Mass Effect 3: BioWare on surprises, inspiration and tough decisions (Part 1)

Mass Effect 3 wraps up a story that began back in 2007 and will either end with the Reaper threat crushed, or all life in the universe extinguished.

Last month Xbox World 360 ventured into the snowy Canadian wilderness, fighting bears, moose, and Mounties, for a look inside BioWare's studios.

Here for the first time are the unabridged interviews with the men and women in charge of production, sound, art, design, and combat. Show them some respect. It's bloody cold in Edmonton.

In part one we talk to Casey Hudson, executive producer of the Mass Effect franchise and Derek Watts, art director on Mass Effect 3....

Where does Mass Effect 3 kick off?

Casey Hudson: It's a few months after the ending of Mass Effect 2. The DLC 'Arrival' is basically the last piece of story that bridges the two games. Admiral Hackett sends you to investigate this mass relay where the Reapers are going to make their entry point into the galaxy because their original plan - the Citadel - is closed off.

You have to sacrifice thousands of people in order to slam that door shut on the Reapers. So Shepard's kind of stuck trying to explain all this stuff. But as you're doing that the Reapers actually arrive and take the Earth.

It's not an alien invasion story where you're fighting off the invasion; they are unstoppable, you narrowly escape, and your goal is to figure out how to rally the forces of the whole galaxy. That's what it's going to take in order to return and take back the Earth.

It's kind of like ME2 where you're building a team of twelve people, but here you're building an entire army from across the galaxy.

So how do you stop something unstoppably massive?

That's something we reveal over time. You see humans being harvested and processed to become fuel for the way Reapers reproduce. This is their reproductive cycle and we're just a part of it. We're nothing to them.

Will many of your friends help fight them?

Every main character is in there somewhere, kind of doing the thing that is right for that character. Zaeed for example is a very simple character and what he's up to is different to, say, Liara, who is very pivotal.

Do you think players would rather have their old squad

All feedback is valid. People wanted us to recreate the experience that we had with ME1 in ME2, and to them it meant that all those characters had to come back and do all the same kinds of things, but if we did that when you get together with someone a second time, that's very different.

So much of the experience from ME1 was discovery. So we'll do that again with ME3, but we're focusing on a smaller squad with deeper relationships and more interesting interplay.

What feedback really has changed Mass Effect 3?

People really want us to deepen the RPG aspect of the experience. We interpret that as being about the kind of intelligent decision making around how you progress. To us, the RPG experience isn't necessarily about stats and loot. It's about exploration and combat and making a good character-driven story and good progression.

We had progression in Mass Effect 2 in armour and weapon choices but that activity chain was too simple. That whole activity chain I think was a button we weren't really pushing in ME2 and specifically were trying to hit for ME3.

Will Shepard get to punch a reporter again?

Yes.

Will there be a treat for players who have imported a save across all three games?

Definitely.

You've been working on this for years now. How has the art team's work progressed over all that time?

Derek Watts: Art-wise the original Mass Effect's levels worked really well but for gameplay they weren't so good. We had a lot of raised platforms and areas you could get caught up in - stuff we should have fixed right from the beginning.

Because it was our first next-gen game we were actually thinking we were doing a really good job. It's just the challenge of trying to make that first next-gen game was huge. Everybody else had issues too. Getting used to the technology made it difficult for us. We wanted those wide open areas, those swooping curves, the grand vistas and stuff, but it was hard to do with that engine.

All the characters have been given a redesign for Mass Effect 3. Do you ever worry about fan reaction?

You know, they've been pretty receptive to the changes we've made. We haven't really had much negative feedback from them. We changed Tali - that was tough because people were very passionate about her. A lot of people want to have her face revealed and obviously people are going to be pissed off either way.

Like "I thought she was going to look beautiful!" or "I thought she was going to be the most hideous thing ever!" So we've had a lot of debate over Tali's face, but that's the one we kind of dread a lot. We're always "well, let's talk about something else for a while!" That's something we're going to have to decide.

Are there any artistic themes you have to maintain for continuity purposes but would redo if you could?

The one problem is trying to get that Mass Effect arc through everything. It's in the logo, it's on the armour, it's on the guns, it's everywhere. That was always the intention with Mass Effect - if there was one thing we would try to use on everything, it was that arc.

It's tough when you're trying to put the arc onto all these alien planets. We're trying to make some brutalist Krogan stuff that's all solid geometric shapes, and how do you run an arc through that?

It's hard making everything so clean as well, right?

Yeah, videogames look a lot better if you clutter up hallways. It usually looks more realistic. It's hard to do with clean, plastic, white hallways with the reflective floors you see in some of the movies. I can't even think of those clean movies - I don't think Hollywood does them any more!

The new star trek movie was quite clean. Tron Legacy, too. They're the only ones.

