Spoiler alert: Some new story details.
Mass Effect 3 is easily one of the most-anticipated games of the year. And fans are eating up new details about the game as they wait for the March 6 debut. Ever one to milk the attention, Electronic Arts and BioWare are spilling out the details about the game to generate more enthusiasm.
We previewed the hands-on game play of Mass Effect 3 with the Kinect voice commands last week. But details are coming out from German game magazine Gamestar, GameTrailers.com and Spike TV’s GTTV with Geoff Keighley have all unveiled new details about how Commander Shepard is going to save the galaxy from the Reapers in the third edition of the Mass Effect series.
In an interview with Keighley, executive producer Casey Hudson at BioWare said the team has been on the series for eight years and has ramped up the production values for the sci-fi action adventure story. In the story, the Reapers extinguish all life in the galaxy every 50,000 years and it’s about to happen again. Shepard has to deal with a character named The Elusive Man and his Cerberus Network, which appeared to be either a helpful or neutral party in the last game. But in this game, Hudson says that the Elusive Man becomes scary and will tangle with Shepard.
Mac Walters, lead writer of Mass Effect 3, told Keighley that the end of the trilogy has the “biggest decisions with the biggest consequences.” The fate of the galaxy is on the line and “it has to mean something” to the player, Walters said. Mars will be an integral part of the game, where Shepard meets Liara again and has to explore a facility on Mars and run into the Elusive Man.
Caroline Livingstone, video producer for Mass Effect 3, says that actor Freddie Prinze Jr. plays the new character James Vega, who you meet at the beginning of the game. Livingstone says the performance of the actors are so powerful that she cried a couple of times during the voice-acting sessions.
Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer also got a demo during the Keighley show.You can play all kinds of characters as you fight for key locations. You start as a human and can unlock characters like a Drone, an Asari, or a Krogan.
Gamestar, meanwhile, reported that if you enter Reaper-controlled territory, the Reapers may try to hunt you down and you have to do something to avoid getting caught. Reaper-controlled territory will change as the story progresses, but major plot decision will trigger the territorial changes. You can pursue sidequests as much as you want without running out of time. All of the mission results will influence your reputation and your relationship to other characters. If some of your team members die, then the story can change completely or you may find a replacement character. As the war progresses, the effect will show on your ship, the Normandy. Lastly, the Citadel will be bigger than ever and it will tie up loose ends from earlier, including the mystery of the Keepers.
Here’s a GameTrailers.com video with all of the new details including an interview with Prinze Jr.
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