BioWare discusses potential Mass Effect MMO
"It's fun to think about. It's really interesting."
Ahead of Mass Effect 3's 9th March release, developer BioWare has discussed the possibility of creating a Mass Effect MMO.
BioWare Doctors Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka - still fresh from the December 2011 launch of MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic - said a Mass Effect MMO would be "daunting", but, "really interesting".
"The implication of a Mass Effect MMO has so many expectations," Zeschuk, who headed up development of SW:TOR at BioWare's Austin studio, told the Penny Arcade Report.
"We already bit off a big thing to chew with a Star Wars MMO, and that's not so small.
"It's daunting, but the neat thing is it would lend itself to a different type of gameplay. It's fun to think about. It's really interesting, I don't know. It's a tough one."
Mass Effect has up to this point been a strictly single-player affair, focusing on telling a cinematic story in a rich science fiction universe.
Mass Effect 3 adds multiplayer to the series for the first time, via four-player co-op missions that are independent of the main story but contribute to your "Galactic Readiness".
The next step, perhaps, is an MMO - or at least multiplayer experiences set in a persistent play space. This, Muzyka said, would be well within the Mass Effect universe's reach.
"The possibility space, that's a term that I heard Will Wright say about ten years ago, and it really struck me," Muzyka said.
"When you deliver a game, and you deliver it for a player, you have to capture what they think is the possibility space. You need to let them do everything they think they should do, and you can't block them from doing anything they think they should be able to do. You have to nail all the features and content that should be in that possibility space.
"Mass Effect is a big possibility space."