carocat
20-01-2007, 09:37 AM
Click me to read the interview (http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/756/756883p1.html)
Some extracts for all the ones too lazy to cklick the link:
You will do whatever it takes to solve your mission, to get through that door, to accomplish your objective. And you will go to extremes to do that. That's really the essence of the experience of being Commander Shepard. But then everything else is up to you. You can create a female Commander Shepard, you can decide everything about the way you look, and you can even decide how you got to be that kind of a character by choosing different kinds of your back story.
we have a new interface for interacting with characters in the world. So it's based on a circular wheel that represents different directions for emotional responses. The neat thing about this is that when you interact with another character, you're able to do things that you can't normally do if it is just conversation or just picking dialogue options. So here, you can see the whole spectrum from something that is a simple verbal response to taking a fairly extreme action or making an important decision. But you can do these things almost instantaneously because you start to learn how to react through the system. It's really amazing how fast you learn it and then how much value it has in being able to instantly react to somebody. Your action might be as extreme as hitting them with the butt of your rifle and then when they're on the ground you tell them how things are going to go. It can be very extreme.
Those interactions that have a much more visceral and tangible flavor to them, that's where you start to have an experience that immerses you inside the story in a way that we were never able to do before.
There are a lot of conventions that we're trying to avoid. Like you're running through an open area but up ahead you can see a character that looks like their purpose in life is that they will stop you and talk to you when you get close. After you play a few games like that it starts to drive you nuts because you see that character and you think, oh I'm not ready to have a conversation with that character yet.
No, it's an extremely nonlinear game. The idea is that we start off with a prologue that is the major eye opening hook for what is happening in the universe of Mass Effect. Once you've played through the prologue, you show up on the starship in command of it and you've really got the run of the whole galaxy. At that point it is about trying to uncover new locations to go to and new leads on what is going on.
It's not a fully destructible environment, but a lot of the objects and things that you'll be able to interact with are destructible. One of the cool things about the way that combat works in general is that you're not just four soldiers that are moving through combat. You actually have some unique characters that have extremely different abilities. The tech abilities are completely different from weapons and what you get with our dark energy powers that we call Biotics.
Like being able to create a small singularity that pulls everything towards it. If you develop one of those around an enemy, then they become immobilized, but things in the environment start flying towards them causing damage and then that sets them up for things like grenade attacks.
So you'll find a weapon and it's pretty cool on your own, but then you can start using some of the mods that you've found or bought so that you can start to customize that weapon so that it becomes something special. It's really unique to you and your play experience. For example, you can put in high explosive ammo that destroys the enemy in a flash and turns them into ash that just floats away. Or you can vaporize an enemy. Or you can freeze them so that if they take further damage, then they'll shatter and you have little pieces bouncing all over the place through physics.
It's not going to be multiplayer. But we are going to have this larger galaxy that is constantly expanding through downloadable content. It's definitely a game that has all the other Live aware features. We have an awesome achievement system that incorporates some really cool stuff you can do on replays and things like that.
I really, really want this game.
Some extracts for all the ones too lazy to cklick the link:
You will do whatever it takes to solve your mission, to get through that door, to accomplish your objective. And you will go to extremes to do that. That's really the essence of the experience of being Commander Shepard. But then everything else is up to you. You can create a female Commander Shepard, you can decide everything about the way you look, and you can even decide how you got to be that kind of a character by choosing different kinds of your back story.
we have a new interface for interacting with characters in the world. So it's based on a circular wheel that represents different directions for emotional responses. The neat thing about this is that when you interact with another character, you're able to do things that you can't normally do if it is just conversation or just picking dialogue options. So here, you can see the whole spectrum from something that is a simple verbal response to taking a fairly extreme action or making an important decision. But you can do these things almost instantaneously because you start to learn how to react through the system. It's really amazing how fast you learn it and then how much value it has in being able to instantly react to somebody. Your action might be as extreme as hitting them with the butt of your rifle and then when they're on the ground you tell them how things are going to go. It can be very extreme.
Those interactions that have a much more visceral and tangible flavor to them, that's where you start to have an experience that immerses you inside the story in a way that we were never able to do before.
There are a lot of conventions that we're trying to avoid. Like you're running through an open area but up ahead you can see a character that looks like their purpose in life is that they will stop you and talk to you when you get close. After you play a few games like that it starts to drive you nuts because you see that character and you think, oh I'm not ready to have a conversation with that character yet.
No, it's an extremely nonlinear game. The idea is that we start off with a prologue that is the major eye opening hook for what is happening in the universe of Mass Effect. Once you've played through the prologue, you show up on the starship in command of it and you've really got the run of the whole galaxy. At that point it is about trying to uncover new locations to go to and new leads on what is going on.
It's not a fully destructible environment, but a lot of the objects and things that you'll be able to interact with are destructible. One of the cool things about the way that combat works in general is that you're not just four soldiers that are moving through combat. You actually have some unique characters that have extremely different abilities. The tech abilities are completely different from weapons and what you get with our dark energy powers that we call Biotics.
Like being able to create a small singularity that pulls everything towards it. If you develop one of those around an enemy, then they become immobilized, but things in the environment start flying towards them causing damage and then that sets them up for things like grenade attacks.
So you'll find a weapon and it's pretty cool on your own, but then you can start using some of the mods that you've found or bought so that you can start to customize that weapon so that it becomes something special. It's really unique to you and your play experience. For example, you can put in high explosive ammo that destroys the enemy in a flash and turns them into ash that just floats away. Or you can vaporize an enemy. Or you can freeze them so that if they take further damage, then they'll shatter and you have little pieces bouncing all over the place through physics.
It's not going to be multiplayer. But we are going to have this larger galaxy that is constantly expanding through downloadable content. It's definitely a game that has all the other Live aware features. We have an awesome achievement system that incorporates some really cool stuff you can do on replays and things like that.
I really, really want this game.