Mass Effect 3 story to be shaped by


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August 4th, 2010 @ 15:32

By Stephany Nunneley

BioWare has said the story in Mass Effect 3 will be ?shaped by over 1,000 variables? from the first two games.

Speaking with PC Zone, project lead Casey Hudson said Mass Effect 3 will be impacted by the decisions players made in previous ME games, just like ME2.

?We plan out the larger plot points of the story from one game to the next, but it would be impossible to plan it all in advance,? he said. ?More importantly, we?d never be able to plan as many creative opportunities if we?d do it all up front. Instead, we record what a player has done in a play-through, and then we have all of those choices available that writers can refer to as they build storylines.

?Numerically, it?s over 1,000 variables that we?ll have access to for shaping the Mass Effect 3 experience for people who?ve played the previous games.?

Hudson said the team doesn?t plan to reinvent the series for it?s third outing, as it already implemented the changes it wanted in the second go-round.

?If you define an RPG as a game where you equip your hero by sifting through an inventory of hundreds of miscellaneous items and spend hours fiddling with numerical statistics, then Mass Effect 2 isn?t one,? he said.

?In Mass Effect 2 we focused on what we love about RPGs: An awesome sense of exploration, intense combat, a deep and non-linear story that?s affected by your actions, and rich customization of your armor, weapons and appearance.

?We had an overwhelmingly positive response to this approach, and while we?ll make further adjustments to it for Mass Effect 3, we?re really happy with how it?s been received so far.?

Mass Effect 3 is still in the planning stages last we heard, and ME2 had the Firepower Pack released for it yesterday.

More Mass Effect 2 DLC is expected ?soon? with Lair of the Shadow Broker.

Via CVG.

http://www.vg247.com/2010/08/04/mass-effect-3-story-to-be-shaped-by-over-1000-variables/

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Nice, finally get to deal with the shadow broker...and cannot wait until ME3. Played ME2 a lot and had to go out and buy ME1 as well. Good single player game which I like!

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Nice, finally get to deal with the shadow broker...and cannot wait until ME3. Played ME2 a lot and had to go out and buy ME1 as well. Good single player game which I like!

A lot is an understatement! Every time I signed on for a three month period, what was techbeck doing? Play ME2!

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Over 1000, huh? I've played the first two games to death, and 1000 sounds exaggerated. Whatever the actual number is, it's certainly more than any other game; so it definitely won't disappoint.

I'm also glad to hear they're keeping the combat system from ME2. The counter-based system is more fun and tactical than the original's in my opinion. The inventory system I think was a little strange, so hopefully they tweak it a bit. And I really, really hope they completely-redo the resource gathering. Planet probing was God-awful boring, finger-cramping, and time consuming.

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A lot is an understatement! Every time I signed on for a three month period, what was techbeck doing? Play ME2!

hahaha, yea....I forgot I have you as a friend!! I love single player games and not really big in to multiplayer unless its co-op. Waiting for Fallout New Vegas and then you will see me playing that for a LOOONG time to...haha.

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I'm glad based on what I've seen/heard so far with regards to the carry-through from ME2 to ME3.

The transition from ME1 to ME2 was really, quite frankly, pointless. The only real thing that transferred that actually affected the story in a meaningful way was nothing. There were minor events, email, news reports, etc. that referenced events from the first game, but nothing that affects ME2's story directly.

The only thing that affected your gameplay was the bonuses you received based on the level and alignment of your imported character.

It sounds like the transfer from ME2 to ME3 will be quite a bit more meaningful and actually impact the story.

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Don't recall it being posted on Neowin, so old news yes, but I missed it from Joystiq, probably lots of people from NW did too.

For sure, more against the original website suddenly making a big deal about it a month and a half after it was announced.

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Very excited. I absolutely cannot wait for this. I wouldn't really care if they had 1 ending, but at least it increases the replay value massively.

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They definitely have their work cut out for them, considering how different one person's ME2 game is from the next (

they have to account for virtually every combination of characters that can die in Collector base

). I'm not surprised that the game is still in the planning stages - there must be a hell of a lot of planning to do.

Super excited for this game, since Mass Effect 2 is still my favourite game of 2010.

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Thi sis quite impressive...but by 1000 variables they probably also mean many random conversation choices you have, from which you might get slightly different outcomes.

Still i am quite excited for me3.

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Actually this game is really awesome and I love to play that because I have all the cheats of the game, So that can be very easy for me and basically if the task become little easy then we definitelly like that. I think this is reasonable argument to play the game from me.

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I need to get the 2nd DLC, the AI bit, did the Kasumi one last week. I should still have enough points so maybe I'll do it tonight or tomorrow.

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I'm glad based on what I've seen/heard so far with regards to the carry-through from ME2 to ME3.

The transition from ME1 to ME2 was really, quite frankly, pointless. The only real thing that transferred that actually affected the story in a meaningful way was nothing. There were minor events, email, news reports, etc. that referenced events from the first game, but nothing that affects ME2's story directly.

The only thing that affected your gameplay was the bonuses you received based on the level and alignment of your imported character.

It sounds like the transfer from ME2 to ME3 will be quite a bit more meaningful and actually impact the story.

lol no. If you killed the council in ME1, then captain anderson became counselor anderson, same with undina if you picked him. You get more starting paragon / renegade points depending on what you were in ME1, psychological profile is still intact from ME1, there was the asari on the citadel that was ****ed at you, if you saved wrex on virmire, he was the leader of the urdnot clan on tuchanka.

