We got word—nay, actual confirmation from BioWare—a few days ago that multiplayer would be a huge facet of the Mass Effect 3 experience. Thanks to Bioware's release of a new video, we now have a full preview to clarify what the game's multiplayer aspect will consist of.
Mass Effect 3's multiplayer mode is cooperative, with support for up to four players.
Bioware's Casey Hudson explains how the whole thing works. "If you haven't played a game in the Mass Effect series, Mass Effect 3 is really a great place to start. Whereas Mass Effect 1 and 2 were about Commander Shepard and his small crew, this is really the beginning, middle, and end of the whole galactic war," he says. "Because it's fundamentally different in that way, we realized multiplayer could be a complement to Commander Shepard's very rich, engaging storyline experience."
"You'll be able to join your friends for four player co-op missions, where you'll be fighting for control of locations throughout the galaxy. But what's really amazing about multiplayer in Mass Effect 3 is that for the first time you'll be able to take control of characters you've never been able to play before. You can be an Asari, a Drell, you have access to all the different classes and many different races that you've seen in the Mass Effect series but haven't been able to play before.
"Because it's been an integrated design effort, we've created something that is a cohesive experience between the multiplayer and single player aspects of Mass Effect 3. These places that Commander Shepard is trying to secure across the galaxy as part of your war assets on the single player side, you're fighting to control those on the mutiplayer side. And the better you do—the more you control—the better your single player ending will be.
"Ultimately, it's about adding more player choice. If you want to do a really complete single player playthrough then you can absolutely get to the highest levels of success in the endgame. But you also now have an alternative. You can take more of that experience into multiplayer—it's actually part of your canon storyline as Commander Shepard."
Hudson also addressed concerns about how the development of multiplayer would impact on the single player campaign. "One of the biggest concerns we've heard that by taking on multiplayer maybe we're taking on what could be applied to the single player story, but by adding multiplayer we actually have the opportunity to use an additional team that we've been growing over the years, specifically around the expertise in doing multiplayer programming, design and art.
"So you get a single player experience that's polished, that's got all the amazing moments—but at the same time, we've been able to add through the addition of Bioware Montreal this new capability to do multiplayer for the first time.
"We've worked really hard to make a fun experience. We're now at the point where developers that have been working on it all week, all day on friday, will stay until the wee hours of the morning playing multiplayer. That to us is the biggest testament to the fact that it's just a tremendous amount of fun—it continues to be fun day after day, and we're just so excited for players to be able to get their hands on it."
