Mass Effect 3 Preview and Gameplay Footage

We have a fresh new preview for Mass Effect 3 out of Comic-Con, courtesy of GameSpot, which briefly delves into the character development systems in the game. Here’s a sampling:

The first thing we noticed that wasn’t really covered at E3 was Mass Effect 3’s reworked upgrade tree. The demo started us off with a choice of classes: soldier, sentinel, or adept. Being big fans of shooting people who are frozen upside down in midair, we decided to go the biotics route with the adept class. What greeted us next was the chance to spend some upgrade points on our squad’s various skill trees. But unlike the linear skill progression of Mass Effect 2, there’s some extra

We should probably note that these aren’t the most wildly splintered pathways, but they are nonetheless a different take on character progression than the previous game’s offerings. In ME3, your skills start along a single path and then splinter into two branches where you can select only one upgrade or the other along a sequence of possibilities. So, for example, you might reach the point in upgrading your pull biotic–you know, the ability to suspend hapless enemies in midair–where you’ll need to decide whether you want a longer duration or a wider field of attack. Choosing one cancels out the other, leading you to another set of options. According to BioWare, this feature has been worked into the game to add a bit more traditional role-playing customization–the loss of which many fans mourned after ME2.

They also offer some gameplay footage commented by Casey Hudson which shows a mission you may remember from the last E3.