Mass Effect - Impressions @ TeamXbox Forums

The TeamXbox forum has some informal impressions from someone who was apparently invited to BioWare's Mass Effect launch party in Edmonton. This bit caught my eye:

They also changed the way the game saves are handled. There is an autosave setting as well as being able to do manual saves. But most importantly, you can go back and forth between characters of your creation and game save points. To illustrate, let’s say you have a light side Jill Shepard and a dark side Jack Shepard. You play a point in the game as the light side character. You want to see how the same point would play out as a dark side character, all you do is change characters and replay the point. This is HUGE over only having the option to just replay the whole game again as “the other side.”

More information.

Actually I find this rather worrying. Why? Because if any character can play any point in the game, regardless of what level that character is or if they've even played to the point you're actually placing them, then that means that there's little to no impact of your past actions on how dialog plays out. There can't be when your character may have never even done the prerequisite steps that lead to that conversation.

It points to making the game a more shallow experience that is defined only by your dialog choices of the moment that will more than likely be KotOR-style stupidly good or annoyingly evil. No Witcher-style morally ambiguous choices that have far-reaching consequences here.

Sadly, Bioware defiantly seems to be making games for the smallest minority of gamers, kids and I recall feeling this sadness when other great PC developers started shifting their focus for m$'s millions.

Turns out Team Xbox are wrong. You can't interchange characters on the fly. It was some kind of massive misunderstanding.

http://masseffect.bioware.com/forums…6667&forum=104

Glad to hear that - not that I'll be playing Mass Effect soon (no X360) but this idea (if it existed) would really strip RPGs down to simple adventure games.

Originally Posted by Acleacius
Sadly, Bioware defiantly seems to be making games for the smallest minority of gamers, kids and I recall feeling this sadness when other great PC developers started shifting their focus for m$'s millions.

What a dumb remark. First off, what would be defiant about it? It's their prerogative. Furthermore, it's stupid and false. Bioware isn't even leaving the PC market. They make an Xbox 360 make and they get huge slack for it? Why? I grow tired of your tedious assumption that their priorities lie where the most money can be found regardless of whether that impacts quality.

Sooo glad to hear this information is wrong. *phew* I just finished moving my Xbox 360 to my computer desk so I can play Mass Effect on my monitor when it comes out. It just makes it seem… more comfortable. I can almost pretend it's a PC game. That is, until I remember that I can't mod it or import custom stuff, which are some of my favorite things to do in RPGs. Bah. Oh well, luckily BioWare is also making Dragon Age specifically for the PC… I just hope EA doesn't interfere with that.