BioWare Investigating HUD Changes for Mass Effect 3

Programmer Brenon Holmes has been making some interesting posts on possible changes in the heads-up display for Mass Effect 3, specifically in putting the HUD into the environment. First.

We actually had the exact same thought during ME2 development and did a few prototypes of a health and shield indicator in world on Shepard’s armour. The end result was not as great as we’d hoped…

It was ok when Shepard was out of cover, like in the image you linked. The issues started to crop up once you popped into cover, with the way that the camera was positioned and with Shepard’s orientation changing we had to do some fairly crazy stuff to get the health indicator to display in a reasonable position. Even then it ended up being rather confusing to reference when you were in the middle of a fight. I think if we’d simplified our health system so we only had one meter or bar it might have been easier to represent it on the armour (like on Isaac’s back in DS).

All that said, we’re still really interested in trying to move information into the world. That’s one of the things that I love about Dead Space; the interface… it feels really immersive. I just want to touch the hell out of those buttons . So we are still investigating ways of putting some of our HUD elements into the environment… we’ll see what we end up with.

I’d be interested to hear what you guys think might be interesting though… even beyond simple health and shield indicators.

Second.

This is well said, and I think is closer to a lot of the stuff we’re trying to do. If someone’s going to look different, it’s because their gameplay is different (or should be), and there is an actual reason for them to look different. This should also be supported by their AI behaviours and general “feel”.

I’d really like to go into specifics, but I don’t think it’s really appropriate just yet.

He also notes they’re “actively iterating on” the red tendril low-health effect, and thinking about making enemies recognizable without descriptions.

Me, I’m not too fond of Dead Space’s HUD, it was a bit unintuitive and awkward, but it fits with the cinematic/immersive design goals alright. Thanks ScrawlFX.