14 DAY TRIAL // BioWare has confirmed that, with the upcoming Mass Effect 3 game, it’s trying to do a better job in familiarizing new players with the story of its sprawling series and that the game will have special systems to fill them in with more information, if this is their first time experiencing the franchise.
The Mass Effect series has delighted millions of gamers from all around the world and is set to deliver the final set of adventures for its protagonist, Commander Shepard, in the form of Mass Effect 3. The game even relies on a save game import feature, which means players can bring in their save files from previous Mass Effect games and see their choices influence the story in the new title.
As you can imagine, developer BioWare doesn’t want to scare off new players that didn’t experience the first couple of games, so it wants to get them up to speed with the story in the best way possible.
The studio has already tried this with Mass Effect 2 for the PS3, the first game in the series released on the console. It had an interactive comic book that allowed players to make some of the crucial choices that were present in the first game. BioWare’s Nick Clifford admitted to IGN that it wasn’t the best course of action, however.
"In all honesty, we didn't do a really good job of new player orientation,” Clifford said. "If you didn't play the first game then 2 was pretty jarring for the first half hour.”
In Mass Effect 3, however, things will be different, as special measures have been taken to fill in players with events from previous games.
“If I'm a new player and some guy walks up to me and is like 'Ohhhh Shepard! Remember that one time?' I would be like 'No. I don't remember that one time.' So we wanted to make sure that there aren't those moments that the player is like, 'Who is this? What's going on? What are they talking about?'"
While Clifford didn’t go into specific details, he confirmed that the game would have an introductory video of the story so far, as well as a mechanic where NPCs would share more details about themselves when talking to new players.
Expect some more details about this pretty crucial aspect of Mass Effect 3 to appear before its release on the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 in March.