In an interview with CVG, Bioware stated that the forthcoming Mass Effect 3 will have more action/adventure elements, although promises not at the cost of its RPG heritage, something that fans felt was a little light in the previous game.
BioWare marketing boss David Silverman had this to say:
“This is definitely the best chance we have in the series to really break out and go truly blockbuster.”
“It’s a natural entry point for new players: giant alien race launches all-out war, you have to rally the forces of the universe to counter and see if you can take them down. That’s pretty clear. You don’t need to be like: ‘Well, what about when I had this love affair?’ It’s like, who cares? It’s all out war!”
“We’re hoping for a big hit. It’s the best game we’ve ever made at BioWare Edmonton. The stuff we’re doing – making the gameplay more action-adventre-y, making it on a par with some of the best action games you see today, whilst on top of that adding in these RPG elements that maybe people were upset we didn’t focus on as much in Mass Effect 2 – it strikes a balance.”
When asked whether the game would have more RPG depth than Mass Effect 2, Silverman commented:
“Absolutely. Hands down. We’ve done a lot of research about what people liked about Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and other games too – what they like about Gears Of War, Assassin’s Creed, Halo, Call Of Duty and lots of RPG games too.
“We’ve looked at all these games to see what’s resonating and what’s not. On the one hand, we don’t want to go too far down the RPG rabbit hole where Shepard starts rolling dice, but on the other hand we don’t want to ignore that coolness – where people can customise parts of their character and making them feel that it’s them in the adventure. We capitalise on that in spades in ME3.”
Hmm, don’t know what to make of that, but the skeptic in me isn’t convinced. The following vid looks more ‘Halo/Gears of War’ than an epic RPG in space. Having said that I’ve faith in Bioware to deliver – I just hope that faith isn’t misplaced. There’s enough action-shooting games coming out over the course of the next few months, we really don’t need another.
I’ve still secretly got my fingers crossed.
I don’t mind that they add some set pieces to help the trilogy go out with a bang, just as long as they don’t forget the series’ strengths. Playing DA:O after ME2 made me realise how unenjoyably time consuming traditional RPG elements can be, and ME2 was a better game for not including them but still focusing on story and character.
I just hope they don’t add something as stupid as the planet probing…
Personally, I’m confident it’ll end up being great. They’d have to really mess up the foundation they laid down from the previous games for it to end up shit.
As I say, my only concern is that it just becomes another shooting game. ME2 was dangerously close to being just that with its constant corridor shooting which grew tiresome as it went on. We shall see, of course.
ME2 did away with many of the more annoying aspects of the first game. I don’t mind me some RPG action, but all the searching of boxes for new armour/weapons/powerups, and the management of your inventory was a little too much in ME1.
That being said, there were also things changed for the worst, such as seriously over-simplifying the levelling up of your character, and the acquisition of new skills/stats. That, and that time-sink that was resource mining/planet probing.
Also, I kind of enjoyed landing on planets and having free reign to drive around on them in the Mako, particularly when you landed on The Moon. I missed that in ME2, and the Hammerhead levels that were added via DLC didn’t really make up for that, as there was barely any exploration involved.