the best singleplayer levels are those based off multiplayer maps - usually the firefight arenas - they are easily the best-designed areas in the game, and where the combat really shines, but betrays a lack of interest in the singleplayer.

Then, of course, there's the multiplayer. Familiar to anyone who tried the Beta earlier in the year, not much has changed - it seems that this is where Bungie put all their time and effort, and it really pays off: not only do you have lots of the usual playlists, but also an improved Firefight (read: Gears' horde mode but better), the Invasion mode, and an improved Forge mode where you can create custom maps with improved tools, and 'Forge World' an absolutely massive are which can be customised for different modes and individual maps made and customised even more within it's boundaries. Not only that but there's a wealth of customisation options (though some have to annoyingly be unlocked at high ranks - why can't i have my Halo 3 helmet at the start?!) - although superficial in nature only - really go a long way to making your Spartan/Elite individual. Notably match-making is fast, relatively glitch-free, has host-migration (and it works!), and all the best levels are represented nicely.

The trouble with this is: for me, singleplayer is the 'meat' of games - multiplayer is more like the icing on the cake - it's nice, and extends the life of the game pretty much indefinitely if you wish - but it isn't what initially interests me in the universe. Without a good story and interesting singleplayer, you might as well be playing COD with the other dullards - the setting, science fiction etc. don't mean anything in that context, and that is what is really so disappointing in a way: when you have concept art like this, surely you can do a bit better?

Overall: 8/10 (if i was rating it as a multiplayer-only game it would easily be 9/10)

Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker My Review *Spoilers*

Lair of the Shadow broker is an important DLC for Bioware: it is designed to be the first "bridging" DLC to connect the events of Mass Effect 2 to those of the forthcoming Mass effect 3, and it also re-introduces one of the old Mass Effect squadmates - Liara T'Soni - as well as answering the question: who, or what, is the Shadow Broker?

You can tell Bioware have been listening to some of the complaints on their forums and elsewhere, because there is also some minor character development for Shepard in this DLC, as well as the appearance of a (very cool) Spectre, but as usual in trying to accomodate too much and too many choices, they also hobble themselves as much as they do raise the bar once again, not only for DLC but also game content in general.

The First thing to mention really is the price: 800MS points (or Bioware's own points) is a jump up from previous DLCs which have all been priced at 560. However, even compared to the previous DLC efforts, this is another jump in not only production values, but also acting, conversations, cinematics, level design - you name it. I also believe it incorporates some of the newer Unreal Engine features (like global illumination), not even featured in the main game, which give the settings an awesome lighting effect, and push the graphics standard to all-new highs (the cityscape of Illium, flashed with lighting and filled with rain, as well as the Shadowbroker's rather exotic lair being absolute standouts in this regard - they really have to be seen to be believed).

You can start the DLC at any point in the main game, after you have completed Horizon, and therefore, have unlocked Illium as a visitable world (and, therefore, Liara) - upon going to her office, you are presented with a new conversation option which once again recounts the beginning of the main game (shepard's resurrection) and events that transpired in the Redemption comics series (which wasn't good at all), culminating in the reveal that one of the comics' characters, a Drell named Feron may still be alive and in the Shadowbroker's possession. Liara is, therefore, determined to find out for sure and rescue him.

personally i think the DLC works as a plot better at the end of the game, and to be truly bridging to ME3, it would need to be played as such, otherwise certain things don't really conform to logical sense, despite Bioware's best efforts.

Once you have spoken to Liara, she immediately leaves for her apartment, elsewhere in the city and you then have to go to another "taxi" point to really start the DLC proper. Arriving at Liara's apartment, you find police, techs and the highlight of the DLC, as much as anything else, another Spectre, an Asari named Tela Vasir. If you have been reading the Cerberus daily news feeds on the Mass effect 2 'dashboard' when you boot the game, she has been mentioned several times, which is nice. One thing that is very cool here is that she acknowledges your choice in the main game to re-acquire your Spectre status after being presumed dead for 2 years between the main games, as I had duly done so after speaking to the council, she remarks her admiration for one of the organisation's most famous(/infamous?) members.

