Mass Effect 3 Interview

The folks at Game Informer have published a three-page interview with BioWare’s executive producer Casey Hudson on the studio’s upcoming sci-fi threequel Mass Effect 3, with subjects including the title’s alleged superior gameplay variety, the presence of a “clearer foil” for Shepard and his crew, DLC plans, multiplayer, and more. Here’s a snip:

With the ending in Mass Effect 2, there were so many different variables and possibilities for the outcome and what could happen. As players reached the end, they started comparing notes and trying to figure out how it worked. A few months after it came out, we ran a chart in the magazine that showed the layout of how to get the different endings and how things happened. Is that same type of complexity built into the ending of Mass Effect 3?

Yeah, and I’d say much more so, because we have the ability to build the endings out in a way that we don’t have to worry about eventually tying them back together somewhere. This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we’re taking into account so many decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.

It’s more like there are some really obvious things that are different and then lots and lots of smaller things, lots of things about who lives and who dies, civilizations that rose and fell, all the way down to individual characters. That becomes the state of where you left your galaxy. The endings have a lot more sophistication and variety in them. It would be interesting to see if somebody could put together a chart for that. Even with Mass Effect 2’s…

Yeah, I remember looking at the Mass Effect 2 chart and thinking that it still seems like there are so many variables that it’s difficult to set things up for trying to get a very specific outcome. I loved that about Mass Effect 2. In fact, every time I think of those tons of choices you’re building on from the previous two games it seems to me that there’s never been anything this narratively complex in games previous. How do you balance that? How do you handle all of these different possibilities and choices from back to the first game?

It’s narratively complex, but the other part of what’s really neat about it is it’s not just a system. It’d be a lot easier to develop something like this if it were built more as a system, and you saw characters that technically did things and responded to different situations, but what’s really cool is when you see that a character remembers something that you did, and their feelings are hurt. It’s really high fidelity digital acting. All these things play out with extremely high production values for where we’re at in the game industry. That’s something that I think is really cool. That’s a lot of what we’re doing right now, just getting in as many of these last little magical moments for characters.

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To me it kind of speaks to there’s always this debate going on in the game industry about narrative versus focusing on just gameplay. Some people say it’s the gameplay that’s most important and narrative always comes second. Certainly gameplay in Mass Effect is great, but I think the whole arc of the series assuming that everything plays out in Mass Effect 3 is something you can point to as proof that narrative in games can be really meaningful and important. This is not an experience you could have had in any other medium, in any other way and felt this connected.

I think gameplay is certainly key, but the way I would look at it is that the reason you care about gameplay whether it’s the inventory system or combat or exploration or whatever the reason you care about it is the narrative. Arguably, you don’t need a great narrative. Great gameplay can still make for a fun experience. But what we see in Mass Effect and the way people respond to it is that for example, when you’re modding weapons, you think differently when you’re giving that weapon to a squad member that is your love interest, that you just had a conversation with and you think she likes you. That makes giving her that weapon have a little bit of a different meaning versus putting it all on the stats and numbers.