14 DAY TRIAL // Mass Effect 3 is going to be tweaked for a larger market, at least according to John Riccitiello, the CEO of its publisher, Electronic Arts.
Mass Effect 3 will be the final chapter in the planned trilogy of sci-fi role-playing/third-person shooter games from BioWare that will focus on Commander Shepard.
As you can imagine, the studio and EA want to make sure that everyone will enjoy the title.
According to John Riccitiello, who talked with investors during a recent Q&A session, via Eurogamer, Mass Effect 3 will continue the streamlining process seen in the second one, and try to adjust its gameplay in order to attract an even larger audience.
"One of the things that Ray Muzyka and the team up in Edmonton have done is essentially step-by-step adjust the gameplay mechanics and some of the features that you'll see at E3 to put this in a genre equivalent to shooter-meets-RPG," he said, "and essentially address a much larger market opportunity than Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 began to approach. We're huge believers in the IP and are purposefully shifting it to address a larger market opportunity."
While the original Mass Effect was more of a role-playing game than a shooter, the second title really established it in the cover-based, third-person shooter genre, and was praised by many as one of the best games released in 2010.
Now, it seems that the third title will streamline that gameplay even more, so it's going to be interesting to see just how much BioWare and EA will push Mass Effect into the shooter genre.
While this might worry certain gamers, we already heard that the third game is going to bring back some of the RPG elements from the first game, so it will certainly be an interesting mix of the two genres.