Mass Effect 3

In Mass Effect 3, an ancient alien race known only as Reapers, has launched an all-out invasion of the galaxy, leaving nothing but a trail of destruction in their wake. Earth has been taken, the galaxy is on the verge of total annihilation, and you are the only one who can stop them. The price of failure is extinction. You, as Commander Shepard, must lead the counter assault to take it back. Only you can determine how events will play out, which planets you will save from annihilation and which alliances you will form or abandon as you rally the forces of the galaxy to eliminate the Reaper threat once and for all. 
 

Mass Effect 3 is an upcoming action role-playing game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Officially announced on December 11, 2010, the game is scheduled for a March 6, 2012 release and will mark the third and final chapter in the Mass Effect trilogy of video games.

Gameplay in Mass Effect 3 will be influenced by decisions from Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 and will include locations throughout the galaxy, including Earth and Mars. Combat has been changed and refined; in particular, the cover system has been improved, there will be more options for moving around the battlefield, instant melee kills and conventional grenades will be introduced and reintroduced, and there will be increased artificial intelligence.

Mass Effect 3 will follow from the events of the Mass Effect 2 DLC expansion Arrival and follow Commander Shepard as he/she tries to save the galaxy from the Reapers by rallying civilizations of the galaxy together, while also having to deal with Cerberus, who have decided to turn against him/her.

Decisions from Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 will be imported into Mass Effect 3 to keep continuity within the series. Over 1,000 variables will be pulled to shape how players experience the final chapter. Unlike in Mass Effect 2, Commander Shepard will start the game with some powers. Upon finishing the game, there will be a New Game+ option that allows players to continue playing after the main story ends or start again with their finished Shepard and collect items they missed the first time around.If players achieved a love interest in both Mass Effectand Mass Effect 2, then there will be two love interests vying for their Shepard's attention in Mass Effect 3. This "love triangle" will be resolved by the end of the game.Gameplay

Locations in Mass Effect 3 will include the Salarian homeworld Sur'Kesh, the Asari homeworld Thessia, the Turian homeworld Palaven, the Quarian homeworld Rannoch, a human mining base on a Martian crater, and a giant city on Earth representing the combination of Seattle and Vancouver. Players will also return to Tuchanka - the Krogan homeworld - and Illium.

As of June 6, 2011, BioWare has confirmed the return of previous characters Illusive Man, Garrus Vakarian, Liara T'Soni, Kaidan Alenko or Ashley Williams, Legion, Tali'Zorah, Urdnot Wrex, Jack, Mordin Solus, Ambassador Udina, Captain Anderson, Zaeed Massani, Jacob Taylor and Miranda Lawson from Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. Some characters will not return if they were killed at any point during the previous games. The number of characters available as squad mates will be smaller than in Mass Effect 2 for the purposes of deeper relationships and more interesting interplay, including same-sex relationships for both male and female Shepards. BioWare has also confirmed a new character called James Vega. While some squad members are permanent and core to the storyline, some will be optional and others will be available for a single mission.

Combat

Combat in Mass Effect 3 has been radically changed and refined from Mass Effect 2, and further emphasis has been put on third-person shooter aspects to make the game more commercially viable. In a preview for IGN, editor Arthur Gies went so far as to say the game "plays like a shooter" and that "combat-wise, Mass Effect 3 is in an entirely different space" from the first two games.

The series' cover system has been improved so players no longer need to slide into cover and then hop over objects. Players will have more options for moving around the battlefield, including a refined sprint capability, combat rolling, and the use of climbable ladders. Players can also blindfire their weapons from covered positions, and have opportunities to shoot selected armor pieces and limbs off enemies. Moving and shooting, a previously "suicidal maneuver" in Mass Effect 2, will finally be a viable option because of a revised melee system. Players will be able to execute formidable punches and attacks, and instant melee kills will be introduced specific to each class; for example, by holding down the melee button, a soldier Shepard will deliver a killing blow with a tech-blade in his/her wrist armor. Actual, round, conventional grenades will also be available.

Mass Effect 3 plans to be the most difficult in the series, with increased artificial intelligence to challenge players and increase the sense of reward. Enemies no longer act as individuals as they did in the previous games, instead fighting and supporting each other in units. Enemies include 15-foot tall Cerberus mechs, assault troopers, and ninja-style shock troops, as well as Reaperized husks of all races and Reaper ships ranging from 500m to 2km long. Some changes will be made to already-existing class types; for example, Engineers will be able to build turrets.