Yeah, and that's hard for us to do. You rely heavily on the lighting and the materials and can you get those reflective surfaces? Can you do it real time or is it all faked? Do you have to flip the level upside down and make part of it transparent? You have to end up faking it and making it as good as you can.

And at least it doesn't look like Blade Runner, like every other sci-fi future.

Yeah. I love that movie. I remember seeing it in the theatre because I'm that old, and it wasn't what we were expecting but we ended up loving it. Doing the (Blade Runner Designer) Syd Mead thing is hard with games. He usually does one area, he does his style - the arc, the 45s - but to try and repeat that through a whole level...?

The new Deus Ex does actually go that blade runner route and really takes it somewhere new

Yeah, I was looking at that. I actually think it has, like, a Japanese feel to it, like the way they do their tech.

Very Ghost in the Shell

Yeah, you know we actually referenced a lot from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. We used a lot of their GUIs and the way they did their ship - that was kind of like in some of the early designs for the Normandy.

Our attack helicopters are loosely based off that movie. There's some great stuff, especially their glowing GUI screens; we used those a lot. I keep a folder of that stuff and I still actually tell the guys "just go back and look at that. Change it like that!"

Keep an eye out for part two of our interview featuring lead sound designer Rob Blake as well as gameplay designers Christina Norman and Corey Gaspur.

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Obsessed With Imagination: BioWare’s Co-Founders On Storytelling And The Future Of Mass Effect

The co-founders of video game company BioWare are often referred to as “the Doctors.” Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk and Augustine Yip started the company in 1995 after their graduation from medical school at the University of Alberta; in the decade that followed, they made some of the biggest and best-regarded games in the business, including the Baldur’s Gate series and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

In 2007 the company was purchased by video game giant Electronic Arts, and it has continued to crank out hits, including the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. Today, Dr. Ray Muzyka is Chief Group General Manager of BioWare and Senior Vice President of Electronic Arts; Dr. Greg Zeschuk is General Manager of BioWare Austin and Vice President of Electronic Arts.

I spoke to Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk earlier this month at E3, the game business’ biggest annual trade show. The following excerpts from that conversation are edited for length and clarity.

David Ewalt: At the risk of betraying personal biases, I have to tell you I was blown away by the Mass Effect 3 demo.

Ray Muzyka: I think it might be the best behind closed doors demo we’ve pulled. And it’s one of the very best we’ve ever shown at E3. It’s really, really tight. First time I saw it, I kind of knew what was happening, but still was like, wow.

Greg Zeschuk: You kind of know when you’ve got it. It’s that chill on the back of your neck. There’s that moment that you start to have a physical response, not just a mental one, that you go ‘Wow.” My mustache twitches, actually.

One of the things that was interesting for me was seeing characters that, in my Shepard’s world, are dead. I know they aren’t going to appear in my version of the game.

Ray Muzyka: Yeah. If you import your saves [from one Mass Effect game to the next], because they reflect your decisions and choices, it changes the pantheon of characters. But [Mass Effect 3] is also a great entry point for people that haven’t done any of that. It’s a new beginning for them… In fact, if they’re just going to play one Mass Effect title, we’d rather they start with this one, because we think this is the best game of the franchise. This is the most exhilarating, most visceral, intense action.

Greg Zeschuk: Yeah, it has a sort of awesome, epic quality, an over the top summer blockbuster element. But it’s also got depth. Our feeling is it’s probably the best balance of what we deliver; the action intensity is bigger and better, the battles are bigger and better, but at same time, like, there’s a nice level of depth as well.

How difficult is it to script and produce a game where you know certain characters aren’t going to exist for certain users?

Greg Zeschuk: Oh, we don’t like to do the easy stuff. We’ve always strived to make games that make you think. They’re more mentally engaging, they’re thought provoking, there are dimensions to them that you don’t see in other games. I think one of the fun things for us, when we know we’ve really nailed it, is when when players get together and talk about their experience, and they’re quite different, so much that they may seem like different games. That’s one of the things we’ve really been trying to nail.

I think the persistent experience from title to title works really well, but wonder if it’s a novelty, if other designers will say ‘Oh, that’s what Mass Effect did.’ Will more game franchises offer this sort of personalized experience?

Ray Muzyka: One of the requirements for games to import saves and have continuity is that the player has to care about that experience. It has to be meaningful to them. That could be mean characters you care about, it could mean abilities, progression on your character that you want to retain. It could be any of those things, or all those things.

But if you don’t have something that people actually care about translating from one game to the next –you could do it, but there wouldn’t be a point. But because people do care about our games, they care about the persistent state of the story, there’s a reason to do that. And we’re excited about that. Because we love allowing our audience to be immersed for a long time in our universe.