As i mentioned above, this first area, though small was a fantastic way for Bioware to introduce and show off the impressive features incorporated into this DLC - the graphics and design of the apartment are amazing and the global illumination is in full effect as a storm rages outside and the illium skyline is lit by flashes of lighting which cast shadows deep into the apartment. coupled with the rain and the panoramic view through the huge windows, it really is a sight to behold - almost up there with Coruscant in the Star Wars movie prequels (and illustrates perfectly just how far games have come in terms of media presentation).

Once you have searched the apartment for clues as to Liara's fate, you are whisked off to the location of her contact - Baria Frontiers. It is here, after a brief but impressive cut-scene, that the familiar exploration and combat moves into full swing as the devastated (but oh-s-sleek and beautiful all the same, and completely different to the aesthetics of, say, Gear of War 2) building and The Shadow Broker's private Mercs engage you. Now, this may depend on whom you bring, but the enemies do show signs of better AI and higher difficulty than most in the other DLCs or main game.

Fighting your way through the floors of this building reinforces the fact that Bioware have gotten better with every instalment of not only designing beautiful environments, but also integrating the cover for combat much more naturally, whilst maintaining scale, openness and aesthetic appeal, whilst you bring chaos to it all in beautifully orchestrated combat - if this is what Mass effect 3 is going to be like, i can't wait.

Eventually, upon finding Liara's contact, the Asari herself reappears and confronts Vasir, which leads to an epic cut-scene and a massive chase, including both more on-foot combat, then in a skycar through the streets of Illium. it's her that Bioware also tries something a little bit new - the section is short and basically on-rails (and you can't even shoot anything) but it's a cool little diversion nonethless, before you casue Vasir to crash into a hotel and the chase begins again. (i'm purposely keeping details light because i don't want to spoil it for everyone).

Once again the hotel (which amusingly turns out to be a form of Asari "love hotel" if you talk to Liara at a certain point near the beginning), is another beautiful but different environment on Illium, and you can explore a few new areas before - surprise - a big battle with Vasir, another Spectre. Vasir is a vanguard, and for the first time, really, she acts like one - having all the powers shepard would employ as that class - including the dash attack which can be quite devastating. Once again this changes the entire game up a bit, as Vasir is an enemy like you will not face in the main game, or any other DLC so far. Once you win, however you are treated to a few small revelations and a few home truths by the dying Spectre before setting off with Liara to the location of the actual Shadow Broker.

now, for me, Vasir was the highlight of this DLC (i'll explain why the Shadow Broker wasn't, exactly, later - though he is cool) - because she was another Renegade Spectre, and you could quite easily justify a lot of her actions, harsh though they were and she contrasts herself with your own possibly far-worse in galactic eyes: pairing with cerberus, as terrorist organisation in the main game. now it is here that Bioware let themselves down a bit, the obviously quite limited dialogue options don't really give you the opportunity to really explain your own actions at all ("humanity wasn't being looked after," "i had no choice" etc) which reinforces the main game's lack of choice in the matter (it's not like you get to reject Cerberus until the mandatory for everyone one at the game's end); nor can you sympathise (as a renegade i could, certainly with some of Vasir's doings) with the Spectre at all - all you get is the paragon "people don't blow up buildings..." response or the "council wouldn't sanction working for the Shadow Broker" options. whilst the latter is certainly correct, so is vasir's justification for doing so, on occasion - and neither is as bad as working for cerberus.

A very nice cinematic later and you are confronted with a stunningly conceived and realised location to fight through - which i won't spoil - before you reach, well, it itself - the shadowbroker. Now a lot has been conjectured about the nature of the Shadowbroker, both within the game, other media, fandom etc, and in some ways it's the only way it could be, in other ways it's a wasted opportunity that could have been much more, but there is a climactic (though easier than the Spectre fight earlier) sequence - including a nice bit of Shepard manning up and actual using his fists - that eventual deposes the Shadow broker himself and installs none other than Liara on his "throne" as the New Shadowbroker. Whew!

