14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at BioWare is not yet willing to offer any official information on the Mass Effect title it currently has in development, but it’s safe to say that the experience will have a host of new and interesting weapons for the player to use.
The team is using a new official blog post to detail how the vast array of tools of destruction seen in its two biggest franchises was created and what other ideas its leading developers want to explore in the future.
Corey Gaspur, the Mass Effect 3 combat designer, is quoted as saying that, “Literally anything goes during brainstorming. The shotgun pitchfork sounds silly, but it could work. If you throw on an Omni-tool with a three-pronged bayonet, I could totally see it working.”
In order for a weapon to move from the concept stage to actual in-game reality, an entire team at BioWare needs to work on it, from gameplay designers to artists and Quality Assurance.
For Mass Effect, the company is trying to make sure that each faction has its personality reflected in the weapons they use and that they give clear indication of the best way to be deployed on the battlefield.
For the fantasy-based Dragon Age series, BioWare is more interested in unique elements and in making sure that there’s a clear lore linked to the weapons that the characters use.
Varric’s Bianca repeating crossbow is one of the examples used by the company, which says that, traditionally, such a weapons would not have been included because it broke scale, polygon and part limits.
Matt Goldman, the art director for Dragon Age II and Dragon Age: Inquisition, explains that, “For Bianca, we ignored all that because she’s special. This caused an incredible amount of work for the animation tree, because they had to make and maintain a special animation tree just for Varric. Sorry about that, guys.”
Varric is a returning character for the new Inquisition and that means that gamers will get to see how Bianca looks and kills using the power of the new Frostbite 3 engine created by DICE.
At the moment, BioWare is putting the finishing touches on the new Dragon Age experience, which is set to be launched on the PC, the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 during autumn, while also working on the initial stages of a new Mass Effect title that does not involve Commander Shepard.