Do you see BioWare returning to the Mass Effect universe once you’ve completed the trilogy?

Greg Zeschuk: Certainly the setting has really resonated with people, the type of aliens in the world, the type of people that inhabit space. Obviously we focus first and foremost on nailing it on this game, and then, you know, the possibilities in the future are very, very broad.

Ray Muzyka: We want to make sure it’s awesome. [Mass Effect 3] is our first focus. Beyond that, we do have a desire to continue the Mass Effect franchise, and we’re working on the details, figuring out what the fans want, figuring out the right way.

Bioware’s known for making role-playing games. Why that genre?

Greg Zeschuk: I think some dimension of what we do and why we do it is related to our experience as gamers. As younger gamers growing up, for whatever reason, we really identified with role-playing games, and played a lot of them. I just personally thought that was always the strongest experience.

The other dimension of it was the element of story and narrative. Most of the reason different media forms exist is to create different ways of telling stories. We’re always telling stories… it’s central to our learning and our culture.

What were you playing, computer role-playing games, or tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons?

Ray Muzyka: I got into video games and PC games pretty quickly, but I did play D&D a little bit. I read through some of the other roleplaying systems, too. I found it really interesting to read. I always had this fascination with the source books, I’d just kind of open up the Dungeon Master’s Guide, read through and think about scenarios.

Greg Zeschuk: It’s interesting, because some folks just don’t have a sense of imagination. I mean, one way we describe why we are no longer doctors, kind of a joke, is that there’s no creative doctors.

Ray Muzyka: We don’t like doctors applying creative solutions that aren’t tested.

Greg Zeschuk: I think there’s imagination in research, certainly, and that’s where some of those folks go. But in gaming, everyone here who works with games has to have some degree of obsession with imagining things. I think that was sort of fueled, in our case, by all the D&D books. I mean, I still remember the pictures, and what pages they were on in that book. I’m pathological.

Which comes first? Are people who are more imaginative and interested in fantasy attracted to role-playing games, or do role-playing games bring out those qualities in their players?

Ray Muzyka: It could be either. Now people of all ages are playing video games. Back when we were growing up, at 9 or 10, I remember I was one of the few kids in school that was using an Apple 2. I loved it. I was programming, and I was learning basic assembly, and playing cassette tape adventures. I was fascinated with that.

Greg Zeschuk: I actually spent an entire beautiful summer with a bunch of friends, like making our own little games on our Apples. I didn’t go outside at all. My parents were livid. They’re like, ‘Get outside, it’s beautiful!’ No, we’re working. We’re 10 or 11 years old, and that was more fun than running around outside.

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Mass Effect 3 'Most Promising' Retail Game Of E3

Video game research firm EEDAR has named EA and BioWare's upcoming Mass Effect 3 as the "most promising" retail game shown at this month's E3 expo, citing purchase intent and online media consumption.

EEDAR's research involved analyzing page views, purchase intent and video views through its media partners, IGN and GameTrailers, to rank which of the games shown at E3 had the highest sales potential at retail.

"EEDAR has had strong demand from its retail partners to create an objectively quantifiable method to measure the commercial potential of games showcased at E3 2011," said EEDAR's Jesse Divnich, saying that its new report "highlights the collective activity of over 20 million consumers during the week of E3."

According to EEDAR, Mass Effect 3 had the highest number of recorded page views among all tracked games. The firm says that its data indicates the game could sell in excess of 20 percent more copies than its predecessor.

"We are excited to see that there was such a high level of interest in Mass Effect 3 during E3, especially when you consider how many amazing games were on display at this year's show," said BioWare VP of marketing Patrick Buechner.

The top 20 most promising retail releases showcased at E3 2011, according to EEDAR, are as follows:

1. Mass Effect 3 (Electronic Arts)

2. Battlefield 3 (Electronic Arts)

3. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda)

4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Activision Blizzard)

5. Assassin's Creed Revelations (Ubisoft)

6. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (Sony Computer Entertainment)

7. Batman: Arkham City (Warner Bros. Interactive)

8. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Nintendo)

9. Halo 4 (Microsoft)

10. Infamous 2 (Sony Computer Entertainment)

11. Duke Nukem Forever (Take-Two)

12. Star Wars: The Old Republic (Electronic Arts)

13. Tomb Raider (Square Enix)

14. Gears of War 3 (Microsoft)

15. Rage (Bethesda)

16. BioShock Infinite (Take-Two)

17. Super Mario 3D (Nintendo)

18. Resistance 3 (Sony Computer Entertainment)

19. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary (Microsoft)

20. Street Fighter X Tekken (Capcom)

Note that EEDAR's research methodology weighs all three factors (page views, video views and purchase intent) with its own internal metrics. While Mass Effect 3 had the most page views, it was actually Modern Warfare 3 that topped the list in both purchase intent and video views, despite its placement at number four.