This should provide a nice hint as what we should expect from Mass Effect 3 and in some ways it's surprising such an outcome was not done in a main game, as some people may never see it, otherwise. It is highly likely that Liara will use her new position to help Shepard with the reaper threat and be a credible source of intel, replacing TIM from Mass Effect 2 neatly (as he wouldn't be so forthcoming given what transpires in the main game).

Once the DLC is complete you are also free to wander about a "hub" area on the shadowbroker's ship and use various consoles to get free minerals or buy star maps to them, do some mini text-based missions, read dossiers on all your surviving squad members, talk to Feron and Liara and watch some "spy" videos. You can also re-set the skill points of your squadmates - another requested feature (though if you do the DLC end-game that is rather pointless). Not all of these really work however - the dossiers and some of the videos in particular are nice as little east eggs, but to consider some of their content canon would cheapen not only some characters, but also the universe, which generally takes itself, and the stories therein, seriously.

When you talk to Liara after finishing the DLC, you can get a brief interlude where you can invite her up to the ship - it is here that people who romanced Liara will get a reward with different dialogue and a "romance scene" - other can have her comment on your other love interest very nicely, and there is some minor character development for Shepard as Liara asks how he feels, and you can reply from 3 options, though none of them terribly deep and meaningful (Shepard has to remain a reasonably blank cipher for the player and player's choice, after all). It is also noticeable that Liara's character model, both during and then in another outfit post-DLC have had a substantial upgrade to bring them from Mass effect levels (even originally on Illium in ME2) to Mass Effect 2 levels - the texture work on both her and the outfits is better than, even most Mass Effect 2 squadmates, in fact (though her eyes have also magically changed colour). Actually this graphical/texture upgrade extends from Tela Vasir to the Shadowbroker and most people in-between - a sure sign of the effort and quality Bioware have put in, and encouraging going forward for the (hopeful) quality levels of Mass Effect 3 - all are absolutely top-notch in design and detail.

Overall the DLC is still too short - but with quality this good, it always will be, and in comparable terms whatever negatives are present, no other developer even tries what Bioware has done with this series: having such a breadth of choices and repercussions across the board must a veritable nightmare for the script-writers; to keep churning out better and better material is testament to Bioware's quality and faith in the series.

Score: 10/10.

DLC is out now, on XBL, or for PC, for 800 MS/BW points.

Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker IGN Review

As a huge fan of the Mass Effect series, I have been somewhat disappointed with all of the downloadable content offerings. While the characters have been interesting and the stories well-told, it felt like what happened didn't matter once it was all over. BioWare has changed that with its latest downloadable content – The Lair of the Shadow Broker. The first "bridging" DLC available, your actions do matter and will play a role in Mass Effect 3.

The Lair of the Shadow Broker begins like any other mission in Mass Effect 2: an email in your inbox. Somehow the Illusive Man has tracked down intel on the location of the Shadow Broker, the galaxy's most mysterious and powerful information dealer. Since your good friend and former squad mate (also possible former lover) Liara T'Soni has been tracking him down for two years, Shepard rendezvous with her on Illium, and they embark on an adventure that's the best downloadable content for the game to date.

If you've read the comic series Mass Effect: Redemption, you'll already know all of the details surrounding this ordeal. But if you didn't, the game adequately sets up the situation for you. Liara's beef with the Shadow Broker stems from an incident shortly after the Normandy's destruction. Shepard's body had been retrieved from the icy planet on which it fell and the Shadow Broker possessed it, looking to make a decent sum of cash. To make things worse, the Broker's buyer just happened to be the Collectors. Not content with this outcome, Cerberus enlisted the help of Liara and a Drell named Feron, a double agent for the Shadow Broker, to recover Shepard's body so they could attempt the impossible: resurrecting the dead. Clearly they succeeded, but Feron was captured in the process and Liara has been plotting revenge ever since. Fast-forward to present day and it's up to you and Liara to track down the Shadow Broker and end him.

