Mass Effect 3 Interview

There’s a lengthy Q&A with BioWare’s Casey Hudson ready for your viewing over at VentureBeat, during which the Mass Effect 3 creative director addresses everything from the From Ashes DLC to the team’s reactions to the early reviews that have sprung up.  Excerpts to follow:

GB: There was one review that kinda leaked out, and I was wondering if the basics of the information were accurate. Like. It’s about 20 hours of game to play, and maybe about 40 hours if you really explore everything?

CH: That sounds like it’s roughly accurate. We think it’s probably bigger than Mass Effect 2 in terms of size. Very, very replayable, so even if you did that extended playthrough, all of those things are going to be different if you had different playthroughs, different characters are alive, all that kind of stuff.

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GB: Some of the fans are getting up in arms about the day one downloadable content (DLC). That’s the topic of the day, I guess?

CH: As a fan, some people fear the worst, and they put their own spin on what they think is happening. As a fan, if I believed those things I’d be worried too, because what some people are saying is that we’ve taken all of the lore of Mass Effect out of Mass Effect 3 and it’s only in the DLC, stuff like that. Of course that’s not true. In fact, Mass Effect 3 is all about answering all the biggest questions in the lore, learning about the mysteries and the Protheans and the Reapers, being able to decide for yourself how all of these things come to an end. The DLC, whether it’s day one or not, is always going to be sugar on top, the extra. You know, the extra little bits of content that tell side stories. So even though the character we’re releasing on day one is a Prothean, which is part of a race that’s important to the lore of Mass Effect, his story is still an interesting kind of side thing, and then you get this character that’s good if you want to have him for your first playthrough. But it’s always optional. We would never take stuff out of the core game and only have it in DLC.

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GB: Were there any things you view as having.)fixed,) so to speak, when you moved from Mass Effect 2 to Mass Effect 3? Improvements that really make a big difference?

CH: Yeah. The overall gameplay has really come full circle. Commander Shepard is now really fluid in how you move around, get over cover, you can grab enemies, it’s very physical and visceral. Jumping and falling, you just have so many things you can do. But in addition to the action side, we also took a lot of feedback about how Mass Effect 2. It was a very valid point, that there was progression, but not a lot of intelligent decision-making about how you were progressing. And so we’ve added a lot of depth and decision-making into every step of progression, whether it’s your powers, deciding which kind of flavor you want at every stage. Every piece of your armor has stats on it, so that you can decide how you look, obviously, but each piece is also helping you optimize your gameplay towards a certain style. The same thing with your weapon. Now you literally see your weapon on a bench, you’re plugging in and out different mods that really help you play the way you want to play. You might choose entirely different things on one playthrough versus another because you’re actually making intelligent choices about how you combine all of these things.