Unconfirmed: Mass Effect 3 Already Fully Playable

The Mass Effect 3 debut trailer has triggered quite a bit of discussion on the NeoGAF forums, including several interesting posts about the game’s current state made by EA public relations representative “The Antitype”. Given his status there, one can only assume that he is who he says he is:

Yeah, combat and in-engine cinematics mostly. Some conversations, nothing that could really be used to establish context. No HUD though, so I don’t know about any mechanical changes.

As for returning squad mates…yes. But I’m not going to say who, cause that’s probably off limits.

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Finally got around to watching it.

Surprised they didn’t show any gameplay since rumblings around the office are that the game is already fully playable, beginning to end, RIGHT NOW and the next year or so is all polish.

That might not be true, but the game is definitely far enough along that gameplay would have dropped jaws.

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Well the game being complete and fully playable from beginning to end is just a rumor I’ve heard …but I heard it from people who would probably know.

As for the dropping jaws thing? EA sends around internal, confidential demo reels every so often, so that we all know what each arm of the company is up to, and it lets the devs strut their stuff to each other. Last one I saw was late Dec and it looked damn good.

Those giant robots tearing apart the Earth? I’ve seen them rendered in-engine.

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Battlefield 3, Dragon Age 2, NFS, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Bulletstorm and a few others were all in the same reel.

I don’t know the reason they show it to us. I imagine it has to do with team-building, make everybody in the company feel invested in the future and proud of the content the company is putting out.

On another level, say I’m a marketer for NFS and we get budget x for the next game. Then we see or hear that another game gets budget 3x. If we’ve seen the game, see why the company is expecting so much from it, and see that it’s on track to earn that budget, then it probably helps morale.

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Ok, I just want to clarify that no characters were ever addressed by NAME in the trailer.

And since I can’t tell one member of an alien race from another member of the same race (see how I don’t say which one?) in the middle of fast-moving action sequences, I’ll just say I THOUGHT I recognized some returning characters.

So, sorry if I break hearts or destroy my credibility. I just wanted to make sure I was as honest as possible.

If you held a gun to my head and asked if I thought characters are coming back, based on what I saw, yes.

Thanks, shinobi602.