GamePlanet Interview with Mike Gamble Dec 22'16

What do you think this is, a role-playing game?  

Hmm, I think some people are getting a little carried away. Now of course Bioware does do blunders, but there's simply not enough information at the moment to get upset about.

In regards to the skill swapping: from what they say it sounds really convenient. How is it explained lore-wise remains to be seen. I think some people forget that we don't know yet... well mostly anything about how the game skills/powers system works. The thing they refer to as profiles or class might end up being different from what class meant in the ME trilogy. I mean a little more creativity in imagining what this will be like would be nice, instead of assuming the same pattern from previous games applies here with no adjustments.

I might end up liking it or not. For example I mumbled a bit about DAI and the limited number of skills compared to DAO, but it wasn't a real problem. I can definetly see pros and cons to both approaches. One thing I have a problem with is dumbing things down. Which is what they did for ME2 but started to somewhat undo with ME3. Hopefully they keep that direction and don't turn Mass Effect in a FPS clone. That would be upseting lol.

Back to the skill/profile swapping... personally I don't really have a problem with adding meta stuff to my pt's so as long as they don't do anything weirdly bad with this system, I'll be fine. I know some people like to be more hardcore with their rp, but it all depends on how they set up the system, especially lore-wise.

Still, I'm sure there will be a lot of discussion about this until more news "leak" from Bioware...

EDIT: Just thought about this, as an example of what I meant. You could have a scenario where you choose a class (let's say adept) and then you can swap profiles and move the points around, but within the adept "category". So you'll be able to swap to a "soldier profile" by equiping powers based on the adept concept but aimed at specific situations (lore-wise you would "focus" your biotics to maybe mimic what a soldier or sniper can do or whatever). Let's say you use a "biotic trance" that mimics the soldier's "adrenaline rush" skill.
So you won't be doing a meta class change, you'll just use a focused approach to your class to mimic other classes to benefit you depending on what you're facing.
This will be easy to explain lore-wise and doable in game world.
Again, it all depends on how they explain it and what the system actually is. If it's just there and you actually do a meta swap to "soldier" while in the field... yeah it would be a bit weird, but for me personally it would be convenient more than anything else 

You see I'm the other way round. If someone said diplomacy and stealth to me regarding a game I'd expect plenty of options to solve things solely by those methods, not a shot fired. If I played through and found they in fact meant you can get through the odd conversation or small area using these options, but 95% will be shooting everyone in the face I would not be impressed.

Space biotic sniper engineer marine!

...What the hell?!


What happened to roleplaying, huh? Getting to choose how to play our own character? How about choosing how to react to different situations or characters myself, rather than having it decided for me?! This is just ME3 autodialogue syndrome all over again, people. Why would you go backwards? There is no downside to having all the options as both genders! It's needlessly limiting otherwise! Why go back to autodialogue after DA:I improved that substantially? What the hell is wrong with you, Bioware?

One of the things I love about Bioware games is that I can play as a woman and just... do that. I'm not limited by that choice artificially and arbitrarily. This is a step in the wrong direction, Bioware. Utterly, completely, colossally STUPID move.

Awesome Christmas present, this news is. And I was already feeling so good today... And then there's the class thing to think about.



...

I wouldn't worry yet.  Especially about auto dialogue.  You will still probably get *at least four* and probably more in a few cases sets of dialog in cut scenes but then what your characters say will be slightly different based on who they are.  You can still shape their character.  Heck you can still shape your character under this system far more then Geralt of Rivia and people seem to consider that a great RPG. 

The Ryders having different personalities makes sense, since they're completely separate people. Shepard was just one character with a gender toggle.

I'm not sure how to feel about the profile swapping, though. I suppose there will be some lore-based explanation for it, but right now I can't imagine how that will work. How do you explain away a character seemingly forgetting abilties after the profile swap?

Great, so SAM knows how to remove and redistribute Praxis kits...

I don't think you should worry that much! As others have said, you'll still be able to customize Ryder, and I don't think it'll be as settled as Shepard (that already has a reputation). sisRyder and broRyder are young and inexperienced right? But they are still too different people that exist at the same time, so it makes sense for them to speak a little differently. And I actually believe that with this they have listened to Inquisition feedback. Of course I understand your point of view, but I had a harder time connecting with my Inquisitor than with Hawke or Shepard, for example, so I do prefer them to have a little of background and just shape what they're really like from there.

Which then still leaves it up to the player whether or not they will even bother.  I don't plan on it that much if only for the pure simple stake of experimenting with powers until I find a powerset I like, at which point those will probably be the powers I stick to for the rest of the game. 

If this is a repec of the pick x of your y skills, change pretty much whenever you want, designed to be done easily and frequently, with the game designed under the assumption this is an integral part of gameplay, I view it as a different beast from those kind of respec your extensive skill tree features, which you don't want to be doing too often. The latter I just don't consider an in universe thing, but me the player choosing to mess around a bit, with the former I want a little nod of justification from the game.

Mind you I have no problem with the idea from a roleplaying viewpoint. Let's assume our wonderful latest model biotic implant is now reconfigurable, but at the expense of the number of skills it can access at any time, our omnitool is the explorer model and loaded down with advanced planetary survey functions on top of combat software and can only wedge so much in, and okay non tech/biotic skills are trickier to justify, but two out of three ain't bad and I'm sure someone can think of something.