Mass Effect: Andromeda Interviews

While they might not have shown a lot of gameplay, the folks at BioWare opened up a little on Mass Effect: Andromeda while talking to the press at this year’s E3. While the full blowout on the game won’t happen until this Fall, we do get to at least understand a few of the core design values behind the game’s gameplay and narrative.

IGN wanted the scoop on romances:

“In the past we’ve been very, eh, I’d say somewhat formulaic in the way we presented them. We’re trying to look at more organic ways to have those relationships evolve,” Walters told IGN. “Aaryn [Flynn] talked on stage today about offering more freedom to players than ever before, and that includes areas like this as well — how you engage in those types of relationships and the gating around them throughout the timeline of the story.”

While Polygon has a longer and more well-rounded feature. Creative director Mac Walters stresses how the new protagonist and his crew will be newcomers to the galaxy and much less experienced than the Shepard and the crew of the original trilogy, which allowed them to solve some narrative problems they experienced in the past:

“It would be very easy for us to go in and, you know, be the typical space marine who goes in and doesn’t really recognize the impact that they’re having on everything that’s happening there,” he said.

“What we want is someone who — I mean, it is a third-person shooter. What we don’t want is someone who is like, ‘What’s a gun? I don’t know what a gun is.’ It’s very important to us that, you know, you come ready for whatever’s there, but to me it’s more about, well, what experiences have they had up to that point. Has it just been training, have they actually had any live action, and most of the things we’ll start talking about during the fall as well. You can imagine the difference between that and Commander Shepard.”

This is something BioWare struggled with a lot on the original trilogy, Walters said — that you’d expect Shepard to know so much, and yet somehow players must be on-boarded into the universe and its workings as well.

“We’re freeing ourselves up with in this game,” he said. “It’s new to the protagonist in the story as well, so you get to experience it with them, ask all the questions that they’re probably asking as well and kind of go on that journey together.”