Mass Effect 3 Engine Improved to Handle Enhanced Cinematics

BioWare, the developer of the upcoming Mass Effect 3 game, has revealed that several modifications were made to the standard Unreal Engine used by the title, in order to better handle cinematics and output high-quality sound effects.

The Unreal Engine is being used by a large number of titles these days and, while this usually leads to some pretty impressive visuals in many of them, it also means that most of them end up looking very similar in terms of graphics.

BioWare has also used the Unreal Engine for its Mass Effect franchise, slowly refining it with each subsequent iteration.

With the third game set to appear in 2012, BioWare has now detailed some of the improvements it has done to the engine, in order to customize the experience for the unique blend of third-person shooter gameplay and the role-playing aspects of the title, which focuses on lots of cinematic dialog sequences between characters.

"The Mass Effect 3 engine's based on Unreal but we definitely have made some significant upgrades in terms of the cinematic system has been fully improved," BioWare Marketing Director David Silverman told CVG. "We've made it a little more seamless. We want to really immerse you in this experience and make you feel like you're kind of in there, almost as if it's a movie you can control."

Having black screens or breaks between actual gameplay and the dialog can't be seen, otherwise players will feel pulled out of the immersive experience delivered by Mass Effect 3.

"Having clean breaks, where you're like: 'Oh, it's a dialogue mode and now it's an action mode' kind of disjoints that. We're really trying to make the cut-scenes feel like they're organic to the actual gameplay; make it feel seamless and integrated. "

"Those mechanics have been altered. We've done some things to make the sound pop a little bit more, the graphics have obviously been improved. We're really just taken advantage of the latest drop from Unreal and putting our own magic, secret sauce on top of it."

Mass Effect 3 is set to appear on March 3, 2012, for the PC, PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.