The original Mass Effect team at BioWare Edmonton is creating a "whole new fictional universe", while BioWare Montreal takes the reins. Tali almost wasn't a squadmate in Mass Effect 3.
Everyone's favourite masked girl on her pilgrimage - Tali'Zorah - very nearly missed out on a lot of the action in Mass Effect 3 as she was going to be limited to a cameo.
"We talked about not putting Tali in as a full squadmate and passionate people on the team were like 'oh, you gotta put Tali in. Tali's got to be there!' So thank Patrick Weekes and some of our writers for that," revealed Hudson at PAX East. "We figured if he was passionate about it then there were other people passionate about it, so we put her in there."
The studio released some interesting stats for Mass Effect 3 and showed that, despite getting huge props from fans online, only 18 percent of gamers played as FemShep. 64.5 percent of us were goody-two-shoes and followed the Paragon path, with 92 percent curing the genophage and 59 percent working to redeem the Geth.
Mass Effect now enters new unexplored territory as it moves forward. "We are starting to get ready to develop another Mass Effect game, and it’s going to be a new thing,” explained Hudson. He remains as executive producer of the sci-fi series but will be heading up his own new IP along with other Mass Effect creators at BioWare Edmonton.
"We want to be able to give fans an opportunity to get back into the world with these things you’ve come to know and love about the Mass Effect experience but start something fresh and new – a new way for you to explore the whole universe in Mass Effect.” BioWare Montreal is taking over control of the Mass Relays now.
“We are developing a whole new fictional universe at BioWare for myself and Preston. That’s kind of our next thing,” continued Hudson. “We’re focusing on building something new the way we did at the very beginning on Mass Effect.”
Not long ago BioWare had been fielding questions and suggestions from fans on where they'd like to see the next Mass Effect go; sequel or prequel? It'll be quite some time before we see the results, although it'll probably powered by DICE's Frostbite 2 engine much like Dragon Age 3.