Clocking in around three hours, Lair of the Shadow Broker unravels the engaging tale at a great pace. Despite the dark themes of murder and betrayal, the conversation can be quite humorous. There are some really great moments between Shepard and Liara, and the storytelling effectively communicates the strong bond between the two, even if they weren't romantically involved in your game. Over the course of the story, it's clear that Liara has evolved from the shy girl Shepard met on Therum into a hardened woman struggling with her feelings of loss and guilt. To keep everything balanced, BioWare tossed in some self-deprecating material, including jabs about the Mako's wonky controls and using Omni-gel to open any door. Visually, Lair of the Shadow Broker boasts some really breathtaking environments. The cut-scenes are beautifully rendered and approaching the Shadow Broker's ship is simply stunning as lightning storms envelope the massive vessel.

Of course, Mass Effect isn't all about the conversation and story -- it's about kicking ass, too. Since the whole idea behind Lair of the Shadow Broker is to showcase Liara and Shepard's relationship (romantic or not) the Asari joins your squad. While there are typical run-and-gun areas, what makes the combat satisfying here is the boss battles. Both bosses have unique traits that make them a formidable opponent. For example, the first person you'll encounter shoots around like a bullet out of a gun making he or she extremely hard to target. Though it's technically not a battle, there's also a debut action sequence -- a high-speed car chase through the skies of Illium. As someone who hates controlling vehicles in videogames, I have to say that the chase is actually a fun time. It's short enough to not overstay its welcome, the car controls decently, there's awesome music in the background, and some great banter between Shepard and Liara.

I have only one complaint about Lair of the Shadow Broker: it feels like this shouldn't be DLC, or at the very least should have been included as part of the Cerberus Network for those who purchased a new copy of Mass Effect 2. It's such a great story and could have such an impact on Mass Effect 3 that it's a pity a lot of people will miss out on it. As someone who also romanced Ashley and Kaidan, those romance stories do seem left out in the cold and reuniting with Liara made that even more obvious. However, the fact that this DLC exists makes me hopeful for more content focused on the other relationships.

CLOSING COMMENTS

If you haven't been interested in any of the previous DLCs because they only offered self-contained stories, start getting excited about Lair of the Shadow Broker. There are a few reasons to snag this and play through it immediately. First, this is the only downloadable content so far that will actually influence Mass Effect 3. Second, if you romanced Liara in the original game and want to re-kindle that flame you finally can. And third, there's a great narrative complemented by fun combat. If you can only afford one piece of extra content for Mass Effect 2, this is the one to spend your money on.

Overall: 9.5 (/10)

Source.

I will do my own review shortly, but I have to agree with IGN, this is by far and away the best DLC so far - even at a higher price-point there is so much good stuff in this, it's totally worth it and a great indicator of not only more to come (the PC files point to "expansion: part 1," for example) but also what to expect from Mass Effect 3. In fact the ligthing during the thunderstorm in Liara's apartment may even have been the newer UE3 global illumination in full effect, and was amazing, whatever technical trickery they were using.

Rumor: Mass Effect 3 for PS3, announcement coming next month

Ever since the announcement of Mass Effect 2 for the PS3 was made, people have been clamoring over whether or not Mass Effect 3 would make way to the system when the game releases. That question may now have an answer and it looks like it'll be made official in just a few short weeks.

Thanks to a reliable tip, it seems that BioWare is poised to reveal information about Mass Effect 3 shortly. As with every gaming-related event, some major news is always leaked from behind closed doors, and this year's PAX was no different. Planning an announcement in October, BioWare will officially announce Mass Effect 3 and will also let it be known that the game is coming to the PS3. This should be classified as a rumor and taken as a rumor.

Whether this holds true or not will be known in the near future. With the next entry hitting the PS3 in early 2011, will you buy Mass Effect 3 on the PS3 or will you continue to follow the series on the Xbox 360 and get the complete experience over all three entries?

Source.

I assume this will be the official announcement for Mass effect 3 that we have been expecting for a while... given the just-released Lair of the Shadow broker DLC - which sets certain directions pretty well (amazing locations, much improved level design, even better cinematics, conversations,  enemies etc) - it's definitely an exciting time.

Crazy Mass Effect 2 Stats and What They're Used For

When George Orwell wrote the dystopian novel 1984, he laid out a possible future in which the government watches everything in a heavy-handed approach to population and thought control. Big Brother was always watching, a concept that still sends chills down the spines of every privacy advocate out there. Thankfully, 1984 never came to be.

