Mass Effect 3 and the future of RPGs

You know the brand name and you know that the conclusion to Commander Shepard’s story arc is hitting early next year. But what you mightn’t know is the meta implications of Mass Effect 3 and the future of RPGs.

While the gaming world was recently introduced/reintroduced to one of the most renowned sci-fi fuelled RPG/FPS franchises of all time, Deus Ex, another series of the same subgenre edges closer to being on a PC near you. Mass Effect has had a relatively speedy rise to fame from the release of the original game in November 2007. In fact, a quick Google or Wikipedia search of the ‘mass effect’ phrase reaps more information related to the sci-fi role-playing shooter (RPS) phenomenon than the medicinal description of a growing mass. And like the medicinal mass, the Mass Effect series continues to grow.

But this growth hasn’t been reliant on the prequel ‘reboot’ of Deus Ex: Human Revolution or the reimagining of a series with Fallout 3 and its subsequent sequels. Instead, Mass Effect continues to gain critical mass in a consistent and persistent arc as the gaming world waits with bated breath to see what happens next.

Feeding the right dog

At their core, RPS titles attempt to broaden their appeal by attracting two big but once different markets: the shooter crowd and the RPG lovers. Of course, this comes with an inherent risk. Favouring one market more means that BioWars runs the risk of alienating the other. In our interview with Michael Gamble, associate producer at BioWare, he was careful to accentuate just how much the developer understands the importance of catering to both worlds.

“So it often seems as though one thing comes at the expense of another. When you’re developing a really, really awesome shooter, you want to make sure that it’s tactile and you can move around the battlefield like you would in any other shooter, but at the same time we have this kind of old school perception that when you’re doing RPGs it’s all about numbers on the back end and things like that. So to marry those two is difficult and what we have to focus on is just to make sure that combat feels personalised. But when you play a role-playing game, role playing is the most important thing. You want to be able to do things that you would in real life. So you have to find a way to actually say, ‘This is how I’d fight in combat. This is how I’d defeat these enemies.’”

Breakfast of champions

We were lucky enough to be the only Australasian journalists invited to a breakfast round-table discussion with a panel of heavy-hitting RPG bigwigs. From left to right (see image) was Dr Greg Zeschuck, general manager at BioWare Austin; Eugene Evans, general manager at BioWare Mythic; Ken Rolston, lead game designer on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (as well as The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion); Keith Stewart of Edge Magazine was in the moderator seat; and last but certainly not least was Dr Ray Muzyka, group general manager and CEO of BioWare.

This wasn’t a place for opinionated journalists to ask what they felt were poignant questions; oh no. It was, instead, a safe place for this collection of RPG gurus to impart wisdom for us mere mortals to bask in. And bask we did.

Upping the ante

A lot of BioWare’s focus with Mass Effect 3 revolves around the idea that this third entry is the final chapter of Commander Shepard’s story. That’s not to say that we won’t see more Mass Effect in the future, but BioWare is looking to make the third Mass Effect outing bigger than before. One such area that BioWare is raising the standard is in the combat. Michael broke it down for us.

“So we’re still using the Unreal 3 engine but we’ve done a lot of work to bring a better particle system into the game and that adds a kind of different level of dynamic-ness to the combat; especially the enemies that use things such as smoke which you may have seen in the demo. Those kinds of things are in. You’ll be able to have a 3D battlefield in a way where you can move up, down, all over the place... jumps over gaps and ladder climbing, and all that kind of stuff changes up the combat.”