Mass Effect Blog Update

BioWare’s Preston Watamaniuk has added another entry to their Mass Effect blog on IGN, this time talking about the decisions that were made while designing the game’s character classes.

Classes within an RPG fundamentally determine how you will play the game. We built each gameplay mechanic first, and then built character classes that used them. As a result, classes feel more naturally integrated into the overall game but have different gameplay. The strengths and weaknesses of enemies are based around these mechanics instead of around things like damage types. In (Mass Effect,) an enemy will be vulnerable to biotics, not fire or cold. The effect is that playing through the game with different classes causes the combats to become more or less challenging, depending on the combination of character classes in the squad. It means that your squad members are important parts of your strategy for overcoming difficult scenarios that play to the weaknesses of your current character.

Recently, a combat situation we encountered in our daily gameplay review highlighted the importance of balancing the squad with different classes. A squad was put together to fight a Krogan Warlord, one of the toughest combat opponents in the game. He is heavily armored and shielded, and he takes a lot of punishment before he dies. He is the Soldier’s worst nightmare. The squad had a heavy emphasis on weapons instead of biotics or tech. When combat began, the Krogan Warlord blasted apart the squad in no time. I knew that the Krogan Warlord would have been much easier to overcome with an Engineer or Adept in the squad.