Mass Effect 3 Interview

The guys over at CVG have cranked out an interview with BioWare Edmonton producer Michael Gamble about how the storyline has evolved across three Mass Effect titles, why they’ve reduced the RPG elements in the series, the introduction of multiplayer in ME3, and more. A sampling:

Is BioWare doing too much at the moment? Do you feel like you’re spread too thin? Dragon Age, Star Wars, C&C, Mass Effect, and now multiplayer Mass Effect as well as single-player.

We have an amazing set of teams. Obviously, teams on different projects help each other out when they can, but we all keep busy, we make sure we’re passionate about the project we’re on, and, if you love a product enough, you don’t mind keeping on working on it.

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The first ME was very much an RPG that looked at its world down the barrel of a gun, and by now it feels like a shooter with the RPG elements receding – the morality and the levelling seems to be in the background. Has it been a battle of genres?

We just want to tell the best story within the context of an amazing shooter. I think in ME3 we’ve actually brought back a lot of the customisation elements that were missing in ME2: Weapons, armour, powers, each power now has nine possible ways of evolution. We brought back all that customisation. Like any transition between games, we want to polish everything. I wouldn’t say one genre is winning out over another.