EA Tweaking Mass Effect 3 to Appeal to Wider Market

[Smooth Operator]

OMG, is this a joke
"equivalent to shooter-meets-RPG" - thats what ME2 was(and very light on RPG), if you went further I'm guessing it's just shooter with story(I imagine this time light on story).

I didn't expect it to go beyond ME2, now it's just ridiculous, really do wonder how far then can push it: QTEs, button mashing, motion controls, Wii port maybe,... ?

 

[Sieggy]

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Seriously through, it's kinda stupid to tweak the game for a wider audience if you won't get what the fans wanted. The game will only go as far as word of mouth can get it too, making it another Dragon Age 2 disaster area wouldn't help there.

 

[PopcornAvenger]

This has catastrophe written all over it.

Train wreck!

 

[Andronicus]

Captcha; Proc. toRome

THAT'S 3 WORDS ¬_¬ Still.. time to process myself to rome?

Well, you know what they say: all processes lead to Rome.

OT: I haven't even finished the first game yet, so a bit more of a delay doesn't mean a lot to me. Hopefully I can at least get the first game done and dusted following the conclusion of uni for this term. I always hear the sequel's combat is supposed to be a lot better, so I'm looking forward to seeing just how drastic an improvement over the first it's going to be; combat in the first game is literally a painful experience.

 

[ThisIsSnake]

Wider audience appeal does make me shudder, but surely Bioware can't possibly screw this up. I'm cautiously optimistic at this point.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

Yeah, less a plot arc, more a plot oscillation. For all their talk, I can't help but think Bioware have been basically making it up as they go along.

I'm pretty sure at this point that original vision for the ME trilogy was scrapped sometime after the first game came out. I mean, the ending of the first game seemed like it was clearly going somewhere. It was the culmination of an entire game of political positioning. Then the sequel just said "You know what? Noboy cares anymore. Even if you were single-handedly responsible to putting in power the new all-human council, they'll still tell you to go off and die when you warn them about the Reapers."

 

[Saltyk]

I thought Mass Effect 2 was already pretty popular. Must have been my mistake.

It's not as popular as Call of Duty, though, which seems to be what Bioware is dedicated to making now. I don't know why they're even bothering with the 'RPG' pretense anymore.

This Bioware simply isn't the Bioware that made KOTOR anymore. It's time to accept that that Bioware is dead and gone, and that it's been replaced with an even lower-rent Treyarch. The remenants that were still trying to emulate that Bioware when DA and Mass Effect were made have moved on. It's time to permanately lower expectations of their general output to "eh, maybe if I see it in a bargin bin". Goodbye, Bioware. I'll miss you.

Well, I wouldn't go THAT far. I understand wanting to get more people to play, and by extension buy, your game. It's just that I'm worried what will happen if they tweak too much of the game at this point. Considering the stage in the development, this would be like filming a whole movie, then deciding it wasn't good enough and trying to completely revamp the whole thing. Most likely, they want to change "minor" things, but its still worrisome. It's especially odd when you say that you want one of the most successful and beloved games in a long time to reach a "bigger audience". I'm sorry EA I don't see my mom buying this game anytime soon.

I'm not ready to completely throw Bioware's credit out the window.

 

[Kingsnake661]

Yeah, less a plot arc, more a plot oscillation. For all their talk, I can't help but think Bioware have been basically making it up as they go along.

I'm pretty sure at this point that original vision for the ME trilogy was scrapped sometime after the first game came out. I mean, the ending of the first game seemed like it was clearly going somewhere. It was the culmination of an entire game of political positioning. Then the sequel just said "You know what? Noboy cares anymore. Even if you were single-handedly responsible to putting in power the new all-human council, they'll still tell you to go off and die when you warn them about the Reapers."

Maybe it's my decades of comicbook reading... but I've had no problem follow ME's plot nor it's plot "twists". This is common fair for a comicbook junkie. Th hero saving the day and noone respecing him for it? Check. Teaming up with known enemys for the greater good. Check. Having said enemy stab you in the back, at the worst possible time. Check.

I rather enjoy it all. *shrug*

 

[Proverbial Jon]

EA CEO John Riccitiello said that BioWare was taking apart various elements of the Mass Effect experience and adjusting them to give the game a more broad market appeal.

