Mass Effect News Thread

I found ME:A's combat to be more exciting overall... spontaneous with more surprises, even if lacking some variety yet in the enemies.  I would have liked to see them using more "biotic-like" powers, particularly when fight MW exiles.  ME3 was great in that we were able to more directly make up the combos (thanks to the power wheel and ability to tell the squad mates what, when and where to cast their powers.  Even if they just add that feature into ME:A combat, I think we'd have the best of both galaxies.

Jonathan Cooper @gameanim
Ten years ago this month, my very first anim test for Mass Effect. Yup, Commander Shepard was originally a woman:

Rand M @rand_M__
What videogame franchise would you like to write for most?

Gary Whitta @garywhitta
(Writer of things. ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY, THE BOOK OF ELI, OLIVER, THE WALKING DEAD, STAR WARS REBELS, THE LAST JEDI (MARVEL), AFTER EARTH, ABOMINATION)
MASS EFFECT

Yep, there is no need for remaster on MET.

It's the remaster everyone wants... but not everyone can get. 

Wasn’t the default in MEA female? My game always defaulted to her. And she definitely had the more developed background. She was at least as much as the default protagonist as male Shepard was.

Pretty certain Sara was the default as well.

Personally I wish they’d drop the names entirely. Let you totally pick your own. Entirely go by title or rank.

Jos Hendriks @sjosz
Happy 10th birthday to Mass Effect 2. First BioWare game I worked on, and the reason I moved from Europe to Canada. Still very proud of the work, and of all the folks who worked on it.

The opening of blowing up the Normandy SR-1 was my first real assignment, and I worked on it from probably my first month there to locking it for the game to ship.

Working together with audio to get that transition to the depressurized top floor of the ship just right, timing out and spacing out the ambient dialog to fit the run up to that transition. Seeing those chairs come in that you knock out of the way on your way to Joker.

I can't remember now if we always were going this way, but Shepard putting on their helmet at the start? We worked around the fact that we couldn't get your Shep's custom face before that moment. It ended up working out well, though.

Still super crazy to think I was playing the first game in the UK, loving it so much, and then getting to blow up the ship that had become this home in a video game. So powerful.

Another mission I worked on for ME2 was Grunt's acquisition mission. You thought you'd get this Krigsn scientist Okeer, but you end up with young Grunt. A lot of fun working out a ship graveyard with opportunities to knock enemies off ledges with biotic powers.

Getting to implement running into Rana Thanoptis again in this mission was a lot of fun. Just enough of a callback that also fit with where you ran into her in the first game for it to work.

Kris, one of the other designers, ended up taking on finishing the Grunt Recruitment mission and built the bossfight with the mercenary leader Jedore. Still really like how you weren't really expecting to leave with someone completely different than expected.

And then the other main mission I worked on was Jack's Loyalty mission, visiting the facility she grew up in on Pragia. Pretty sure the Grunt mission was set on Korlus. Those names still stick with me 10 years on.

I think the challenge with Jack's Loyalty mission at the time was that it needed to feel a bit more quiet, less action heavy, and the presence of others needed to feel like there wasn't a whole batallion of mercs hanging out.

So there was wildlife there. And then the mercs. And a little jumpscare with the Varren hiding in the hallway of cells. Ended up hand-scripting where the merc boss would go so he seemed smart in closing the distance to Shep as you'd expect a Krogan with a shotgun would do.

And then it was on to building a loyalty mission for Zaeed. I think we built that one between 3 different designers, with the clear goal of the renegade path being the shortcut to revenge, and the paragon path leading to the bad guy getting away.

I remember the original ideas we kicked around contained several branch points so that you had multiple points to choose to go with Zaeed or to try and do good along the way, but we just couldn't fit it in a 20 minute mission structure, so we ended with one big branching moment.

I think we were succesful with the mission helping characterize Zaeed as someone pretty damn ruthless. He could still be the big goddamn hero he always kinda sneered at. Robin Sachs did such a great job with his voice.

On to Project Overlord. The team was getting comfortable with the way we built our stuff and the tools, and so started trying new things. The little hub world that you traveled through to get to the different mission areas was one such thing.

My contribution to Overlord was the interior of the crashed Geth ship that was spooky and empty on the way in, and full of angry Geth on the way out. I really wanted to try and see if I could build a scary/spooky mission.

Bjorn was my co-designer for that mission, he did the outside with the big turret encounter, and he built the platform puzzle towards the back end of the interior.

Showing the Geth Prime at the start of the ship interior was a fun bit of foreshadowing. I remember talking to my audio designer about getting a warped version of the ME1 elevator music and he was so on board. With writing we turned that music into a fun moment for the player.

And then on the way out of course all the Geth wake up and it's a mad dash to the exit. I had time to experiment, which I used to hand animate a Geth running at you and getting crushed by a falling pillar, so I could better understand a cinematic designer's work.

My last work on ME2 was for the Lair of the Shadowbroker DLC. As a team we were confident in our understanding of what we were building and how to build it, and this DLC offered us another opportunity to see where we could take things, with ME3 development on the horizon.

I think we made the funnest stuff for ME2 with Shadowbroker. My contribution was the exterior of the Shadowbroker's ship on Hagalaz. What does a ship perpetually flying on the edge of hot and cold and thunderstorms look like? What would be cool things to see and do for players?

The art and audio really sell it, of course, but in the meantime I built a lightning capacitor that could be shot to discharge chain lightning around it, creating a fun usable hazard.

Additionally, I scripted the space around/above the ship to strike anything that gets in there with lightning and for those things to fly away, so biotics users could fling enemies into the sky and watch lightning disintegrate them. So fun to build.

The ship exterior, and I think the other areas of the DLC were also a more deliberate attempt at moving away from the sometimes very boxy cover layouts in the game, trying to make the cover more integrated with the environment art itself.

Over the years (and now!) I've seen an incredible response to ME2. It still gives me fuzzy feelings and it makes me happy to know people really enjoy(ed) it. Thank you so much for playing the game and sharing your experiences with it with me.

BioWare @bioware
When your squadmates survive the suicide mission to make it to your birthday. Happy ten years, Mass Effect 2!