Local cooperative play not included just yet in the role playing shooter

Nov 9, 2011 09:58 GMT  ·  By

The cooperative mode in Mass Effect 3, called Galaxy at War, won't have support for split-screen gameplay on consoles or for local area networks (LAN) on the PC, BioWare has confirmed.

Mass Effect 3 has been talked about quite frequently in the past week, what with an early demo appearing on Xbox Live by mistake and with story details being leaked by certain websites after playing the game.

Now, the game's producer, Jesse Houston, has revealed some more details about the upcoming role playing game, and how its cooperative mode will work.

"They complement each other really well," Houston said about the single and multiplayer modes. "The Galaxy at War System takes the actions played in MP and pushes them to your SP achievements. The SP elements will dovetail really nicely into those and both those actions will allow your Shepard to have a different ending depending on those actions. That said, SP can still be played all by itself without any kind of multiplayer or third party and you can still get the absolute best ending. This just gives you new options to be able to get that ending."

Houston shared some more information on how the co-op mode actually works, saying that, at least for the moment, it won't have support for local play, like LAN for PC or split-screen for consoles. He did emphasize, however, that they are both "on the table as something we might add."

What's more, the PC version will require a one-time check online, "when you initially launch and authorize it but then you will no longer require the connection," according to Houston.

Last but not least, Mass Effect 3 players wont be able to create their own servers, as the matchmaking system relies heavily on the systems set up by BioWare itself.

"Because of a lot of the match making systems are quite server intensive, we have no plans anytime soon to allow the creation of an offline server," he said. "However, our servers themselves are quite bandwidth friendly and most of the MP elements involved in that are peer to peer based. So if you are in a bandwidth poor country, and you are playing with your friends you are still going to find it to be a relatively good experience."

Will these new details change the way you view Mass Effect 3 or are you still going to enjoy every minute of its single-player and cooperative modes? Look forward to the action role playing shooters on March 6, 2012, for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.