Urgh, I hate it when this is announced of any game. Mass Effect 1 needed some minor tweaking that's all, Mass Effect 2 was much improved but had a little too much taken from it... there will be no trace of RPG in Mass Effect 3 is this trend continues.

Are they seriously saying that not enough people bought Mass Effect 2? I'm pretty certain there are plenty of people who are pumped for Mass Effect 3 as it is... this sort of action will not help sales.

Besides... how do you tell the people who "might not have played it before" that this particular installment will suit them? Surely the only people who will hear this "dumbing down" news are people who frequent these sorts of websites, people like us, who are gamers... and already know if we will like the game or not. All the others will find out of they like the game (or if it is "accessible" enough for them) through playing it, by then they have already bought it and Bioware already have their money... I just don't see what they're trying to do with this.

 

[TehKnifeh]

Personally, I think Mass Effect 2 worked a lot better than Mass Effect. But it wasn't exactly a complex game, so this is a little bizarre.

Anytime EA or Activision get their grubby little jew hands on it,

You should probably come and join the rest of us in the 21st Century. Its nice.

We have waffles!

OT. What I can't understand is that part of the sales pitch which states its being done to broaden to a wider market...... in the last installment of a well established franchise(of this story line anyway, I am sure some kind of spin off will happen in a few years)...... which to me seems alittle pointless. Make improvements to make the existing fanbase happy, not alienated them as your trying to appeal to more players who have only ever heard of the game but not played it.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

- Different Dev team
- One game can't be considered "A pattern"
- This isn't part of the Marketing campaign
- This isn't something the developers have said, it's from the publishers.
- This is said to people who aren't even likely to play the game; They're investors.

And really, you're suggesting that they're NOT re-introducing larger skill tree's and weapon mods and expanding the RPG elements, that was just a lie. Your evidence? The publisher said "We're appealing to a broader audience" at an investors conference, a place where investors tend to want to hear "We're going to sell this to lots of people".

Seriously this DA2 butt hurt is getting mighty old.

- Because, clearly, managment and the publisher had nothing to do with DAII's direction...
- ME3 makes it at least a three-game pattern, and multiple lies during DAII's marketing campaign make for a pattern.
- It's a public statement. This wasn't culled from stolen e-mails.
- Again, because the publisher has no influence over the game at all...
- So? What he said is what you say when you're dumbing something down but don't want to say "we're dumbing it down."

You know what's really getting old? Fanboys being butthurt because people didn't like DAII. No amount of trolling is going to change the fact that the game was dumbed down, and that a huge numbr of people found it dissapointing.

 

[Nimcha]

I wonder why whatever this guy says seems to have more weight than what the actual developer says about the game. I'm inclined to believe the guy who's actually working on the game in stead of the guy who's just trying to appease stockholders.

In other words, stop throwing around the retarded phrase 'dumbed down'.

 

[jhlip]

Its not the end of the world people. Its not like we are going to have DA2 Effect 3 instead of Mass Effect 3. So everybody just relax.

 

[Ayjona]

There is no such thing as an instance of "broadening appeal" that doesn't mean dumbing down.

I'm trying to come up with a counter-argument to this statement, mostly out of naive hope for mankind, but find that I cannot ;-)

 

[Ridrith]

Oh, stop bitching. You're all going to buy the game anyways. Even if you don't, nobody else will know and or care because it's a single player game. I myself will be enjoying the ending of the trilogy with or with out anybody on the internet.

Huehuehuehue. Seriously though, I didn't see anything wrong with Mass Effect 2 combat other than the fact that I didn't think you had enough abilities/skills at your disposal. At least as a soldier. I used fire-proc rounds through out the entire game and just blasted things with an assault rifle.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Can't see how that would go wrong.

 

[Ayjona]

That is such a paranoid viewpoint. EA already have the people who made Call of Duty under contract, as well as a pretender series - why would they need or want another one?

Because they already spent the time to make that pretender? ;-)

Seriously though, I didn't see anything wrong with Mass Effect 2 combat other than the fact that I didn't think you had enough abilities/skills at your disposal.

Then this broadening and widening of the appeal might be just what you will NOT like.