Synopsis

Main article: Mass Effect 2Background

In Mass Effect 2, the Normandy is attacked by an unknown starship and Commander Shepard is killed. Shepard's body is recovered and he/she is brought back to life by Cerberus, a human supremacist organization led by the Illusive Man. Shepard learns that the Reapers were responsible and working by proxy through an insect-like species called the Collectors, and that they are responsible for entire human colonies disappearing throughout the galaxy. Shepard recruits squad mates, earns their loyalty, and defeats the Collectors after traveling through the Omega-4 Relay.

Plot

See also: Characters of the Mass Effect universe

Mass Effect 3 will begin with Commander Shepard on Earth for trial as a result of events from the Mass Effect 2 DLC pack Arrival During the trial, Earth is attacked by Reapers. Faced with insurmountable odds, Shepard is forced to flee the planet in order to gather support from alien civilizations and mount a counter-attack while also having to deal with Cerberus, who have decided to turn against him/her.

In an interview with PSM3 Magazine, Casey Hudson said of the plot, "Mass Effect 3, in simple terms, is a little more like the first game. You're collecting pieces of a story, but the more you investigate and explore these themes, the more the game will unlock and you'll see the bigger picture. In a way, it's more of a traditional story where you're learning about things and the plot changes as you find things out."

Development

Production on Mass Effect 3 began prior to the release of Mass Effect 2. Speaking with IGN at the Consumer Electronics Show on January 8, 2010, Casey Hudson admitted "We are already at work on Mass Effect 3," adding, "Building the first bits of the story, putting that together." In another interview later that month with Computer and Videogames, Hudson revealed that the game could be out as soon as the end of 2011 or early 2012.

On December 10, 2010, Electronic Arts posted the official synopsis for Mass Effect 3 on their website, although the listing was later removed pending an official announcement at the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards. The following day, the game was confirmed for a "Holiday 2011" release and accompanied by a teaser trailer.

On March 21, 2011, actress Tricia Helfer announced via Twitter that she would be reprising her role from Mass Effect 2 as EDI, and had already started voice-recording sessions. Actor Seth Green was soon to follow, announcing that he would be reprising his role from Mass Effect 2 as Joker.

The first detailed information regarding development of Mass Effect 3 started being released in April, 2011. On April 20, Belgian website 4gamers.be reported that BioWare were collaborating with Battlefield developer DICE in weapon development for the game. The same day, Game Informer released the first-ever screenshots of Mass Effect 3 to help promote their May 10 cover story. On May 3, 2011, IGN announced that Mass Effect 3 would be presented and demoed by Electronic Arts at the 2011 Electronic Entertainment Expo. The next day, BioWare announced that the game's release date had been pushed back to early 2012, in part so it could be tweaked to appeal to as wide a market as possible. On June 1, EA Games' online store uploaded artwork by mistake which revealed the game will have Kinect support. The artwork was later removed.

At the 2011 E3 Convention, BioWare finally confirmed Kinect support in a gameplay video. The game's collector's edition, cover art, a new teaser trailer and official release date of March 6, 2012 were also revealed. For the first time, fans were shown actual gameplay videos, including a 15 minute demo supervised by Casey Hudson.

Audio

Main article: Music of the Mass Effect video game trilogy

Mass Effect 3's music will be composed by Golden Globe-nominated composer Clint Mansell. Mansell first stated he would be scoring the game during an interview with The Quietus on February 9, 2011. Electronic Arts officially announced his involvement shortly thereafter with a Facebook post. Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 composer Jack Wall will have no involvement with the production of Mass Effect 3 due to undetailed and "complicated" reasons.

The weapon audio is being redesigned and refined. BioWare's audio team has been in discussion with other EA studios, including DICE, in order to improve their combat soundscape.

Release

Numerous gaming websites have called Mass Effect 3 one of the most anticipated games of 2011, with IGN ranking it number one in their "Top 10 Xbox 360 Games of 2011" column. Following the 2011 E3 Convention, IGN nominated the game for Best Role-Playing Game and Most Anticipated Game, and EEDAR called it the most promising retail title of 2011.

Mass Effect 3 will be released in two editions. Alongside the regular edition, there will also be a collector's edition which includes bonus content and unlockable items; most notably, four exclusive weapons found in the N7 Arsenal Pack.Titled Mass Effect 3 N7 Collector's Edition, its cover art will feature the female version of Commander Shepard, who will also be given a more prominent role promoting the game compared to previous titles in the series.

Xbox 720? Ideas and Designs

While Sony already admitted to be thinking about the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo are no doubt developing a Wii 2… In an interview with the head of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business division, Peter Moore, EGM magazine asked him when their next video game console would come out, and also asked if they’d drop support for the Xbox 360 like they did with the original Xbox. He said that they were going to support it “as long as it sold.” Possibly because they saw the Xbox sell well into 2007 despite not producing the console after October 2005.

