ComicsOnline Exclusive: XBox Australia Mass Effect 3 Preview Event

March 2, 2012

HUGE thank you to the amazing (and incredibly lucky) Kerrie for providing this for us! — Karissa & ComicsOnline

by Kerrie Hui, Guest Reporter

I will admit it: I was late into the Mass Effect craze, and by late I mean so late that by the time I had won tickets for the Mass Effect 3 Sydney Preview and Media Event, I was only just removing the shrink wrap for ME1. It does however provide me a fantastic opportunity to tell you that by playing both 1 and 2 and jumping straight into 3, the differences between the three are fairly noticeable – they just keep getting better and better.

It so happens that I was bored one day on the Xbox when I stumbled upon the Mass Effect 3 demo. After some discussion with fellow gamers who suggested that I shouldn’t even dare touch it before I played the other two first, I happened to coincidentally cross paths with my local game store and bought both on sale. After being entranced by the storyline in about 20 minutes of play, I immediately hopped online whilst waiting for the story to unfold (you remember those endless times where you would have to listen to the characters speak?), I came across a competition on Xbox Australia’s Facebook page for a chance to win 1 of 8 tickets to the Sydney Media Event and 1 of 25 tickets to visit the Microsoft Headquarters to try out a more comprehensive demo. I never thought in a million years that I would win, so I entered thinking “What the hell? I can’t possibly win this!” Oh, how wrong was I…
I received an email the day before the Media Event was to be held (22nd February), telling me that I had won tickets to not one, but to both events. It took me about 7 reads before it sunk in before I went all crazy around the house.

Mass Effect 3 Media Event – February 22nd, 2012
The “secret” Sydney location was held at a Sydney bar/club. The event started with everyone heading to the bar (go figure) where free beer was provided. A live orchestra band from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music started off the night by playing some of the select music from the Mass Effect 3 soundtrack. Robyn Théberge, an Associate Project Manager of Bioware, presented the newest trailer, as well as discussing some of the new features of the game.

As properly described, the final installment of this epic trilogy is all about the war. You see and experience the stages cascade towards the pinnacle of the fight against the Reapers and to save humanity and all other sentient living life forms in the galaxy. As Shepard, you will work to unite and command these galaxies. The consequences of choices you have made so far in the past two games will be revealed.

Mass Effect 3 introduces the “Galaxy at War” system, which includes features such as a 4 player co-op multiplayer, a “Galactic Readiness” measure, and Infiltrator and Datapad. Infiltrator is a standalone third person shooter iOS game app for both iPhone and iPad, with Datapad as an iPad-only companion app. Your accomplishments in Infiltrator affect your Galactic Readiness measure in the GaW system, as well as unlocking weapons for ME3. These new features are aimed at enhancing the whole ME3 experience. For the game itself, it has been refined to its peak.

After the introduction, we were given the opportunity to play the first hour of the game – the Earth and Mars missions. Mind you there were probably over 100 people in the small area and only 10 or so Xbox’s, so naturally I went to go get pictures with the Garrus and femShep cosplayers (forgive me if I look drunk). I did get to watch other people play and I can noticeably see the improvements to gameplay and graphics, with gameplay being “most fluid and at its peak.” Throughout the night there were raffle draws with the prize being the unreleased Mass Effect 3 Collector’s Edition Razer Onza Tournament Edition Xbox 360 controller (SRP $59.99). One of the members of the group I was hanging out with was lucky to win one.

Hot damn.

A green screen was also set up for personalized Shepard photos to be made for free!

Think we can convince them to do this at E3 or Comic-Con?

Microsoft and Xbox Headquarters – February 23rd, 2012

The second event was held at the Microsoft headquarters in Sydney. We were escorted in with the tight security surrounding the building. When we were led into the room with a floor to ceiling screen, I immediately knew this night would just be as good as the night before.

Can I work here every day?

As this was a more intimate setting, we had the opportunity to meet some of the EA and Xbox staff. Robyn started off the night, with Jessie (@EA_Jiggsy) demonstrating the Kinect voice commands on the large screen. If you are like me, who fumbles over the controls of the game, the voice commands complement it really well. Even if you’re a pro and the controller is an extension of your own hands, the voice commands really do make the game better. Unlike Siri, many English dialects were tested and incorporated to ensure maximum usability (something like 40 English dialects such as Australian and New Zealanders from all around the world were tested). One of the other participants demonstrated the use of slang ‘Boomstick’, which made Shepard switch to his shotgun. Robyn and the staff were amazed by this (they didn’t know), but Robyn did say that some of the staff (she worked with audio as well as the GUI interface) may have slipped in some slang for the voice commands.

The demo provided was the same as the night’s before, but the section they let us play with the Kinect was from the full game (one of the staff accidentally let it slip and had to quickly exit the game back to the homepage :P). The game is still in its final development stages before its release. All the Classes have been improved even further, with the development team having asked the fans about them, why some of them were not chosen as much, how they could be improved and actually implementing some of the suggestions.

What I can tell you is that the staff at Bioware were given a bit of a holiday in between developing ME2 and ME3. At its peak there were approximately 300 or so people working on the game, with the average of around 150 people. Pre-production took approximately one year, as well as production. They have not announced all their DLC plans yet (the staff were very tight-lipped about it), but I for one and am looking for ME3 to be released soon.

The night ended with us being given some goodies (including an exclusive EA Games version of the N7 Logo Tee and 12 months Xbox Live Gold Membership).