BioWare Explored Multiplayer Ideas for Both Mass Effect 1 and 2

Mass Effect 3 will have a cooperative multiplayer mode called Galaxy At War, but the idea for online play was explored by BioWare, the developer of the role playing shooter series ever since the inception of the first and second games.

Previous Mass Effect titles have been pure single-player experiences, with BioWare telling the story of Commander Shepard, who must now save the galaxy from annihilation in the third game and conclude his saga.

Mass Effect 3, besides ending the story, also delivers a special cooperative multiplayer mode called Galaxy at War, where players can get together and fight waves of enemies while completing objectives that help their single-player campaign.

This idea didn't arrive out of the blue for the team at BioWare, as Mass Effect producer Casey Hudson told Xbox World, via CVG, that multiplayer was talked about both for the first and second games in the series.

"Well, to us it was always a fun, intriguing idea to partake in the Mass Effect universe with friends, to look around, kind of see it from inside with others rather than just taking part in this solo experience," Hudson said. "In general, that's the direction that videogames are heading; they're more social, more online, and we've been trying to find a way ever since Mass Effect 1 to integrate some kind of multiplayer."

The producer revealed that, to accommodate this idea, the first game was supposed to have multiplayer playable characters, while the second was supposed to let players jump from various points of view, similar to how Call of Duty does with its single-player campaign. These ideas were ultimately scrapped, but Mass Effect 3, with its huge intergalactic war, provides the best setting for a cooperative mode.

"So the difference really was that, with ME3, we adopted a fundamentally different approach to what the thing is about, which is that there is a whole intergalactic war going on, which wasn't the case in the previous entries," Hudson added. "So Shepard is still the hero, making the big decisions, deciding what's going to happen with the universe and building alliances, but now there's armies all over the place, fighting to just hang onto different locations. That provided us with a different idea; now in multiplayer you can play as that crew of special forces, journeying around and helping Shepard with the war effort."

Both the single-player and multiplayer modes of Mass Effect 3 will be showcased through a special demo that will be released early next year, before the launch of the final game on March 6, 2012, for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.