But as it turns out, Big Brother is watching; not in an effort to control you but rather to learn from you. You're not just playing videogames anymore. You're actively providing feedback about what parts you like and which you don't. How you play could ultimately help shape the future of videogame design.

BioWare is just one of numerous development studios and publishers that have begun collecting anonymous player data. No identifying information is tied to the information harvested, so you don't have to worry about things being traced back to you. You're just a data point amongst millions. I spoke with Casey Hudson, Executive Producer for the Mass Effect franchise, about how this is done and what the studio has learned so far.

"The only data that we get are in terms of events -- little things that happen in the game," explained Hudson. "Let's say if we want to know whether players skip lines of dialogue, we can have that become a little event that gets sent up. It's all completely anonymous, so all we get is raw numbers for how many times these kinds of events occur. Then we can start getting ratios and comparing proportions and things like that. It becomes this mass of numbers, and then we have to try to figure out how we would interpret that."

This is a process that is new for BioWare with Mass Effect 2, one that Hudson hopes will aid the team in designing future games. "When we were looking at the Achievements for Mass Effect 1, that's where we realized that there are some really interesting player behaviors there that it would be nice if we could answer more questions for ourselves. [Then] we could understand what's going on and how people play our game."

"Sometimes you'll design something and think that it's going to be used in a certain way and people will use it in a completely different way. And if you didn't know that, then you would just keep making that system the same as you did before. But once you know what players like and what they don't like, based on the way that they're playing it, then you can make more of the good stuff and less of the stuff they weren't interested in."

This data is used for top-level design and isn't anything that could have been used in the making of downloadable content, or even to alter Mass Effect 2 for PS3.

"There are some things regarding difficulty and weapons and things like that and those are easier to tune, but there won't be a huge opportunity to include this stuff for the PS3 version. It's about how you design a game from the ground up."

"Ultimately it doesn't always give you the answers, but it sometimes raises questions or gets you to ask the right questions…More people played the soldier class than all of the other classes combined. If you know that, then you can start thinking about future games. Is that good? Is that a problem? Should we look at the other classes and start thinking about ways to make them selected as often as soldier? As part of asking these questions, we can design games in the future a lot better."

It's not just about raising questions. Sometimes the data gathered reaffirms beliefs. "It helps us to confirm a lot of the assumptions that we make when we design games. Obviously with a game like Mass Effect we're trying to capture the sense of continuity and the cinematic experience. More and more we're trying to create something dynamic and exciting like a really great movie and we're trying to get away from dialogue, though even a movie has conversations. This set of decisions we make for how you would experience that and the fact that we have a dialogue system and things like that, we're kind of assuming and hoping that we're right in that people are interested in this kind of experience."

BioWare found that only 15% of conversations were skipped in Mass Effect 2, with the rate higher in non-critical moments like in the hub worlds and much lower later in the game at the climax. "If we found that 80% or 90% of the lines were being skipped, we would have to reevaluate the work that we were putting into the digital acting."

Other times, the data surprises. That happened with both how there were differences between the PC and Xbox 360 populations, as well as in regards to importing saves from Mass Effect 1. "We were surprised by how many people imported a game from Mass Effect 1…We put a lot into that feature and we could have gotten data back that said nobody was doing it. But actually more than half of players imported their save game from Mass Effect 1. That to me is quite high."

The average time to play through the game was 33 hours. PC gamers spent about an hour longer, while Xbox 360 players did 10% more loyalty missions on average. "In general, pretty much all of the data for the Xbox 360 version and the PC version are quite similar. One difference was the people who did certain loyalty missions on the Xbox versus the PC, which is kind of surprising. On the PC for example, people did Miranda's loyalty mission quite a bit, which is where she is trying to connect with her sister and it's more of a touchy-feely plot. Not a lot of Xbox 360 players did that one. But the Xbox 360 players did do Grunt's mission a lot more than PC players."

