12 Feb, 2012
BioWare has been very busy lately. With Dragon Age II, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Command & Conquer all under their belt, there’s already been rumblings of a new Dragon Age entry. However, their biggest focus right now is the end of Command Shepard and the upcoming Mass Effect 3 launch in early March. With the open demo just a mere few days away from destroying everyone’s social schedule (yet again), there’s been a lot of questions as to whether the last installment of the series will deliver.
First with the terrible reception of the recent Mass Effect novel, to the leaked plot files resulting in changes to Mass Effect 3‘s plotline, some diehard fans might end up questioning what’s really going on. However, producer at BioWare Edmonton Michael Gamble says that there’s been a whole lot of dedicated teams handling every aspect of each of their projects, they know what they’re doing, and they’re loving every moment of it.
“We have an amazing set of teams,” said Gamble in an interview with CVG. “Obviously, teams on different projects help each other out when they can, but we all keep busy, we make sure we’re passionate about the project we’re on, and, if you love a product enough, you don’t mind keeping on working on it.”
So how does one go about keeping up a series heavily based on decisions and consequences, and at the same time try to woo a new audience? You really don’t skip to the last book of a trilogy and expect to understand everything. However, Gamble says that Mass Effect 3‘s story is something that anybody can sink their teeth into. It’s a story about war, and according to Gamble, that’s a good place for anybody to jump in, whether they’ve been through the ride before or not.
“Some game series continually build a narrative throughout the games,” said Gamble. “For Mass Effect, we’re in a unique position where we’ve continually been talking about this Reaper war for two games now, and finally they’ve arrived. Mass Effect 3 immediately turns into a war story: that impending threat turns up, attacks, and you have to deal with it all within the course of a single game.
“If, in some alternate universe, we’d done the trilogy differently and the Reapers had attacked Earth at the very beginning, that would have been really different. For us, giant sentient robots attacking Earth, Commander Shepard has to rally the truth: that’s a good place to jump in.”
Taking all of that into account, how did the team exactly make it so that everyone’s choices would affect the gameplay? With millions playing, a million different choices could have been made. It takes true talent to write something that could encompass all of those decisions, or at least boil them down.
“Without sounding facetious, it’s just a really talented team,” said Gamble. “We have an amazing group of writers who have to conceptualize all of the myriad possibilities of relationships and who might still be alive at certain points and come up with amazing story arcs based on these permutations.”
Without a compelling story, there’s little point in trying to push mechanics upon the player. However, when Mass Effect first appeared on the scene, it looked like an RPG that had a beef with the world. Well, a world filled with guns. Now, it’s starting to feel very much like an FPS with the occasional RPG element mixed in. BioWare may have straddled the line between FPS and RPG, but in the end they wanted to do just one thing — tell a great story.
“We just want to tell the best story within the context of an amazing shooter,” said Gamble. “I think in ME3 we’ve actually brought back a lot of the customization elements that were missing in ME2: Weapons, armor, powers, each power now has nine possible ways of evolution. We brought back all that customization. Like any transition between games, we want to polish everything. I wouldn’t say one genre is winning out over another.”
Speaking of genre-bending, there’s that one question lingering in the back of everyone’s mind: multiplayer in Mass Effect? This might not end well, but BioWare’s got big plans for that part of the game too. In their attempt to change combat mechanics in ME3, Gamble says that they’re trying to “get away from corridor shooters.” This means getting kind of up-close and personal with your baddies. Tic-Tac anybody?
“How the player interacts with the gameplay space is one of the most important things, as players spend most of their time doing that,” said Gamble. “We’ve added a lot of new melee stuff, and it’s all part of making combat seem more dynamic. Enemy behaviour is also different as enemies will now try and flank and come up close. There’s definitely been an emphasis on making combat spaces into open battlefields in this game. We’re trying to get away from corridor shooters.”
More open space means more places to hide and shoot people from. Perfect for everyone’s multiplayer needs. How it will all tie together will, of course, be all about the story. “Multiplayer, when we decided to do it, we wanted to make it tie in seamlessly to the singleplayer and that story of the Reapers attacking,” said Gamble. “That idea of locking down an area and holding a position, it just fit well. I wouldn’t necessarily say that we took multiplayer design strategies and moved them into single-player, but at the same time, we wanted to make a lot of single-player missions filled with options. That happens to translate, but we didn’t want to replicate them.”
And now comes the part that every player dreads: the end of a story. All good things must come to an end, and Mass Effect is no exception to the rule. Maybe.
While ME3 might be the end of Command Shepard’s story, that doesn’t mean that the universe of Mass Effect will definitively end. Gamble himself said in an earlier interview with GamerZines that those ME3 save files could come in handy in the future. This can only mean one thing: something pertaining to Mass Effect might come about, and your gameplay decisions are going to have an effect on it all.
“…we’ve spent a lot of time building the IP and building this amazing world,” said Gamble. “We don’t have anything to announce, and ME3 is the end of Shepard’s story of course, but who knows? We may tell additional stories in the future.”
A lot of fans just dropped to their knees and started praying. We hope that another amazing story will come from BioWare. Who knows what it will be?
Mass Effect 3 will launch on the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 on March 6th in North America and March 9th in Europe. The demo drops this week on February 14th. Do us a favor and don’t ignore your significant other, but you can totally play when they’re out of the house.
Via CVG.
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