A Mass Effect MMOG "makes sense" claims BioWare's Casey Hudson.
While famed developer BioWare continues to bang out the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMOG for a possible Q3/Q4 2011 release, the company is also looking at one of its current IPs as a possible candidate for another MMOG: Mass Effect. According to series lead Casey Hudson, the concept seems only natural for the Mass Effect universe.
"We've been trying to think of a way that makes sense for people to experience Mass Effect with their friends," Husdon said in a recent interview with Game Informer. "We haven't yet come up with a way to do that, so we don't have anything to announce at this time. But, obviously, multiplayer is something we want to do more of in the future as a company."
He added that many fans actually want a Mass Effect MMOG. "Part of what you're trying to do is save the universe so you can live in it," he said. "That's part of the promise for any great IP. It has to be a world worth saving. Mass Effect has that quality to it. If you get rid of the Reapers and win that, wouldn't it be amazing to just live on the Citadel or just take a ship to Omega? That makes sense."
Right now the Mass Effect team is focused on the game at hand, Mass Effect 3, pushing to make the game bigger than the second installment by using larger skill trees, weapon mods, and more than two endings. It won't feature any multiplayer capabilities, but concepts conceived along the way may be set aside for a possible MMOG spin-off.
Still, if BioWare has a Mass Effect MMOG on the boards, gamers will likely not see it until the next generation of consoles are heading to retail shelves. If we're lucky, the MMOG will arrive on the PC first with consoles to follow later (grin).
Let the console players rot in the elevators.
Let the player walk in and then walk out on PC (elevator doesn't even move).
Like most gamers, i want innovation and tech to go hand in hand. Mass Effect does some great innovative stuff for the genre and its the tech in my honest opinion that some times hinders the full effect that the artist are trying to convey. Remember the texture pop in in mass effect 1? Elevators? there could be so much more available to PC gamers who really care about this franchise such as better visuals, advance A.I. interaction, quest structure, and much more that someone like me can only hope to dream of but that Bioware could make possible. That is why the hardcore want this PC first, console second.
The grumbling comes mostly from the belief (which is probably justified) that devs now make games for consoles then do crappy ports to PC. There's quite a few examples of this such as Bulletstorm's lack of configuration options without first decrypting the config files. There's also the complaint that console game to PC ports (or multiplatform releases) result in lower quality graphics in the PC version because of the lesser capability of consoles compared to PCs. I also notice an over simplification of game controls lately due to devs targeting controllers instead of mouse+keyboard.
Considering Mass Effect 2 was a step back compared to Mass Effect 1, they better do all of that and then some - just to return to the level of detail of the first game...
On the subject of console ports, they may both be ports, but the first was at least a decent port. Those huge fonts in the second game just feel weird when you sit next to your screen. Not to mention the completely dumbed down skill trees...
Why would you care if it's on consoles too? You do realise the first ME was bought and funded by Microsoft specifically to promote the 360? Get a grip mate.