EEDAR's report also named Nintendo the most-watched publisher of the show, saying that the announcement of its new Wii U made it stand out above all other publishers.

"While investor reception was slightly negative, EEDAR believes the initial sentiment from the finance community was premature and unwarranted," said EEDAR. "EEDAR believes that as Nintendo continues to release additional information regarding the Wii U, investor sentiment should reverse."

The most-watched platform of the show, says EEDAR, was Microsoft's Xbox 360, which came out on top in both purchase intent and page views. The firm cited its continued perception as "the quintessential core gaming platform" of this generation, as well as the long-anticipated announcement of Halo 4, as contributing to its placement.

For further analysis, the full report is available here.

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E3 2011 Machinima Coverage - Mass Effect 3 Game Demo / Interview

E3 2011: Mass Effect 3 Video Preview (IGN)

Mass effect 3: E3 Live video walkthrough and chat with Jesse Houston

Mass Effect E3 2011 PowerTV Gameplay Trailer

E3 2011: Mass Effect 3 Interview - Customizable Weapons, Returning Characters, and More. (Xbox 360)

Mass Effect 3 Interview with Casey Hudson (Machinima)

Mass effect 3: OXM E3 Preview

Mass Effect 3's Kinect integration was a genuine 'wow' moment in Microsoft's keynote. The ability to bark orders at squad mates completely revolutionises the RPG's combat by stripping away the need for the Power Wheel without compromising any of its features. Now more than ever, Mass Effect 3's moments of action resemble those of a fully-featured third-person-shooter.

The behind closed doors demo at EA's E3 booth skipped these additions entirely and focused on features long term fans are more familiar with. With no Kinect in sight, executive producer Casey Hudson talked us through two new areas. Stage one involved an assault on a Reaper base, with Shepard's ultimate goal being to destroy the facility for good.

Short but sweet sums this one up: Shepard opened a giant vault doorway built into the ground before painting the facility beneath with a laser. Moments later the Normandy dropped a missile barrage into the gaping hole, seemingly obliterating whatever was inside. If only things were that easy...

Not only did the Normandy's airstrike fail to kill the Reaper lurking underneath but it angered Shepard's deadliest foe and created a blast powerful enough to knock our hero down to the ground too. Cue the Commander running through ravished environments while dealing with squads of cunning assault troopers as well as one very grumpy Reaper.

Combat looks better than ever, with plenty of tactical rolls and smart cover usage on display from both sides. There was a big focus on melee kills too: Shepard loves nothing more than to run in close to an enemy, clock him around the chin with a rifle butt and then stab him in slow motion - from behind, no less - with the new omni-blade. It's brutal but effective stuff.

The level concluded with Shepard, still being dogged by the towering Reaper, leaping up to what appeared to be a fixed turret. It was indeed fixed, only onto a vehicle that soon took off and zipped away from the devastation. Naturally the Reaper gave chase until Shepard's on-rail cannons won the battle - the Reaper's glorious demise as spectacular as the explosion-filled pursuit itself.

From there Hudson turned the clock back for the second level of the show: back to a scene plucked from near the beginning of the game. Shepard was on trial on Earth just as the Reapers invaded and had to battle his way out of a collapsing city and ultimately make it off-world before succumbing to the Reaper threat. Here he paired up with Anderson and took in a brief panorama of the burning buildings before making a bee-line for the extraction point.

The journey from rooftop to safety involved many more battles with husks, troops and new mutations the 'cannibals'. Weapons looked to have been refined yet again - something confirmed when Shepard set down his gun onto a table and the screen switched to that of a weapon customisation menu. There were only space for a couple of attachments, but even the smallest modification changed the weapon's stats. Equip special ammunition, meanwhile, and a small holographic icon attaches itself to the side of Shepard's gun to remind players of their limited costly rounds.

The opening scene wasn't quite as impactful as Mass Effect 2's beginning (to be fair it's nigh on impossible to top the Normandy's shock destruction) but did still try to play with our feelings. Half-way to safety, Shepard found a small boy cowering in an air vent. Despite offering to help the child the boy ran off, only to reappear a few minutes later while boarding a transport ship that was blown out of the sky mere seconds after take-off. As Shepard - newly reinstated to his Commander post by Captain Anderson - looked away in horror we pondered whether or not better dialogue wheel options would have spared the boy his fiery doom. If so, Casey Hudson wouldn't spill the beans when quizzed...

So impressive was the showing that Mass Effect 3 received the only round of applause of the day - something it fully deserved too. Even without factoring in the exclusive Kinect features, BioWare seems to have saved Mass Effect's best 'til last. A definite contender for E3 2011's most exciting game.