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lol no. If you killed the council in ME1, then captain anderson became counselor anderson, same with undina if you picked him. You get more starting paragon / renegade points depending on what you were in ME1, psychological profile is still intact from ME1, there was the asari on the citadel that was ****ed at you, if you saved wrex on virmire, he was the leader of the urdnot clan on tuchanka.

I mentioned the bonues to renegage/paragon and the extra XP and cash you received based on your import.

The rest of it is just like I said, pointless. Sure those things are true, but they don't affect the story. Regardless of whether Wrex survived or not, you still get the same missions on Tuchanka with the same result - Grunt joins Clan Urdnot, except Wrex's cousin or brother is the leader.

If the council survived, you get your Spectre status back, which doesn't affect the story. If they were killed, you don't and the new council won't have anything to do with you. Again, it doesn't affect the story or what missions you receive.

Let me clarify what I mean by doesn't affect the story: I mean that these differences based on decisions in the first game don't influence the missions you receive and what actions you take in the second game - they only change the players and the dialogue at those moments.

If this "1000 variables" hype is true, this is going to be one cut down disappointment. You can't playtest 1000 variables in QA within a reasonable time frame.

Sure you can. Probably 75% of those 1000 variables are going to be very minor things relating to dialogue choices, who is dead and alive, alignment, NPCs's disposition toward you, resources, mission outcomes, etc.

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1000 sounds like a lot of variables, but how much do they actually affect the game and how many different outcomes there are is more imprtant. Still, sounds awsome regardless

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Why would you boast about having over 1,000 variables in a massive game? Who is going to be impressed? When did the amount of variables used indicate anything about the quality? Lots of other software has more than 1,000 variables and you don't see them bragging.

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Why would you boast about having over 1,000 variables in a massive game? Who is going to be impressed? When did the amount of variables used indicate anything about the quality? Lots of other software has more than 1,000 variables and you don't see them bragging.

Your missing the point, this isn't just 1,000 variables in the game, because plenty of open world games already do that, this is just 1,000 variables based solely on what choices you made and what you have done in the previous 2 games.

Not a lot of games have done that, especially in such a capacity and also over so many sequels.

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Your missing the point, this isn't just 1,000 variables in the game, because plenty of open world games already do that, this is just 1,000 variables based solely on what choices you made and what you have done in the previous 2 games.

Not a lot of games have done that, especially in such a capacity and also over so many sequels.

Oh. I thought they were talking about variables in the context of programming.

As in:

#include "SDL/SDL.h"
#include <string>

//Attributes for the screen -- BPP is color depth
const int SCREEN_WIDTH = 640;
const int SCREEN_HEIGHT = 480;
const int SCREEN_BPP = 32;

//Rendering surfaces
SDL_Surface *foreground = NULL;
SDL_Surface *background = NULL;
SDL_Surface *screen = NULL;

SDL_Surface *load_image(std::string filename) {
            SDL_Surface* loadedImage = NULL;
            SDL_Surface* optimizedImage = NULL;

            //Load the image
            loadedImage = SDL_LoadBMP(filename.c_str());

            if(loadedImage != NULL) {
                           optimizedImage = SDL_DisplayFormat(loadedImage);
                           SDL_FreeSurface(loadedImage);
            }

            return optimizedImage;
}

void apply_surface(int x, int y, SDL_Surface* source, SDL_Surface* destination) {
     SDL_Rect offset;
     offset.x = x;
     offset.y = y;

     SDL_BlitSurface(source, NULL, destination, &offset);
}

int main(int argc, char* args[]) {
    if (SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_EVERYTHING) == -1) {
       return 1;
    }

    screen = SDL_SetVideoMode(SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT, SCREEN_BPP, SDL_SWSURFACE);

    if (screen == NULL) {
                  return 1;
    }

    SDL_WM_SetCaption("Tutorial 1", NULL);

    foreground = load_image("hello_world.bmp");
    background = load_image("background.bmp");

    apply_surface(0, 0, background, screen);
    apply_surface(180, 140, foreground, screen);

    if (SDL_Flip(screen) == -1) {
                         return 1;
    }

    SDL_Delay(2000);

    SDL_FreeSurface(foreground);
    SDL_FreeSurface(background);
    SDL_Quit();

    return 0;
}

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Man, I can't wait for ME3. I'm holding off on another ME2 run until all the DLC is released, but I'm thinking of starting up a new ME1 Renegade character before long. :D

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1000 sounds like a lot of variables, but how much do they actually affect the game and how many different outcomes there are is more imprtant. Still, sounds awsome regardless

While the choices/variables from ME1 to ME2 where little, thus you didn't get much of a change, most of the ones from way back in ME1 won't show till ME3! This was said back when they talked about ME2 etc. Maybe most of those will be minor, but I think that a good number of them could have big changes in your playthrough for ME3. You see it done in movies of this sort, sorta, small choices that you don't put much value on turn out to make big changes later on down the line.

I think it's cool, cuz then many people might want to play all 3 games over, trying to see how things change once you get to the end of ME3. It's another way to add massive replay value you could say. Maybe the general overarching plot won't change much, but the devil is in the details they say. I think it's pretty damn cool.

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There are two decision I made in both ME1 & ME2 that I'd like to see play out big in ME3

Saving the rachni queen on Novaria and helping Legion convert the heratics in his side mission. I'm praying this gives us access to their fleets for the final battles. I feel more sure about the rachni after meeting the Asari on Illium who gave Shepard the message that "When the time comes our voices will join with yours and we will burn the darkness clean". Imagine getting fire support from Rachni troops. 'Holy Shiznit' moment.

I've got one more ME1 profile to play through ME2 with. Wonder what achievement we unlock by having a character through all three games. :cool:

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