8 replies to this topic

[ElitePinecone]

This thread is for discussion of the new character Lieutenant Steve Cortez and his role in ME3. 

Steve's voice actor is 
Matthew del ******, who is possibly most notable for his work on the TV show United States of Tara.



(Thanks to lietk12 and IsaacShep for the images!)

Steve is the Normandy SR-2's shuttle pilot and quartermaster, flying the Kodiak on missions with the squad and arranging for parts, weapons and supplies to be delivered to the ship. Cortez can sell items and gear to the squad through Alliance requisition channels.

Lieutenant Cortez is also a romance option for male Shepards. 

This thread is NOT for discussions of same-sex romances in ME3 generally, nor about the number or identity of LIs available to any particular Shepard. Please take this to the other thread.

Thanks to the amazing & dedicated IsaacShep, we now have signatures! 

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BSN group: http://social.bioware.com/group/7104/
Devianart group (fanart!): http://steve-cortez-...deviantart.com/

Edited by ElitePinecone, 11 April 2012 - 04:59 AM.

[Dusty Everman]

IsaacShep wrote...
Hoepfully Dusty will visit this thread, he's been very active in Ken/Gabby's thread here C'mon c'mon Dusty, talk to us about Cortez, we don't bite

I do visit this thread from time to time.  The reason I spoke out so much in the Ken/Gabby thread was because we accidentally shipped with a nasty bug that basically cut them from most player's games.  Thank goodness that didn't happen with Cortez.

[Dusty Everman]

IsaacShep wrote...
Yay hi Mr. Everman!

To steal from Preston's posts years ago: "Please, Mr. Everman is my dad." 

IsaacShep wrote...
Any chance for more Steve in future DLC?  Especially more romance? Would absolutely love if you could write some more Steve

For a bazillion reasons, I can't talk about what may or may not be in future DLC.  The biggest reason is that anything can change before ship. Things get added or cut all the time in game development.

IsaacShep wrote...
Also, as a Vega fan, I very much appreciate their banter in the Shuttle Bay. Did you work on it together with Mac Walters (who I believe wrote Vega)?

I'm glad to hear you like them. I wrote the banter, then Mac did a voice pass on James' lines.  Carlo Lynch, the editor for that conversation, did any last tweaks.

Edited by Dusty Everman, 07 May 2012 - 10:53 PM.

[Dusty Everman]

Chun Hei wrote...

LanceSolous13 wrote...

Ok, so, I'm making my way through Mass Effect 3 for a third time, One thing that bugged me on my second playthrough and is now really bugging me on my third playthough is, Where the hell is Steve during Mars?

I ask this because Shepard purposfully asks James to go back and take care of the Kodiak because of the storm and ete. And James is the pilot during the beginning of that mission too.

I natrually though, Oh, maybe we picked Cortez up when we have to go to the Citadel later, but, when you meet Cortez later, He says that he was overseeing the retrofits on the Cargo Hold for the Normandy, so he was on the ship when it left Earth.

So, Why wasn't he flying the Kodiak for Priority: Mars?

Mars is a two minute drive for Normandy and I am sure that gung-ho Vega told Shepard could fly. It would have been funny to see Steve run out just in time to see Vega steal his Kodiak. Rage!

This is pretty much correct. On Earth, Cortez was not officially the shuttle pilot for the Normandy. As part of the retrofit skeleton crew on earth, Cortez was coordinating the changes to the flight deck, armory, and cargo bay. If you compare the differences of Deck 5 between ME2 and ME3, you’ll see how busy he was. Things were in chaos on the Normandy immediately after the escape from Earth, and Cortez was frantically dealing with the logistics of an emergency evacuation of a dry-docked Normandy.  There wasn’t much time between that and the Mars mission. Vega can fly a shuttle and has a bold personality, so Shepard’s team was away before Cortez even had the opportunity to volunteer his talents. After what happened on Mars, Cortez instated himself as the official shuttle pilot of the Normandy. The position needed to be properly filled, and the military regulations put him in that role given the situation. If you are good at reading between the lines, Cortez basically tells you this in his introduction dialog.

[Dusty Everman]

devSin wrote...

IsaacShep wrote...

Thx, reading your post made me watch the panel myself xD I quite enjoyed it actually. Sylvia and Chris Hepler were there, always like when writers talk the character/story process. Too bad our Dusty wasn't at Comic-Con

I don't think Dusty has ever been? Probably as a level designer nobody even asks him to go to conventions, but I think he should pull some writer cards to get to go (considering he wrote most of the Normandy in 2 and I'm assuming again in 3, along with Steve).

