CVG Interview with Casey Hudson

Many thanks to CryticZer0 for the inside scoop...:-)  I really liked his answer regarding the "What feedback has really changed Mass Effect 3?" question.  Much discussion in these very forums have revolved around that question, and I must say, he's pretty much summed it up with his thoughtful answer.  They're going all out on this one, and I'm confident that a suitable finale has been achieved, but unfortunately, won't be delivered until March...:-)

To us, the RPG experience isn't necessarily about stats and loot. It's about exploration and combat and making a good character-driven story and good progression

 

It is that bit that brings both fear and hope into my heart.

 

The character driven story is the hope but the rest of it makes me feel as if they are basically going to make it a third person shooter with a token upgrade system for the guns that is little more than cosmetic.

For me, personally, I've always preferred third person games (mainly because I suck at the first person games!), so a third person shooter with RPG elements and a remarkable cast of characters and story sounds pretty good to me, ME2 is still my favourite game of all time, but I think that's about to change...:-)

[quote user="voteDC"]

To us, the RPG experience isn't necessarily about stats and loot. It's about exploration and combat and making a good character-driven story and good progression

 

It is that bit that brings both fear and hope into my heart.

 

The character driven story is the hope but the rest of it makes me feel as if they are basically going to make it a third person shooter with a token upgrade system for the guns that is little more than cosmetic.

 

[/quote]Yeah that line doesn't inspire me with confidence. To me it reads as:

"We looked at all the feedback from the community and decided we know what's best so we're going to ignore it."

Now maybe that's a good thing (horse, camel, committee), but then again BioWare "knowing best" gave us planet scanning, universal cool-downs, ammo as an ability etc... so know telling what we might end up getting.

Guess we'll just have to wait and see, but you know I'm a glass-half-empty kinda guy  

We should all be a glass-half-empty kind of person.

[quote user="Schuey19"]

[quote user="voteDC"]

To us, the RPG experience isn't necessarily about stats and loot. It's about exploration and combat and making a good character-driven story and good progression

 

It is that bit that brings both fear and hope into my heart.

 

The character driven story is the hope but the rest of it makes me feel as if they are basically going to make it a third person shooter with a token upgrade system for the guns that is little more than cosmetic.

 

[/quote]Yeah that line doesn't inspire me with confidence. To me it reads as:

"We looked at all the feedback from the community and decided we know what's best so we're going to ignore it."

Now maybe that's a good thing (horse, camel, committee), but then again BioWare "knowing best" gave us planet scanning, universal cool-downs, ammo as an ability etc... so know telling what we might end up getting.

Guess we'll just have to wait and see, but you know I'm a glass-half-empty kinda guy  

[/quote]

all that line means is that an RPG isn't all about stats and loot (which it isn't and is why I don't consider WoW an RPG as thats all wow is is stats and loot) which it isn't.  and Casey is right in that there are several aspects to rpgs and stats and loot (for henceforth to be reffered to as "shinnies") are just two of those aspects. we do know however that there is going to be more loot than in ME2 (they've already stated there will be more to buy/find than ME2 but no where near as much, which imo was too much as you only really used Spectre Master gear and colossus armor anyway, as ME1). also they have stats being reborn a bit from a powers perspective with the more detailed info on what the ability does (bars showing force, dmg etc). also there are going to be multiple power evolutions (ie what you did with the fourth rank of a power in ME2 where you chose between 2 different versions is an evolution) along the way to maxing it out.

no that doesn't mean they don't care about feed back (if anything they probably care more than just about any other company as the only other dev that responds to things more than they do is Blizzard but thats due to player base) because go look at their boards where they respond to a ton of stuff and I know I've heard/read where Casey said they read through just about everything when it comes to most threads.

Bioware respond to a lot of posts, sadly they don't really 'say' anything.

 

The problem is that Bioware burned the benefit of the doubt for me with the outright lies about DLC for Mass Effect 1 and then removing features of from the first game in Mass Effect 2 in the name of Streamlining.

[quote user="voteDC"]The problem is that Bioware burned the benefit of the doubt for me with the outright lies about DLC for Mass Effect 1 and then removing features of from the first game in Mass Effect 2 in the name of Streamlining.[/quote]Pretty much the point I was trying to make. Just because I love both ME games, doesn't mean I'm going to take everything they say at face value.

 

For everything that I feel they've done right with ME, I could easily list an equal number of things that I don't think were done correctly.

while nothing official was ever said on the matter I would highly suspect that the EA acquisition of Bioware was the reason that Bioware didn't do any DLC for ME1. I would dare say that event probably caused enough of a stir (both structurally and ip rights as MS is the producers of ME1 while EA is 2 and 3) to distract Bioware from completing said DLC. again my opinion but I wouldn't be suprised if Im not far off.

Right up until Pinnacle Station was released the 'official' line from Bioware, Casey Hudson included, was that there would be plenty of DLC for the game. Content that would also bridge 1 and 2. Bear in mind that Pinnacle Station was released after the EA buyout and wasn't even made by Bioware.

 

They gave no indication that anything was wrong. Pinnacle Station was then released and the 'official' line suddenly changed to "that's your lot."

 

Now they claimed that the structure of the first game wouldn't support more DLC, that could be true but why not just say that? Corporate spin most likely but it made me very mistrustful of anything Bioware says now. To me it is "I'll believe it when I see it."

 

As a side note it was quite a shame Pinnacle Station was as bad as it was. Demiurge did a great job with the PC port of the game, I guess coming up with a strong story based content was beyond them. Oddly though I wonder why Bioware have not released a Pinnacle Station style DLC for Mass Effect 2 when it is far more suited for that style of content.

 

I would like to put the blame on EA. You can see their taint creeping in with Dragon Age II where locations were slashed in the name of a 'stylistic' choice. However Bioware made the choice to sell to EA, so they do shoulder part of the blame as they knew what they were getting into.