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E3 2011: Mass Effect 3 Shoots for the Stars (IGN)

BioWare's Mass Effect sci-fi role-playing franchise is one of the best in video games, yet I admit it's had problems in the past, from technical issues on the Xbox 360 when it was first released to the endlessly irritating planet scanning mini-game in Mass Effect 2. Still, through all the flaws, I kept playing, enraptured by the story and the thrill of gunning through the fast-paced action sequences. It let me hop around an unknown galaxy and interact with fascinating characters and explore alien worlds. Mass Effect 3 is meant to be the finale, and it could be the best entry in the series.

That's going to be hard for BioWare to do considering how good Mass Effect 2 was (taking IGN's Game of the Year award in 2010), but from what's been shown off so far, it seems to be on the right track. The combat and sense of sweeping drama seem to be heightened even further.

Since I'm the type of gamer that would rather put Mass Effect on my coverage blackout list to avoid story spoilers, I won't go into that many specifics. The basic concept is Earth is getting attacked by Reapers and Shepard, naturally, has to save it. Just because the focus is Earth doesn't mean you won't be exploring the galaxy, though. You'll still get your ship, the Normandy, to visit locations and find new quests and characters. There'll also be plenty of ways to upgrade your gear as well, more in line with how it worked in the first Mass Effect, though with a better interface.

During gameplay most of the interface is familiar. To switch weapons and special powers you can bring up a radial menu, and you can still run around with a team of two and direct them in battle. If you want to upgrade a weapon, tough, you'll find special benches around the world that can be accessed and used to mod your guns. This alters the statistical values of the weapon, as well as its appearance, making it seem like there'll be a lot more ways to customize your arsenal than with Mass Effect 2's more restricted system.

In combat, moving from place to place as Shepard has been made a lot faster. He can spin and roll between cover spots in this sequel, which in addition to serving as a more effective method of staying alive, also lets him stay hidden. Using his Omni Blade, a glowing knife that extends from his hand, Shepard can perform one-hit kills if he's able to close range on an enemy. If he manages to use cover to get into an area undetected, he can even reach over low walls and slam the enemy with the blade before it has a chance to react. It makes the game play much more like a traditional third-person action game than its predecessors, adding in the added option to lob out grenades provided you have some handy.

What's really great to see is how BioWare is building some incredible-looking scenes to explore. Characters in Mass Effect 3 don't simply say 'Reapers are attacking Earth!' while you're stuck in a generic box of a room, unable to see the reality of the conflict. Instead, you're dropped right in the middle of the invasion. Enormous squid-like Reapers slowly advance through a dense metropolis knocking ships from the sky in bursts of flame. At one point a larger starship is knocked down the force of the blast rips all the way through the air and into Shepard, knocking him from his vantage point of the battle. What was shown had great sound, better combat, and some awe-inspiring visuals. I can't wait to see where else BioWare takes the story, because so far it seems as though Mass Effect 3 could be the best of the series.

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Mass Effect 3 preview: Run and gun (Joystiq)

Since the beginning of the Mass Effect series, BioWare has had to walk the line between the role-playing genre the company is known for, and the series' setting-driven third-person shooter combat. The first game in the series was arguably a role-playing game with shooter elements, and the second game, to both cheers and jeers from fans, definitely bent a little further towards the shooter side of things. And with the third title, a BioWare representative told Joystiq at E3 this week, Bioware wants to "bring both of those elements up at the same time" -- increase the depth of the customization and the role-playing game, and make the combat sequences more smooth and exciting than ever.

We got to play through one short segment of the game, and while we didn't see a lot of the RPG elements in that part, it's safe to say that the combat is coming together to be some of the best the series has ever seen.

BioWare has always borrowed from the language of modern videogame shooters for Mass Effect, and this iteration is no different. The biggest change in 3's combat is that the A button (on Xbox 360, at least) has a bevy of new functions. It still sends you into cover whenever you're close, but once in cover, the button can also be held down to either roll across a gap, or pushed forward to jump out of cover quickly and move on. The effect is very Gears of War-esque to be sure, though Shepard still doesn't roll himself around quite as quickly as the Gears do.

The A button's also used for various interactions with the landscape -- at one point during our mission (in which Shepard, Mordin, and Garrus were trying to release a female Krogan from captivity on the Salarian homeworld), Shepard had to jump a gap and then climb a ladder. The task was quickly and easily accomplished with one press to jump across, and then another press to haul up the ladder.

BioWare's stolen another trick from Gears of War as well: During certain sequences, a prompt appears on screen to press Y, and the camera will zoom in on a point of interest. It's well-traveled ground for the bullet genre these days, but interesting to see the effect implemented in BioWare's series finally.

