BioWare is in the final weeks of production of the epic conclusion to the Mass Effect trilogy. This time, fans will be able to enjoy Mass Effect 3 in more ways than one with the inclusion of Galaxy at War, ME3’s exciting 4-player co-op mode. If you’ve missed MP1st’s break down of the latest multiplayer gameplay trailer, make sure to check it out right here.
Recently, BioWare’s Executive Producer, Michael Gamble, sat down with OXM to walk fans through the last few weeks of production and detailed what went into designing Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer co-op.
“For developing the multiplayer we’ve kept it within BioWare because we’re very precious with the Mass Effect brand,” stated Gamble. However, with a large number of experienced multiplayer developers under the umbrella of EA, BioWare was able receive a helping hand every now and then. “There’s a lot of core multiplayer people who’ve been able to provide us with context for how to solve certain problems, around technical systems and things like that. There’s a lot of great groups who’ve enabled us to take our vision and turn it into something executable.” To what extent other developers have had a hand in assisting is still unknown. But we do know that Digital Illusions CE, developers of Battlefield 3, were able to give some tips to the team behing ME3’s audio/sound design – something DICE is known for excelling in.
Gamble went on to detail the studios that worked on ME3’s mutliplayer co-op. “…actual development has been done between the Edmonton and Montreal studios in BioWare. And we’ve been working on the single player as well.” He added, “It’s not like we did the single player portion, and then we used another studio to do the multiplayer portion. We’ve all been doing it at the exact same time.” The great thing about doing things in this fashion is that it should prove the single-player and multiplayer to seamlessly meld together, giving them both the same feeling in terms of combat and third-person mechanics. “That’s the only way we could have done it, to make them work together.” It has also been stated many times by BioWare that the multiplayer can have a direct effect on the single-player if the player so chooses.
Mass Effect fans can look forward to the upcoming demo, including a taste of the multiplayer co-op, on February 14th, and the release of Mass Effect 3 on March 6th.
Make sure to read up on why BioWare decided to include multiplayer in Mass Effect 3.