The PC players have the edge in dedication. Hudson claims that a lot of people played Mass Effect 2 more than once and about half of all players -- including those who rented or borrowed it -- who started played all of the way through to the end. Two players in particular on the PC played through 28 times. That's the current record. Four people on Xbox 360 played 23 times. If you're any of these people, please write in to us and tell us how you have so much spare time.

Some of these statistics are nothing more than that. As Hudson noted, there isn't any real takeaway in the differences between Xbox 360 and PC players. "Even if you know what some of these player behaviors are, is there anything you should do about it or is it just something interesting?"

There was a great improvement in quality from Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2, and that was without collecting this telemetry data. If this endeavor proves useful, we can expect great things from the final chapter in the trilogy.

"Ultimately what it means for players is that we don't have to guess anymore about what players are doing. We can actually learn about what they like and what they don't like and just try to focus on building the good stuff."

Sounds good to me.

Source.

Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker IGN Preview

It's not a secret that I'm a huge fan of Mass Effect 2. Although I didn't have a hand in voting it as the best Xbox 360 game to date, I certainly agree with the decision. That said, the downloadable content thus far has been self-contained, with seemingly little impact on the overarching storyline, which I found a little disappointing. Still, there have been some really great pieces. Kasumi's Stolen Memory and Overlord stand out as my favorites, but I have a feeling they'll both be usurped by the next bit of content: Lair of the Shadow Broker.

The first true bridging downloadable content BioWare has produced, Lair of the Shadow Broker will be playable at any point in your game after you travel to Illium. Because your decisions here will actually affect certain storylines in Mass Effect 3, and more importantly, you can finally resume your romantic relationship with Liara (if you successfully wooed her in the first game), this promises to be the best DLC for Mass Effect 2 to date. Lair of the Shadow Broker also houses more cut scenes and dialogue sequences than in any of the previous DLC offerings and will play out over a few hours. Yesterday I had the privilege of getting my hands on it for about 30 minutes, and that time left me wanting more.

There were two gameplay sequences that stood out to me during my time: the car chase through the city (highlighted in the trailer) and the first boss battle. When I first heard that there would be a car chase, I became nervous. I'm terrible at driving in games and I almost always fail missions on my first try. Thankfully, the section was forgiving and short, and I actually sort of enjoyed it. Weaving through city traffic to try and catch up with the other car reminded me of the movie The Fifth Element, and I'll admit that I've always wanted to drive a flying car. There was even humorous banter between Liara and Shepard to frame the chase, preventing it from taking too serious of a tone.

While the car chase was a brand new element, the boss battle I encountered was by no means revolutionary, but it did make me go, "Whoa." Holy mother of fast moving things, the enemy you face rivals The Incredible Flash. In the end, the baddie was no match for my team (which included Liara), but beating him or her wasn't easy, and Shepard almost died a few times when I couldn't find safe cover. If there are more boss battles like that throughout this add-on pack, then the combat segments will be sure to satisfy.

The storyline of Lair of the Shadow Broker is consistent with the darker tone of Mass Effect 2. Liara is no longer the naive girl prone to sequestering herself in Prothean dig sites. She's become noticeably hardened and hell-bent on getting revenge, and rightfully so. If you've read the Mass Effect: Redemption comic series following the actions of Liara after the Normandy SR-1 is destroyed, you'll already be caught up with her situation and motivation. If you haven't, the game sets up the circumstances for you, though not in as much detail.

To sum it up, Liara worked alongside her partner, Feron, and Cerberus to retrieve Commander Shepard's body from the Shadow Broker's possession before he could sell it to the Collectors. In the process, Feron was captured and Liara is hopeful that her former Drell partner is still alive on the Shadow Broker's ship. After years of tracking, Liara finally gets her big break – a Salarian named Sekat has discovered the location of the Shadow Broker. That's all I'll say story-wise to avoid spoiling the experience, but you can expect a well-written narrative with twists and turns.

This is the first DLC BioWare has released that I plan on playing through with my multiple Shepards, and I can't wait to reunite one of them with their former love. You won't have to wait long to get your hands on Lair of the Shadow Broker – it releases for Xbox 360 and PC next Tuesday, September 7 for 800 Microsoft points ($10).

Source.

Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadowbroker DLC Trailer