And then there's that melee attack. There's always been a random gun bash in Mass Effect for enemies that get a little too close, but in the third iteration, the player can press B to have Shepard whip out "an Omniblade" and get stabby. Just hitting the button allows for a swing, but holding it down (when aimed correctly at the enemy) send Shepard in for a quick kill. There are even stealth kills, of a sort -- my Shepard took some low cover behind an unsuspecting enemy, and then I held B down to grab the bad guy from behind and take him out with the Omniblade.

Combat in general feels quicker and more responsive -- not overly so, but it's definitely been refined yet again. Grenades are back on the Left bumper and have been revamped a bit to work more tactically. At one point, Shepard and crew had the high ground on a group of enemies under cover, and tossing a grenade down in the middle of the group with the bumper took out a couple and sent the rest running out into the open. Enemies will also work together -- we saw one group using smoke bombs to block Shepard's shots, and were told that later enemies will revive each other at times.

The demo ended with the arrival of a gigantic mech called a Cerberus Atlas, and while I didn't actually get to fire a shot at him, I was told that after taking him down, Shepard would eventually be able to get in and control the robot, wreaking destruction on a much larger scale.

That, along with everything else Mass Effect 3 has in store (I didn't get to see the Kinect features in action, unfortunately) will have to wait until later. But the shooter combat that I did see definitely seems like a solid upgrade of the previous titles, and a sign that BioWare is much more sure of its balance over the RPG/shooter line that the series has always had to traverse.

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BioWare Pulse ep3 - Behind the Scenes at the E3 Press Demo

BioWare Pulse episodes 1 & 2 - Mass Effect 3 at E3

Mass Effect 3 Gameplay Trailer E3 - Fall of Earth

Mass Effect 3 E3 2011 Extended Gameplay Trailers

Mass Effect 3: Escapist Magazine E3 Producers Insight Video

Mass Effect 3: Producer Insight

Mass Effect 3 Moves Beyond Dirty Dozen, To a Warring Galaxy

With the promise of more fluid combat, vicious melee attacks, tougher enemies and a nimbler Commander Shepard, Mass Effect 3 is shaping up to be the game Bioware says will be definitive Mass Effect experience.

"Mass Effect was always designed as a trilogy," Bioware game director Casey Hudson told a gathering of press, "and Mass Effect 3 is the main event."

That means an overhaul of the combat, cover and mobility in the game, reworked enemies and weapons and new customizable powers.

It also means a different sort of narrative backdrop.

Where Mass Effect 2 was loosely structured around a Dirty Dozen storyline, its sequel will take a step back and have you gathering not individual members for a team, but commodities for the war effort.

"The large scale story and even the little missions, the little friendships you accumulate during the game contribute to the overall war effort," Hudson said. The greater you do the better your chance of success."

Mass Effect 3 will be about the galactic war that the game has been moving toward for two titles now.

"This is the story of that all out galactic war," he said. "You start out with the Reapers having captured the earth. It is your job to rally the forces of the galaxy and unify everyone behind the cause and wipe out the Reapers forever."

The game also has a number of tweaks to the way you'll handle Commander Shepard. He will have a whole new level of mobility, Hudson said.

"You can climb things, leap across gaps," he said. "In combat you can roll in and out of cover or between cover. That really helps with the overall fluidity of combat.

Enemies will be tougher too with a "lot of new behaviors" from flying in on rocket boots to crawling out of holes. Some will come at you with physical shields.

Your squad members will have new abilities too. For instance you can send one in to go into a fight a rip a shield out of an enemies hands.

Shepard will, of course, also have new abilities including a new collapsible blade attached to his arm that can be used for vicious, skewering attacks.

To give us a sense of what he was talking about, Hudson let us see a bit of gameplay from Mass Effect 3. It was from early on in the game when you are on a Salarian home world.

The brief demo was a chaotic scene of thumping guns, smoke and fire. Arrows directed when Shepard could roll to new cover or could press a button to see a pivotal moment in the gunfight. A serious injury caused Shepard's vision to blur and the noise from the battle to echo briefly.

At one point in the battle a group of enemies formed up with shields, blocking the return fire of Shepard's team until he was able to flank and cut them down with shotgun blasts and that blade of his. Shepard activates an adrenaline rush power that essentially slows everyone but him down, making his assault easier.

Later in the battle a mech lands. Hudson says that if you can take out the driver you can control the suit.

"We're trying to make Mass Effect 3 the best of the series," he says. "It's about improving the moment to moment action, providing an epic conclusion to this storyline."

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Mass Effect 3 E3 Demo Gameplay

Mass Effect 3 Releases 6/03/12 (09/03/12 for us Europeans)

Mass Effect 3 E3 Gameplay Trailer

Mass Effect 3 Gets More Tactical and Conversational with Kinect

During Microsoft's 2011 E3 press conference this morning, BioWare's Dr. Ray Muzyka demonstrated how Microsoft's Kinect could make the Xbox 360 version of Mass Effect 3 the one to own.

