Mass Effect 3: Special Edition will be one of the games that launches with the Wii U, thanks to Australian development house Tantalus porting it. Speaking with Gamasutra, the company said it wasn't easy porting the title.
"In terms of design challenges, the biggest challenge, to be honest, was not screwing it up," he said. "It's a great game on its original formats and we needed to ensure we didn't break anything."
They also said their job was just to port it and duplicate the experience on the Wii U, instead of add a bunch of exclusive content unique to the Wii U. They instead just wanted to make sure the game would work well with the Gamepad. Players did get extra conveniences, like players who had the Xbox Kinect did.
"We handled the thing gently, and I feel like the stuff we've implemented gels extremely well. We made the power wheel interactive along with the level maps, and you can give orders to squad mates via the map on the GamePad." Tantalus said.
It is curious as to why they wouldn't take full advantage of the Wii U, but perhaps it was the potential for major bugs, or budgeting that encouraged the change.
"With Mass Effect 3 on Wii U, we're heavily leveraging the work done by BioWare. We're very proud of the Wii U-specific features that will ship with the game, but a large part of our assignment is to replicate the ME3 experience on Nintendo's new console."
The port will release November 18th with the Wii U in North American and will contain the Day 0 From Ashes DLC as well as the Extended Cut ending.