I wish you guys had more control over the budgets, because I would have loved to have gone to Comic-Con.   I don’t really have any writer cards to pull. In the scope of how many words were written for ME2 and ME3, my contribution was such small potatoes when compared to the rest of our talented writing staff.

Unfortunately for me and my fellow LDs, level design is something that is hard to show or describe, so the general public isn’t too interested in us. I did talk a few years back at GDC before the release of ME2, but that was to other game designers.   I’ll be at PAX this year, but for my own fun; not professionally. If any of you happen to go to PAX as well and you see me, for goodness sake say hello. It would make my day.

[Dusty Everman]

devSin wrote...
That's why you'd message Dusty and tell him to be at the BioWare booth (or wherever they're setting up) at a certain time. And then you could get a picture with Dusty and Cathleen at the same time! :-)

By all means if anyone is going to PAX and wants to say hello, drop me a message.  I'm not sure if there's a BioWare booth or not.  I'm going as a civilian for fun, so I haven't really heard what official BioWare presence will be there.

[Dusty Everman]

devSin wrote...

Beep Il wrote...

I felt little sad when Traynor's only line was "You've got a new message, Commander."

This confounds me.

It sucks in its own right, but hopefully it also doesn't mean that Steve will just be silent the next DLC (while Sam gets new dialogue) to compensate.

Maybe they just couldn't get Alex back in the studio?

It's costly to bring in a voice actor for just a couple lines.  A session is a session, so you are basically paying for 150 lines even if you just record a couple.  That's why we can't just throw in lines willy-nilly on the Normandy.  Since Cortez was part of the main missions, we were able to add some Normandy banter  lines too, but Traynor wasn't, so we couldn't "sneak" in any Normandy lines for her.  That's also why you don't get more Joker lines.  Seth Green is more famous, and thus earns a higher salary.

devSin wrote...
From Patrick's Twitter, it also seems that Dusty is the one responsible for getting them to do the after-mission banters. Thank you, Dusty! They wouldn't be real missions without the post-mission barks! They are noticed, and they are appreciated.

I'm glad to hear that, and it was my pleasure.  While I was at it, I was able to fix a tiny bug where Cortez wasn't saying his contectual ambients when he's working on the shuttle or at the armory station.  There's no romance lines (those all worked in shipped game, yay), and they are only lines you'd notice if you are paying close attention. They're  just fluff lines, but I'm glad they all fire now.

[Dusty Everman]

Beep Il wrote...

IsaacShep wrote...
Well we will need something to blame it on, might as well be Microsoft, or Liara But I'm optimistic, Dusty visits the thread and knows how much fans want more Steve

Yeah. Dusty, you need pamper your favorite child.

If only I had the power over what content goes into our products that you think I have.

I can't really say anything about future work.  I can say that I haven't really worked on the Omega DLC at all. It is primarily done by our wonderful Montreal team, and I can't wait to play the final version. What I've seen of it is awesome.  As for me, I've been hard at work on something else ME3 related.

I don't know if that qualifies as being a tease or not.  If so, I apologize.

EDIT: Uh oh.  I'm top of page.  Does that mean I need to post a Cortez pic?

EDIT2: Here’s a behind-the-scenes making-of image. During development, it took us awhile to get the look of Steve right. Left to right are the stages that his model went through. Casey gets the credit for picking his final look, while Rion Swanson did the artwork. I hope you’ll all agree with me that Steve’s real version is by far the best. The change happened pretty late, which is why many of Steve’s scenes are a bit dark. The cine designers didn’t have time to adjust their lighting for his darker skin tone.

Edited by Dusty Everman, 21 September 2012 - 07:15 PM.

[Dusty Everman]

I LikeTo Doodle wrote...

Is there a face code i can use to look like 1? might want to try it ?

I don't know the facecode, and it may not even be possible to make exactly. Non-Shepard characters use a slightly different system than NPCs in the world. Steve, Adams, Chakwas, etc use the same face morph system as Shepard, but the adjustment controls are different and don't have a alphanumeric code like the player does. They are just sliders in the toolset that differ from the sliders presented to the player. Other characters, like Aria, Anderson, Hackett, and iconic Shepard don't use the face morph system at all, but instead have unique modeled heads.

IsaacShep wrote...

haha looks like the verdict is unanimous, real Steve is the best one Still hoping for that concept art Dusty mention, we need to get him another TOP somehow

The concept was actual from a "contest" we had back in the days of ME1. Just before we shipped the first Mass Effect, Casey put out the challenge for the team to make their best Shepards. There was a surprisely wide variety of cool looking characters, which verified that we were happy with our face customization system. For Steve, Casey grabbed one of those old Shepard picks from that contest that looked pretty much like Steve today. Sadly, I've lost that photo (damn Outlook deleting old messages cause I never do myself).