Mass Effect's famous branching dialog system comes to life thanks to Kinect's voice recognition. Each decision made can be made using your natural voice, unless you are ridiculously drunk or suffer from a serious speech impediment. Wouldn't it be lovely if the game's characters became confused and asked you to repeat yourself in those cases? Immersion a-go-go!

Voice is for more than just climbing dialog trees, however. Issuing commands to your companions has never been as easy as it was on stage this morning.

This is exactly what I wanted Kinect to do. Thanks, BioWare!

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Amazon outs Mass Effect 3 Collector's Edition *Updated 07/06/11*

Product Features:

• Premium metal case featuring commemorative artwork of Commander Shepard.
• 70-page hardbound art book featuring hundreds of unique and gorgeous illustrations from the BioWare development team plus an exclusive 4x6 lithographic print featuring a one-of-a-kind piece of artwork
• Limited edition Mass Effect comic by Dark Horse Comics, complete with unique cover artwork
• Join the ranks of the N7 with the premium fabric N7 patch
• A full collection of in-game content that can't be found anywhere else!

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Mass Effect 3: E3 2011 - From Cover to Combat

Mass Effect 3 plays like a shooter.

Sure, Mass Effect games have always looked like shooters, but they've never really played like them. Yeah, you pointed and shot at things, but the less tangible particulars of combat have always eluded BioWare's sci-fi epic. Gunplay in Mass Effect was a clunky exercise in behind-the-scenes dice rolls, RPG-style. Mass Effect 2's battles weren't the chore they often were in the original, but they weren't what anyone paid the price of admission for. The cover mechanic was limited in comparison to dedicated third person action games, and guns lacked any sort of oomph.

My playtime with Mass Effect 3 was set on the Salarian homeworld of Sur'Kesh. Ostensibly, my job was to escort a Krogan princess offworld. But in practice, my main job was kicking Cerberus ass across a science station, and Shepard was more equipped than ever to get the job done.

A host of seemingly small additions have changed the way Mass Effect 3 plays. Basic character movement is more responsive for starters, more animated. Guiding Shepard around is less of a struggle than it's ever been. Aiming also felt snappier, and guns have the punch now that they've always lacked.

These changes alter the way you can move around combat zones in Mass Effect 3. Previously, firefights in Mass Effect were mostly static affairs. You'd find a good sized bit of cover and fire away, or throw abilities at your enemies hoping they'd never really get in close enough to make Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2's unwieldy combat controls a liability. If you were a Vanguard, you might risk your life to use your powerful charge move, but it was an awkward maneuver that missed as often as it hit. But Mass Effect 3's revised movement and aiming make Shepard viable at variable ranges in a way he never was before.

Moving and shooting, a previously suicidal maneuver that most players outgrew within a few hours of Mass Effect 2, isn't just an option now - it's a good choice. Cover is still important; it's also been revamped from the last game, easier now to traverse and use dynamically rather than finding a point to set up at and pray that enemies don't close the gap. But BioWare wants you to mix it up in close - something made obvious by the revised melee system.

The awkward melee shoves and slaps of past Mass Effects are gone. Formidable melee punches and attacks specific to each class have taken their place. The Soldier Shepard I used delivered some solid, fast punches that knocked enemies back without causing me to double over like I had shattered every bone in my hand. But the real new addition to close quarters combat is the instant melee kill - hold down the B or Circle button and Shepard will wind back to deliver a killing blow unique to his class, in this case a tech-blade in my Soldier's wrist armor. Shaped similarly to the energy-based armor used by Sentinel classes in Mass Effect, it cut down enemies in one hit. Other classes have their own heavy melee attacks - Adepts have blades of psionic energy that they use to cut down their enemies in close, for example.

Then there are the grenades. Mass Effect 3 sees a series debut for actual, round, conventional grenades. This adds yet another combat option to the game that changes the way Shepard can engage with enemies, and adds a new tactical wrinkle to flanking and other maneuvers.

All of these things combine to provide a shooting experience that, honestly, feels a bit surreal in a Mass Effect game. As I made my way to the Krogan princess on the other end of a science platform with my teammates Liara and Garrus, there was a point in the demo where Cerberus operatives stormed the opposite end of the corridor. The platform had the standard smattering of cover objects between us and the Cerberus forces, but there was also a passage to the right that flanked to the other side. Ordering Liara and Garrus to use their abilities as a diverson, I stuck to cover and ran to the corridor. I made my way to the end and blind-tossed a pair of grenades into the other side of the room.

