All the Mass Effect Andromeda information from E3

During E3 2016, we met Yanick ROY Studio Director for BioWare in Montréal.. He answered our questions about the development and the ambitions of MEA.

I'm Yanick ROY, Studio Director for BioWare in Montréal. I was associated to all the ME we've done, it's my 4th !

Will we still have quests with multiple choices / answers for MEA ?
We want to respect the traditional ME formula, like what we did for the 3 first games, it's part of the "ME/BioWare recipe" to allow the players to live the game the way they want. This is the spirit of freedom we want to keep, like what we had on the 3 1st games, but also extand it.

Aren't you scared to lose a part of the public by giving up on Shepard ?
It's a new story, Shepard's story ended and we don't want to extand it. But we wanted to be sure to keep all the things fans liked on the 3 1st games : the relationships with all the different characters, the species, the powers, the energic way fights are done etc...
We had to carry all of this with us to Andromeda and recreate this experience with a new eye and with new characters. The story of Shepard was to be a hero and to become a legend and there were some problems because of that: Shepard knew the univers from the start and the players didn't. With MEA, the players can discover everything in the same time than their new character and have a real influence on his personality.
About the trilogy : each time we speak with fans, they don't talk about "Shepard", they talk about "THEIR Shepard", they really took ownership of the character. This is the ME recipe we really want to give to the players : it's their character, their ship, their game.

Can you tell us more about the companions ? Will we have, like the previous episodes, loyalty missions ?
Absolutely. The relationships with all the characters, as I said earlier, is a big part of the essence of ME. Players often talk about the quality of the story but what they describe the most are the relationships they had with this or that character (the one they felt in love with, etc...). If there's one element we wanted to take with us, it was this one : discovering new characters and bringing them with us, so yes, be prepared to see them [the loyalty missions] on MEA.

Will we have a MP mode? Can you tell more about it ?
We took the inspiration on ME3 MP but the gameplay, fights and specializations have evolved. The additional elements we want to bring in combat [form the single player] can also be transposed on the MP. So the inspiration is ME3 with evolutions (more energetic) and with Frosbite we want to bring some freedom and chaos.

Will we be able to customize our ship ?
Once again and without too much details, this element, like on ME3 with the aquarium or the ships models on Shepard's cabin is important. The player has to be able to have his own environment. This is part of our criteria.

Do you know how many planets the final version of the game will have ?
It's the most huge game we're working on and we took the inspiration from ME1 and we can also name star Wars.. yes, it's more that kind of inspiration.

What about the strategic and diplomatic aspect with the other species of the galaxy ?
The kind of things that will help you to deal with conflicts are the ones you already know from the trilogy, conversations, fights etc... but we added the exploration, the freedom and also the order you do things matter on the story.

We saw a female human in the trailer, will we be able to pick the specie and gender of our character ?
ME was always about humanity in the galaxy. It will be at the center of MEA. To have more defined characters make it possible to have more sophisticated story ... but we still have the freedom in mind so.... I won't enter into details but we are trying to give you a little more [ note: his answer is weird and hard to translate, it's kind of a "yes it's about humanity", but look like there's more ... maybe just about the CC, anyway he can't tell more about it]

What will be our role in the galaxy ? soldier ? archeologist ? explorers ?
The role is huge, we want a more versatile character : if you're a pure explorer, you don't know what kind of dangers you will find so you can't defend yourself... but if your character is a pure soldier, it's a bit weird for people who want to find a new home for humanity and for the species that are coming with you. The main character must have more than one string to his bow.

Will we have more infos about the protheans ?
As I said earlier, we want to have a good balance : reward the old fans with a certain kind of informations but not to flood the new players with missing informations.