53 réponses à ce sujet

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

I asked my shoe this question and it said that the devs were still sacrificing beer to the belly gods and that real development wouldn't begin until after the snow melts in Canada.

[uberdowzen]

Grand Admiral Wong wrote...

...or early 2012.

Wait, what!?!! Where did you hear this? I thought they'd only said late 2011. That would mean...*shiver* only one Bioware game next year. Except for the old republic...

Are they still on the drawing block in terms of story, artwork and gameplay? Or would they have finalised the storyline by now and moved on to gameplay design?

9 months would be way too much planning time for a game that's got a 2 year dev cycle. The general storyline was probably already known before development started.

The thing to remember is that Bioware has a massive team of writers, game designers etc so it's more likely that the technical people are working on the gameplay while the creative people work on everything else (bearing in mind that Mass Effect's gameplay isn't affected by the story so they can work on both at the same time).

I wonder how is Bioware's methodology, or the gaming industry in general. For Blizzard, I'm almost certain they start with the gameplay then work the story around the units and balanced gameplay. For Bioware however, they excel in single player story epics which they spared no effort to make spectacular since the days of Baldur's Gate 2.

It's probably different for every game. Blizzard games are based around game mechanics rather than story so they would be developed differently from Bioware's story focussed games.

So is the game's story still in the works, or would they be designing gameplay at this stage? Or maybe even simultaneously?

So, yeah, simultaneously.

[Luke Bioware]

I think we'll see stuff after Dragon Age 2 launches. It's kind of the same audience you know.

[masterthehero]

I wouldn't be surprised if most of the development time is getting eaten by the player "choices". (Okay so let's see what choices our character made in ME 2 and some of ME 1)



Thane died in the mission but Tali survived.

The whole team died.

Jacob died, Tali died, everyone else lived.

Garrus lived and is also the new love interest.

Miranda lived and is also the new love interest.



I mean I only wrote out a small portion of possible outcomes and look how many different scenarios now need to be written out due to that fact alone. After all if all the player choices aren't worked out on paper, they can't really start developing too many storyline parts of the game without having all that stuff squared off.

[Commander Raiden]

Once all the news with DA:2 is done with and the dust has settled with the PS3 version's release then there may start to show off more of whats been going on.....(as some have already mentioned here..) I think that is the likely scenario..

[Marzillius]

The story for ME3 was probably partially complete way before Mass Effect 1 was released. Gameplay and voice acting is probably their main priority.



I wonder if all the voice actors for recurring characters had to sign a contract to make voices for all 3 games...

[expanding panic]

Fredvdp wrote...

They were already working on some gameplay mechanics a while back. They gave it a code name but didn't give any info at all about what it is. I think it's also interesting that ME3 hasn't even been announced yet. I guess they want to release Dragon Age II before they start hyping their next project.

I agree 100%

[clennon8]

Call me a pessimist, but I doubt ME3 will be released in 2011. I'm guessing 2012 E1.

[Da_Lion_Man]

clennon8 wrote...

Call me a pessimist, but I doubt ME3 will be released in 2011. I'm guessing 2012 E1.

I sure hope so, don't want a rushed game but ME3 will most likely be rushed anyway...

[Commander Raiden]

At the end of the day if they can get the game to an exceptional level of quality it needs to be as soon as possible then I am all for it, it doesn't have to release in 2012 just for the sake of it or to keep within the development cycle of the past games, and I am sure Bioware are out to give the game a fitting finale, and not just do a Call of Duty style update with a quick turnaround time of release, 2011 why not is what I say....

[InfiniteCuts]

anyone else worried about ps3 version diluting the amount of talent they can throw at the game? I'm assuming they will need some of their best people working on both platforms to ensure fidelity... but that just further compromises what they might be able to do on the 360 and how fast. Am I overreacting?

[MrFob]

For he PS3 port, you'd only need a rather small team which concentrates on the programming elements of the game, right?
I'd think level designers, artists, writers, gameplay designers, etc. probably hardly have anything to do with the port and could be working on DLC or ME3. Granted, they still all need to coordinate but they would have to have some capacity for multitasking.

Modifié par MrFob, 10 novembre 2010 - 03:13 .

[expanding panic]

another reason there is no news on mass effect 3 besides dragon age 2 is because ME2 is coming out for ps3. Dont want to give anything away i suppose

[Raizo]

I would like to think that development on ME3 started before ME2 was shipped out, at least on paper ( plot, script, gameplay tweaks, gamplay scenario's, etc ) , if your talking about actual programing or coding that probably started during the summer. I hoping for a 2011 release or at the very least am early 2012 one.

[harazal]

Bioware will of course be working on ME3. But from a marketing perspective, they'll be focused on DA2. They're not going to woant to send out mixed messages. Maybe we'll see something about ME3 before DA2 llaunchs, but we'll see a lot more once DA2 has been out for a month or so.

[Da_Lion_Man]

I think Dragon Age 2 looks bad... what a waste of time.

[xlavaina]

Da_Lion_Man wrote...

clennon8 wrote...

Call me a pessimist, but I doubt ME3 will be released in 2011. I'm guessing 2012 E1.

I sure hope so, don't want a rushed game but ME3 will most likely be rushed anyway...