He said the production team from the Xbox 360 is working on the next Xbox 720 [our pet name], and their looking into what kind of CPUs will be available on the market in 2011-2012. That would put the Xbox 360 at a lifespan of 6 or 7 years, a far cry from the Xbox’s 4 years. After spending $1.26 billion in losses launching the Xbox 360, they’ll want to get the most out of the system by lengthening its lifespan. As the longer you get into the cycle, the more profit you can make due to stopping being a loss leader, analysts always remark.

On June 13th, 2008, Robbie Bach — the President of Entertainment & Devices Division at Microsoft — mentioned the next Xbox by saying: “Our view is we will be selling Xbox 360 for a long time. We are always working on new technologies. We have people working on those. People ask me how many people I have working on the next generation. On the one hand, it’s everybody. On the other, it’s nobody. People are continuously working on new technology.

We started thinking about the next generation before we shipped the Xbox 360. It doesn’t start with a date. It starts way upstream with silicon development. From that comes a series of data points. You start making early technology choices. It’s an evolving thing. Stuff doesn’t become concrete until you get inside a window of when you have to ship, more than 18 months or so out.”

In late 2008, The Inquirer newspaper reported on speculation from industry insiders that Intel is trying to get its high-performance, new architecture GPU Larrabee chipset into the next-gen Xbox 720… both of which are codenames…

Their sources claim that: “Intel has offered Microsoft a very sweet deal indeed in exchange for pushing AMD out of the running for Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox 720. Offering everything from chips to chassis, Intel is purportedly wooing the Vole right down to designing its thermals and pimping the Larrabee chipset out to Microsoft to subcontract out as it pleases. Needless to say, this gives the Vole some rather hefty bargaining power, and leaves both AMD and Nvidia quivering in their boots.

[...] in all likelihood, Larrabee version one will barely take off, but with the right console deal, Larabee Two — which should be making its first appearance somewhere around 2010 — could be a big player.”

As you may or may not know, the Xbox 360′s internals consist out of a PowerPC-based CPU from IBM and a GPU designed by ATI. So an Intel deal would definitely change things up, and aside from emulation, hardware backwards compatibility might be out of the picture as a result. Advantages of the Larrabee chipset are shown in this image:

In May 2009 Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter claimed: “We do not expect the ‘next’ generation to begin before 2013, if at all. We remain convinced that the publishers will resist the introduction of any video game hardware technology that requires a refresh of software, as the publishers have as yet to capitalize on the immense investments made in being competitive in the current cycle.”

In June 2009 TeamXbox.com claimed: “The only thing I’m going to say about everything I heard regarding the next Xbox is that it won’t launch until a certain type of television becomes more widespread because in addition to built-in Natal tech, a key feature of the next Xbox would be full HD stereoscopic 3D visuals similar to 3D movie theatres.”

In October 2009 Fuzilla.com industry sources claimed: AMD / ATI has already won the GPU deal for Microsoft’s next generation Xbox console. They also created the current Xbox 360 Xeon GPU, suggesting compatibility with legacy games. The report also states that the new console won’t be released before 2012, since the current economic recession is preventing an originally planned 2010 release.

In January 2010 David Hufford, senior director of Xbox product management, said in a briefing at the Consumer Electronics Show 2010 in Las Vegas that there’s no need for an Xbox 720 yet. To quote: “I think it’s important to say that the Xbox 360 is the console of the long future for us. There is no need to launch a new console, because we’re able to give this console new life either with software upgrades or hardware upgrades like Project Natal. The Xbox 360 was designed for a long life, and I don’t even know if we’re at the midpoint yet.”

Here are some pictures of what the new Xbox 720 may look like:

PS4? Concepts and ideas

 While the PlayStation 3 is just now hitting its stride, and has its best days still ahead of it, Sony is not one to rest on its laurels, and with the intense competition in the video game world at present, plans for the PlayStation 4's future release are already being put into motion. In fact not only is the PlayStation 4 getting this treatment, but even the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 6 are in the early stages of planning and conceptualization at Sony's R&D labs.

Although we've yet to see what the PS3 can fully do when really put through its paces (in fact Sony states that games currently on the market are not even close to pushing the system to its full potential), the thought of an even more powerful console looming on the horizon has gamers worried about the holes it will leave burning in their pockets, but giddy at the possibilities of what this new behemoth of a console will be able to pull off. Just imagine the hardware on this thing, it will be insane!

The Question Everyone Wants the Answer To...

