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AusGamers: Ladies and gents, once again, welcome to AusGamers. You’re here with Stephen Farrelly; I’m out at GamesCom. And I’m here with Mr Mike Gamble, who is Associate Producer on Mass Effect 3 -- a game that I’m sure that you’re all very, very much looking forward to; I know I am.

Mike, I want to talk today, I guess, about the carry over. One of the big things you guys had with Mass Effect 1 to 2 was that if you created a character in Mass Effect 1 and some of these big decisions that you made, like whether Wrex lived of died, yada, yada -- sorry spoilers -- could carry over into the second game.

Now obviously that’s hopefully going to be the case with the third, but there’s also been a lot of DLC post release for Mass Effect 2 -- really good DLC with really strong characters; really good narrative. I guess I want to know how that plays into the next game as well.

Mike Gamble: So the characters that you met in DLC and the changes that might have occurred throughout the DLC, those obviously do move into the main ME3 narrative. Certain decisions; certain things did happen in the Mass Effect world. But at the same time, if you did play the DLCs, the choices that you made -- the specific choices in the DLCs that you made -- are basically brought in.

So there is an effect. And you know, Arrival, Shadow Broker, Overlord; all of those things. We’re actually currently writing a couple of levels where we’re looking at some of those and saying there’s some great opportunities to bring some of this stuff in. So actually yeah, we will.



AusGamers: Now another thing that I want to know is: obviously we’re fighting Cerberus in some of the stuff that we’ve been looking at and I got hands-on and I was shooting Cerberus guys, it was really fun. But at the end of the second game you kind of had a chance to side with The Illusive Man or give him the finger. I gave him the finger, because I always play as good as I possibly can.

I want to know, what kind of effect the decision either way that you made at the end of the second game will drive the narrative from the outset with the third game.

Mike: So without giving away too many spoilers and I don’t want to do that: the decision that you made at the end of Mass Effect 2 will change how the Cerberus confrontation happens. Regardless, Cerberus is still basically aligned against Shepard.

AusGamers: Ok, so that’s interesting. Alright, so let’s talk about the big changes; massive changes. You’ve got more of an RPG component in the weapon construction and modification system this time around. And it’s great because every version of Mass Effect has had something different; something new.

Can you talk about... what’s the extent of modifications in terms of the weapons? How far did you guys take it? Did you have to rein it in?

Mike: Well, the weapon modifications is basically building and customising the weapons as you want to play them. So you’ll be able to basically tweak the stats on them, tweak the look, tweak the feel of them. It’s a very, very dynamic system. You’ll be able to make a weapon your own, much like you make Shepard your own.



AusGamers: Now, what about relationships? Because Miranda and I are pretty close. You know, she comes up into the deck every once in a while and hangs out with me in my room. So what’s going to happen there with the carry-over?

Obviously with the first and second game again, you could have had a relationship then that broke and you had a chance to pursue another relationship. I haven’t seen Miranda in any of the trailers or videos that have been shown and I don’t know if she’s actually there anymore. Is my girlfriend alive?

Mike: All the characters that you basically romanced or met in the previous games that are significant will come back. In some way, shape or form, they’ll be back and you’ll be able to conclude the relationship with them. You know, what happens to Miranda, what happens to so and so, I’m not going to get into exactly, but... she’ll be back.

AusGamers: Will there be a chance to pursue other relationships with new characters?

Mike:Yes, absolutely.

AusGamers: Now, another component was that you guys had a lot of sort of... you had the iPhone game that came with Mass Effect 2 to kind of flesh out the story. Will we be seeing any more of that sort of stuff -- the peripheral expansion to lore?

Mike: Well you know, the IP and the Mass Effect galaxy overall is actually pretty substantial; there’s a lot of things to be told within that IP and because of that we obviously look at opportunities. Really nothing to talk about specifically, but at the same time, we’re totally open to the idea.



AusGamers: Now obviously the Xbox 360 verison has Kinect support for voice control. Are there any other differences with the PC at all, I guess in terms of DirectX 11 support or anything like that?

Mike: We’re currently kind of looking at stuff like that and deciding “what’s the best way to present the game on each platform?”. For PC, obviously increased resolution on your monitor and things like that and we know that PC is actually a really, really important market, so we do focus on it. It’s actually a pretty big focus for us.

AusGamers: Now there was a lot of talk a while ago about whether or not you guys would reveal what Tali looks like underneath that mask. Have you made that decision?

Mike: Yeah, we’ve made that decision.

AusGamers: Will we see?

Mike: I can’t tell you [laughs]. That’s one of those things that you really have to play the game for.

AusGamers: Ok, well I’m really annoyed that the game got delayed, but I’m obviously really happy because it’s going to be a better game when it comes out. But thanks so much for your time today, the game looks fantastic.

Mike: Thank you. Thank you very much.

AusGamers: Thanks mate, cheers.