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[Phaedon]

 
Well, first of all, the first hint as for the stage of the development process of Mass Effect 3, came from Christina Norman's twitter, who stated that she is playing a game that will likely be released in 2011. 
From the wiki, credits to Bronzey:

There have been several posts by Bioware developers on Twitter this morning (my time) that look very interesting.Lead gameplay designer Christina Norman tweeted: "I am celebrating 2011 by playing a Mass Effect game that will probably be released in 2011."
Jesse Houston, another Bioware developer (@gtez), then asked Norman "@truffle me2 ps3?"
Norman replied to questions: "I am not talking about me2 ps3! Good guess, but no."
Finally, Houston answered: "@truffle hehe"
This points to (yet another) Mass Effect game for this year. Woohoo?

'Playing' is the important part here. Christina Norman, if I remember correctly, is the lead gameplay designer for ME2 and ME3. That means that by January, Bioware had already produced a playable version of the combat in ME3. If ME3 is going to have the same development process  as ME2, which Casey Hudson confirmed (can't find the source for that, anymore, sorry), then this sets the development between the White Box stage (2/5) and Hardening (4/5)
Here's a video explaining the gameplay development stages:


And then, there was the famous, or should I say, infamous, NFS PR leak, claiming that he heard that the game was fully playable during the Christmas holidays. Wether this guy is a fraud or not, this is not the place to discuss it, but it should be noted that NeoGAF does seem to have a special validation process for game devs.
And then, only 4 hours ago, we have a Bioware dev stating that:

ME3: Had the privilege of doing a full play through at Xmas, I am very proud of the team. Many wow moments.

So the game, was after all, fully playable during Christmas.
Take a look at another video about the development stages:



Stage 1: Narrative Playable, old models recycled, no animations or background, only subtitles.
Stage 2: White Box, basic camera angles, no animation, text to speech used for dialogue.
Stage 3: Basic animation and camera angles, text to speech used for dialogues.
Stage 4: Hardening, partial voice acting, final camera angles, animation and some of the textures.
Stage 5: Beta?

I don't know about you, but this screams 'Hardening' stage to me. You are going to ask, how do you know that it's not the third stage. Well, according to the infamous NFS PR (who is of course not a valid source, but anyway), Bioware would only be polishing the game for the rest of the year. And that's what Hardening means.
What do you think? How far in development do you think that ME3 is?

Modifié par Phaedon, 23 janvier 2011 - 10:23 .

[Digifi]

Well, ME2 PS3 was in the ME3 engine. While that has nothing to do with the story and such, it would make the process of going stage 1 to 2 to 3 very fast. I'd be willing to bet on a game of this scope, that stage 1 might be done, and other parts of the game are in 2 and 3. 4 is possible but just doesn't seem likely as there are still 8 months before you'd have to be in beta for hopes of a december release.

[Fiery Phoenix]

More or less Hardening.

[Phaedon]

Digifi wrote...

Well, ME2 PS3 was in the ME3 engine. While that has nothing to do with the story and such, it would make the process of going stage 1 to 2 to 3 very fast. I'd be willing to bet on a game of this scope, that stage 1 might be done, and other parts of the game are in 2 and 3. 4 is possible but just doesn't seem likely as there are still 8 months before you'd have to be in beta for hopes of a december release.

Well, the game has been in development before ME2 was released. If they aren't in Stage 3 already, then I think that they would have a problem. Plus, the 'wow moments' were probably accompanied by basic animations and camera angles at least.

[Raven of the Night]

Great thread and videos, Phaedon.

On topic: it is definitely the Hardening. "A full play through" means that combat system is more or less finished and the "many wow moments" indicates that at least some of the cut-scenes are at least partially done.

But the closing release date of Dragon Age II also means that Bioware will want their fans (and other people) to be focused primarily on DA II for at least 2 next months, so we sadly should expect almost no new info for the time being.

[didymos1120]

Digifi wrote...

Well, ME2 PS3 was in the ME3 engine.

Not exactly:

Brenon Holmes wrote...

bcooper56 wrote...

Is ps3 really using me3 engine?

Sort of... but not really. The main problem is that it's a bit muddy... both ME2PS3 and ME3 have been developing in parallel and sharing technology where appropriate.

It's probably more accurate to say that they're mostly based on the same technology. That said, on ME3 we'd be silly to not be taking advantage of all the awesome stuff that the PS3 guys did for ME2. 

[Phaedon]

Raven of the Night wrote...

Great thread and videos, Phaedon.

On topic: it is definitely the Hardening. "A full play through" means that combat system is more or less finished and the "many wow moments" indicates that at least some of the cut-scenes are at least partially done.

But the closing release date of Dragon Age II also means that Bioware will want their fans (and other people) to be focused primarily on DA II for at least 2 next months, so we sadly should expect almost no new info for the time being.

Thanks. 

And didymos, I agree, I should correct this in the Confirmed Features thread as well.

[kidbd15]

Christina also posted this recently:

"I wanted to fix something in me1 but didn't have time. Same thing in me2. Fixed it today in me3, squeeze!"

Wonder what she's talking about and which stage it could be categorized under?

[Fredvdp]

kidbd15 wrote...

Christina also posted this recently:
"I wanted to fix something in me1 but didn't have time. Same thing in me2. Fixed it today in me3, squeeze!"
Wonder what she's talking about and which stage it could be categorized under?

Gravity, maybe. In ME1 and ME2 you could fall down some platforms and it looked a bit silly. In ME2 gravity was especially horrible because you could just walk in the air.

[Phaedon]

I think that it's probably Shepard's limp.

[didymos1120]

Phaedon wrote...

I think that it's probably Shepard's limp.

Which Shep didn't have in ME1.

[Phaedon]

didymos1120 wrote...
Which Shep didn't have in ME1.

S/He didn't? Well, hmm, my bet is on gravity then.

Modifié par Phaedon, 23 janvier 2011 - 01:00 .

[Fiery Phoenix]

I think it's just some combat aspect, Phaedon.

[marshalleck]

didymos1120 wrote...

Phaedon wrote...

I think that it's probably Shepard's limp.

Which Shep didn't have in ME1.

And which Christine as a programmer would have little influence or control over. That would be a task for an animator. 

Interesting thread though. I'm sure they've had the entire thing scripted and storyboarded for quite some time now. They're probably just working on assets, set pieces, lighting and animation etc. Iterating on all those things could easily take months, along with running the game through QA passes. And I remember Casey Hudson confirming in a video interview prior to ME2's release that they had begun work on ME3.

Modifié par marshalleck, 23 janvier 2011 - 01:15 .

[didymos1120]

Fiery Phoenix wrote...

I think it's just some combat aspect, Phaedon.

Hopefully, it's the squaddie pathfinding.

[Phaedon]

That does make sense.

[marshalleck]

xAlch3mIstx wrote...

omg was that ashley in the back seat yayyyyyyyy if it was....

Yay for Ashley being in a pre-release build of ME2? Okay...

[didymos1120]

xAlch3mIstx wrote...

from what i can see here, the game looks pretty bad though lol..cant wait to see it fully completed

Those videos are of Mass Effect 2 during it's development, not 3.

[Fiery Phoenix]

Those are placeholder models, Alchemist.

[Phaedon]

It's Miranda in Ashley's armour. The graphics engine was unfinished.