Mass Effect Sequel Will Have Better Side Quests
One of the few flaws of Mass Effect, aside from the 'loading textures' thing, was the side quests. Some of them were quite fun, others, not so much. But they almost always didn't have large amounts of voice work and almost always featured one of the same 3-4 locations or buildings. Compared to the main storyline, especially, they fell kind of flat.
This is kind of to be expected for the first game in a series, however. Since the main story was so lovingly crafted and in such unique and beautiful locations, (I love the ruins planet at the end, Ilos), that it easily makes up for it, I'd say. The developers are aware they can do better, however. Stephan Totilo over at MTV Multiplayer interviewed Greg Zeschuk (Bioware general manager) and they talked about this very issue.
One of the things we're looking at for sequels and some of our other games is better technical ways, smarter ways to auto-generate content, to create stuff that seems richer to the player.
My only concern is that auto-generating content is still going to lead to repetition. Some of this can be improved by simply adding more resources into the mix, (haven't I walked through this same damn tunnel before?), but even then, there are only so many possible combinations and the human brain is very good at picking out patterns.
We look into BioWare's history and we're really aiming for what happened with "Baldur's Gate II" compared to what happened with "Baldur's Gate" one. "Baldur's Gate" one -- extremely solid game, huge impact on the industry. But with "Baldur's Gate II" we just took it to a whole new level. And I think that's what we're excited about with "Mass."
I'd love to see the series continued, personally. Given how great it was, even with it's flaws, the sequel has the potential to be amazing. Here's to hoping Mass Effect 2 will have more side quests where I deal with actual colonists, and not corpses in identical underground bases.
BioWare: How We Can Improve The Side Quests For 'Mass Effect 2′ [MTV Multiplayer]
[via: Joystiq]
Sgt. Sausagepants
Posted to Video Games on 12 March 2008
Other stuff like this: Bioware, EA, Mass Effect
