Mass Effect 3 - Interview @ CVG Part 2

BioWare tend to build spaces that often feel like they exist only to have a fight in, not to live and work in. How important is it to fix that?
NL: Absolutely important. All the departments are involved now - we'll have writers and combat designers in and we'll really talk about the history of the places.
DL: We're really pushing the variety within the levels, so you're not walking into the same room just decorated differently. We're really trying to push each room as a functional space. A hallway has a function for people working there, and we're just trying to really make sense of it in the game.

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you don't want to walk through a room and go, "okay nothing's going to happen here. There's no cover for me here," and then you walk around the next corner and you just see a sea of these chest-high things - you basically see the fight ahead

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I'm doing something right now where I've built the environment as an undamaged structure, and then I start smashing bits up. We try to design the architecture first before we blow it up, rather than just having a box and cramming destroyed bits in it. We're really thinking about how someone from the future designed this building, and whether it functions well. Then we blow it up!

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The new Assault Rifle has different layers that change depending on what type of environment you're in, for example. There are lots of interactions between sounds - you can hear the different decay as shots echo off walls.

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