Gamescom 2011: Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer? P*** Right Off
Would you play Mass Effect online over Call Of Duty, Battlefield or Gears Of War?
Gamescom day 2, and BioWare has hinted that multiplayer could be part of Mass Effect’s future, but would adding competitive online shooting be anything other than a cynical move to capitalise on the popularity of multiplayer gaming in general?
The advent of multiplayer as the new big draw in the gaming space has forced a lot of studios to re-evaluate their games and how they interact with their audiences. More than most that have attempted to bolt on a multiplayer, Mass Effect could be well suited to the experience, but does it need it?
“You know, we’ve really wanted to do multiplayer since the first Mass Effect,” BioWare’s Ryan Warden told NowGamer (read the full interview HERE).
“I mean, it’s a big universe, with a great story and tons of interesting characters, so why wouldn’t we want to share that in the multiplayer space? But we’ve still not figured out the right way to do it. There is always a way to do things.”
Over the last few years we’ve seen more and more singleplayer, heavily narrative focused, games look to the growing popularity of the online space and attempt to ape their success to little or no avail. BioShock 2, Dead Space 2 and even Bulletstorm, all, in some way, tried to bolster their strong singleplayer modes with weaker multiplayer options that distracted from their core strengths. Would Mass Effect fall into the same category?
Multiplayer and interacting online has certainly taken precedence over the traditional singleplayer games that have so far made up the majority of the experiences we enjoy. As the industry continues to evolve, we’ll no doubt see more and more try to ride this online wave to success and though Mass Effect’s combat has evolved sufficiently over the course of its series, this might not be the best time to explore a simple online shooter experience when there are so many other games attempting the same.
If BioWare were to look at multiplayer as an option for Mass Effect, we’d like to see it bring something new and groundbreaking to the table instead of just placing a ME skin over what would essentially be Gears Of War with special powers. Until something new and exciting can achieved, we’d rather leave Shepard and his friends offline, if you don’t mind
to find out about all the
latest XBOX 360 news, reviews, previews, interviews, features and a whole more.
This ain’t gonna work well at all. The way I see it, there’s 3 types of games:
- Games fully dedicated to Singleplayer and have loads and loads of content
- Games mostly dedicated to Singleplayer but have a redundant and half-assed Multiplayer that is literally tacked on at the 11th hour (e.g. Dead Space 2, Bioshock 2, The Darkness)
- Games that have 5 hour long Singleplayer modes and are mainly dedicated to Multiplayer (e.g. Call of Duty, Halo Reach, Killzone 3)
Now, the first type of game I listed is actually really hard to come by. I can only think of a couple of games from this generation that are like this (Oblivion, Skyrim, Mass Effect 1 and 2 and maybe Bioshock). Multiplayer doesn’t suit these games. It just doesn’t.
I have no problems with co-op multiplayer or a game mode like resi outbreak that would be fun in mass effect universe as for Adversarial MP not interested in that ME universe has always been SP focused so the Mp would have to be.
I am pretty much in agreement with the first poster, multiplayer is not suited to every game and is most certainly not required. Personally, I lament the declining availabilty of single player games and fail to understand why publishers believe that everyone only wants to play online. I don’t know if it’s becuase I’m older (I’m 47), but personally, I rarely venture online with any games, but if this drive to multi-player is to continue, perhaps games should be sold in 2 separate editions, one with multiplayer and one without. Perhaps then, the manufactuers would see exactly how many people are buying the game for the multiplayer experience, and how many people are buying the game as is because there is no other option?