14 DAY TRIAL // Ahead of this week’s launch of Mass Effect 3, one of the leading developers working on the third and final game in the BioWare-made action and role-playing series has said that he considers the fan base to be co-creators of the franchise because of the influence they have had over the development process.
Casey Hudson, who is the executive producer working on the Mass Effect 3 series, told Venture Beat that, “When we started the Mass Effect series, we had no way to tell how compelling our characters would be in terms of the emotions. Especially with the aliens, we didn’t know if they would be able to portray compelling human emotion.”
He added, “We didn’t build the love interests into some of the alien characters like Garrus… He has the exoskeleton face and stuff like that. But because a character like Garrus just has great voice acting and animation, and a personality that’s really well-written, a lot of people wanted romances with him and with some of the other alien characters.”
Hudson says that the team has always tried to listen to the players and deliver content that is suited to their playing styles and also addressed the issue of the day one downloadable content for Mass Effect 3.
The executive producer says that BioWare has not taken anything out of the core game in order to force players to get the DLC, describing it as “sugar on top” rather than a central part of the narrative.
The impulse to create the From Ashes DLC, which will feature a new Prothean character and quests associated with him, came after the BioWare team working on Mass Effect 3, about 150 developers strong, decided to create a little more content for the game rather than switch to Star Wars: The Old Republic or the next Dragon Age game.