14 DAY TRIAL // BioWare, the developer of the upcoming Mass Effect 3 role-playing game, is working heavily with DICE, the studio behind the upcoming Battlefield 3 first-person shooter, but only in the area of sound design.
Mass Effect 3 is set to finish the trilogy of titles made by BioWare, so the Canadian studio wants to end it on a great note, with improved graphics, new features and the same deep role-playing mechanics.
Another area where the studio is trying to improve on its previous iterations is sound design, and, in order to do so, it has been working closely with Swedish studio DICE, the developer of the Battlefield series.
According to BioWare sound designer Rob Blake, via CVG, DICE has been instrumental in the development of Mass Effect 3 up until now.
"We've been chatting to the guys over at DICE who did the Battlefield and the Medal of Honor stuff and we've been doing a lot of knowledge sharing and asset sharing with those guys," he said.
"We're taking on board some of their environmental changes that they've done really well. The new [Mass Effect 3] Assault Rifle has different layers that change depending on what type of environment you're in, for example. There are lots of interactions between sounds - you can hear the different decay as shots echo off walls."
DICE helped BioWare, but the Canadian studio also made a lot of progress, largely because it needed to take care of other special effects besides how guns fire, like the unique biotic powers wielded by some characters, and more.
"Their [audio] focus is just the guns but we have spaceships, biotics and tech powers and all this extra stuff that we have to deal with. But one of the things I wanted from them was their environmental interactions, so that when you go into different areas things change quite drastically. They also have a sophisticated ducking system - when you fire your gun it will lower the volume of other people's guns."
Such collaboration between studios owned by Electronic Arts isn't new, as DICE has been spreading its expertise around with studios like EA Black Box, on the upcoming Need for Speed: The Run, and with plenty of other companies, largely in terms of multiplayer.