As the explosions rocked the Cerberus personnel, I swung around the cover and quickly popped a pair of enemies with my assault rifle. Then I dashed forward, sprung over a bit of cover, and took out another Cerberus agent with a pair of quick melee strikes, then ducked back into cover and made my way around to the remaining enemy's rear, cutting him down with Shepard's tech blade.

It all felt like a different game, like a different series even. Where Mass Effect 2 felt like a slightly tighter Mass Effect combat-wise, Mass Effect 3 is in an entirely different space. The familiar elements that need to be there are intact - powers and talents are still in the same menu wheel structure, and weapon types remain unchanged. You're not going to select an assault rifle and be shocked by its looks. But you will be taken aback by how well it works. I was. And now the wait to play Mass Effect 3 until 2012 is that much harder.

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Mass Effect 3: E3 2011 - The Galaxy's Fate is in Your Hands

Spoiler Alert: This article contains some story spoilers for Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and previously released downloadable content.

The Reapers have come to Earth. This is how Mass Effect 3 begins. The first two titles in the series were building towards an epic war with the ancient arbiters of doom and that war has finally come. Good thing the galaxy has you, Commander Shepard, professional Reaper killer.

Mass Effect 2 focused on gathering the best mercenaries in the galaxy for a suicide mission against the Collectors. Mass Effect 3 is a survival mission. You must rally the various races from around the galaxy to your cause to reclaim Earth and save every form of life from extinction. Fail, and everyone and everything dies. No pressure.

It won't be easy. This is full blown galactic war and to many, the battle appears hopeless. How can any army possibly defeat the Reapers? Forget about earning the trust of individual allies -- you must unite warring factions to one purpose. Returning to Earth with anything less than a galactic armada would mean failure. In Mass Effect 2, you helped Jack deal with her past and tracked down Samara's daughter for a family reunion. Here, the stakes are higher and the importance of each mission is going to be greater.

One example of these unifying missions comes about halfway through Mass Effect 3. Shepard and crew have journeyed to the Salarian homeworld, Sur'Kesh, to rescue a Krogan princess. Yes, she's crazy hot. The princess in question is the key to uniting a divided Krogan homeworld. Mordin Solus is assisting (it is his home planet after all), and naturally the Krogan clan leader Wrex Urdnot has quite an interest in the princess.

But wait, is that team even possible in your version of Mass Effect 3? This is where the branching paths of the first two games begin to really affect the final battle against the Reapers. What if you killed Wrex in the first game? What if Mordin died at the end of Mass Effect 2? What if you gave thumbs up to the Genophage? It's unclear how these choices affect the missions -- maybe losing Mordin just means another character is there in his place -- but in some cases the differences should be significant.

Mass Effect 3 Executive Producer Casey Hudson says that "all things contribute to the war effort." Meaning every major decision from the first two games has an impact. The relationships you've built, and those you need to build going forward, matter.

With the Krogans, you might have murdered one of their own. You might have further doomed their species to extinction. Now you must ask them to help you save the galaxy. Awkward. But there are other decisions that should have an impact. Did you kill or spare the Rachni Queen in Mass Effect 1? When Sovereign attacked the Citadel did you sacrifice or save the Council? At the end of Mass Effect 2, did you destroy the Collectors' experiments or save them for (then ally, now enemy) Cerberus? Thinking about all of the decisions made in the first two games and if/how they impact Mass Effect 3 illustrates the scope of the trilogy. This is something we've never seen before.

The separation between someone who played Renegade versus Paragon in the previous games makes the large scale of Mass Effect 3 all the more interesting. Renegade isn't the traditional "evil" you see in games with morality. Often times, it's about self-reliance. Many of those decisions show a Renegade Shepard as being direct, uncompromising, and perhaps trying to prove that humans don't need help from anyone else to survive in the galaxy. For some species, that brash mentality can earn respect. For most, it likely shows that humans are under-developed savages who should be destroyed by the Reapers. I've got to imagine a few things my no-nonsense Queenie Shepard did are going to come back to bite her in the ass.

If you didn't play any of the downloadable content, Mass Effect 3 assumes the events happened. You get a little more out of things if you played Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival. But either way, Liara is the new Shadow Broker (think queen of all mercenaries) and Shepard has been arrested and is on trial on Earth at the start of ME3.

Mass Effect 3 might be about big-scale battles and the fate of all worlds, but there's still time for love. There's an epic battle for Shepard's heart, after all. If you were suave in Mass Effect 1 and 2, then you have two love interests, both vying for you as worlds are about to end. This love triangle will be resolved by the end of Mass Effect 3, so look forward to walking off into the sunset with Liara. I mean, seriously, who else would you want to be with -- Kaidan?

Regardless of how your love life turns out, the Reapers need to be taken down. With a galactic armada at your disposal, that should be doable. All you have to do is convince the galaxy humanity's worth saving.

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