Yeah I agree. An early 2012 release would follow the 2 year 2 month pattern of dev time between the two games. Honestly, there is so much the dev team can cram into this game, I really don't want them to rush it. Give us a teaser early 2011. Make a decent level design for 2011E3 and show off some characters and game play. Then give us the silent treatment for the next few months (like every great production team does), and release the game with a bang. 

So yeah anyway. ME1 was released Nov 2007, ME2 Jan 2010, ME3 ~ March 2012. 

Also if Gameinformer doesn't give this game a damn cover article I'm going to be pissed. They missed it the last two games, and the hype couldn't be larger. 

Modifié par xlavaina, 11 novembre 2010 - 01:13 .

[The Spamming Troll]

i hope there just gonna remake ME1. not really, but sortof yeah.

[Water Dumple]

The standard game development cycle is three years (although this is often reduced for sequels); with ME2 being ~9 months old, ME3 probably has a basic functioning system by now, which will be more or less definite based on how closely they stick to ME2's model for combat. As for the story arc, I expect that was decided quite a while ago. The specific elements of the plot, characters, and whatnot are most likely still being decided, with progress being made on what is currently approved.

Modifié par Water Dumple, 11 novembre 2010 - 04:08 .

[darth_lopez]

OnlyShallow89 wrote...

mad825 wrote...

well first of all we would have to consider the fact that ME2.5 isn't finished yet....is it?

By that I assume you mean the DLC? Look at DA:O - DLC production didn't mean DA2 wasn't being made, so why would it be true for ME2/ME3?

I don't know where ME3 is in terms of development, but I'd wager they're doing pretty well.

he's actually refering to ME 3 it's sorta of sarcasm one gets from those who felt ME 2 wasn't a decent sequel despite filling the same role as all mid stage logs in a trilogy. it's  a common feeling that ME 3 will be more or less ME 2.5 and ME 3 to come later

[SphereofSilence]

masterthehero wrote...

I wouldn't be surprised if most of the development time is getting eaten by the player "choices". (Okay so let's see what choices our character made in ME 2 and some of ME 1)

Thane died in the mission but Tali survived.
The whole team died.
Jacob died, Tali died, everyone else lived.
Garrus lived and is also the new love interest.
Miranda lived and is also the new love interest.

I mean I only wrote out a small portion of possible outcomes and look how many different scenarios now need to be written out due to that fact alone. After all if all the player choices aren't worked out on paper, they can't really start developing too many storyline parts of the game without having all that stuff squared off.

This.

It's crazy to be in their shoes with all the possible permutations of things player could have made. I think it's cool to have great amount of choices, but it's a wee bit too much of a headache to account for all decisions. If I were them developing future games, either I don't ever go down this road again, or figure out a way to provide meaningful choices to players w/o it coming back to bite me in the ass later.

[Raanz]

I imagine that there is a small team to do the PS3 port. Mainly client programmers since all of the art assets are already done.

The rest of the ME team are probably finishing up planned DLC (art and programming teams) while the game designers and writers are well into pre-production phase for ME3. Since they will probably use the same engine for ME3 (Unreal 3.*) then not much technical coding has to be done for systems unless they decide to introduce some new things. Once the art department finishes with all planned DLC assets, then I would assume they move on to ME3 stuff.

Just guessing, but it's similar to my experiences.

[Sursion]

The wiki says it's going to be the same development time as Mass Effect 2 (2 years, 2 months). And since Bioware is using the same engine, we can expect 2 years and 2 months of nothing but scripting, level design, and voice acting. It's going to be a fantastic game.

[TheCerberus14]

I don't remember exactly where but the devs have mentioned that there are mulitple teams working on different projects for Mass Effect. One larger team is focusing on ME3 exlusivley, one on DLC(with the DLC slowdown the team may have been shrunk), and at least one more on ME2 for the PS3.

As stated they said the main story arc was finished already and the gamplay and engine are where they want ME to be so the develpement time for ME3 could be shorter or they could be putting a good effort into putting as much content as possible into ME3. That's what I'm hoping for .

casedawgz wrote...

I suspect it will be shorter, mostly because I doubt that the game will be completely rebuilt like ME2 was compared with ME1. What we see next will probably be pretty close to what we've already seen in terms of graphics and gameplay.

The team doing the ME2 on PS3 will, when they've finished with ME2, be moved to ME3 on the PS3 to keep the develpoment time as short as possible on that end.

[Bio Addict]

SphereofSilence wrote...

masterthehero wrote...

I wouldn't be surprised if most of the development time is getting eaten by the player "choices". (Okay so let's see what choices our character made in ME 2 and some of ME 1)

Thane died in the mission but Tali survived.
The whole team died.
Jacob died, Tali died, everyone else lived.
Garrus lived and is also the new love interest.
Miranda lived and is also the new love interest.

I mean I only wrote out a small portion of possible outcomes and look how many different scenarios now need to be written out due to that fact alone. After all if all the player choices aren't worked out on paper, they can't really start developing too many storyline parts of the game without having all that stuff squared off.

This.

It's crazy to be in their shoes with all the possible permutations of things player could have made. I think it's cool to have great amount of choices, but it's a wee bit too much of a headache to account for all decisions. If I were them developing future games, either I don't ever go down this road again, or figure out a way to provide meaningful choices to players w/o it coming back to bite me in the ass later.

This is why we'll probably just wind up getting a bunch of e mails from the survivors saying "Thanks for the memories!"