As a result, the question on everyone's mind is, when will the PlayStation 4 see the light of day?!?!? While Sony has not released any official information concerning the system's future launch, the generally accepted release date is pegged as late 2012, which would follow the trend of Sony's previous console generations. The PlayStation 1 was first released in late 1994 in Japan and 1995 throughout the rest of the world. The PlayStation 2 hit stores in 2000, giving the PS1 a retail shelf life of 6 years from its Japanese launch. Likewise, the PlayStation 3 came out in 2006, 6 years after the release of the PS2. Following this trend that Sony has established would give us a late 2012 release for the PS4.

Other rumours have also circulated of late which backs up these claims. At last year's Game Developer's Conference in Germany, the CEO of Crytek announced that his company's development of their next-generation graphics engine, the CryEngine3, will release in 2012, around the same time as the PlayStation 4. Although he stated he had no concrete information that the PS4 would be released around this time, and that even if he did, he would not be at liberty to share that information, he expected this to be the release window of the new system.

The Business of Sales (Or How to Get a PS4 Sooner by Not Buying a PS3)

It's possible that how the PlayStation 3 fares in the current console war may also determine the release date of the PS4, for a couple of reasons. If the system continues to flounder in 3rd place in the console wars, failing to generate the revenue which was initially expected of it, Sony may be far more eager to cut their losses and rush the PS4 to market sooner rather than later, possibly as early as late 2011.

If the PS3 does indeed fail to make ground on the Wii and Xbox 360, it may also convince Sony to try and jump the gun on the next generation console wars and get their system out the door first. Both the PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2, which dominated their generations of the console wars, came to market at the same time or earlier than their competition. The PlayStation 1 was launched just after the Sega Saturn, and well before the Nintendo 64, while the PlayStation 2 was released before both the Xbox and Nintendo Gamecube.

This enabled Sony to get a head start on the competition and gave developers time to build their skills at developing games for the console, to the point that even as more powerful consoles came after, games released on the older system were just as good technically, providing no real incentive for players to move to the new consoles.

This same effect has worked against the PlayStation 3 to some extent, as though considered to be far more powerful than the Xbox 360, the one year head start the 360 received has allowed developers to more quickly maximize the system's potential, resulting in games that rivaled games on the PS3 when it released. Only as the system's life spans come to an end will we likely see the PlayStation 3 come out with games that clearly trump what the 360 can do graphically.

How Sony plans to play their hand is cause for much speculation. What we do know is that the PlayStation 4 is coming sooner than we may think, and it will take gaming to a whole new level.

Update - July 2009 - In a recent interview, Doom and Quake creator John Carmack speculated that Sony will likely attempt to be first to the dance floor with their new console, before Microsoft launches their next console. As talked about above, there is plenty of rationale in this line of thinking. On the other hand, Sony has long maintained they have a long-term plan for the PS3, and with the lower production costs of the new slim model PS3, and the increased sales of the new version, the PS3 may just be coming into its own. Whether Sony will try to launch before Microsoft (by all accounts Nintendo will actually launch first, but they're not considered direct competition to the others like Sony and Microsoft are to each other) remains to be seen. Let us know what you think.

Update - June 2010 - In an interview with Gamespot at this year's E3, Activision COO Thomas Tippl shed some up-to-date, though still quite vague light, on the PS4's future release. When asked when he expected the next generation consoles to release, Tippl stated that it was unlikely they would see release within the next 2-3 years, as Activision still had no information on any new consoles. With development times for next gen games running 2-3 years on average, it makes sense that if the new consoles will come with third party games at launch (a near certainty), it will be at least 2 years from the time third parties first get the development toolkits in their hands to the point where the console releases. In the meantime all we can do is speculate and continue to wait.

Update - May 2011 - According to a recent article in Eurogamer, Sony has confirmed they're directing finances to an undisclosed research and development project for a "Future Platform". In the build up to E3, rumors about Project Cafe suggest Nintendo will announce the Wii-2 and developers have reported receiving prototype development tools for a new Microsoft product. Everyone is expecting an Xbox720 and Wii-2 announcement, we can hope that Sony has something as big to announce.

A quote from Sony's chief Financial Manager

Kato stated "For the home equipment the PS3 still has a product life, but this is a platform business, so for the future platform - when we'll be introducing what product I cannot discuss that - but our development work is already under way, so the costs are incurred there."

Update - E3 2011

Gamers eagerly awaiting a Playstation 4 announcement were disappointed when SCEE boss Andrew House released a statement in an interview with Eurogamer

"From a Sony perspective, we're very comfortable with PS3 and the way that market's developing,"

Although they made it clear they have no intention of a Playstation 4 related announcement anytime soon they did show off their new 3D capability as well as the NGP/PSP2 now officially named Playstation Vita. They've waited 7 years after the release of the PSP to announce their next generation handheld, we could be waiting a similar length of time for an official Playstation 4 announcement.

Here are some images and concepts\ideas about the PS4