Post by Deleted on Aug 2, 2016 8:17:41 GMT -8
Reviving my leaks post from the terminal BSN, here's what was shared by someone on Reddit regarding a secret survey random people took for Bioware quite a while ago. Evidently this was a collection of "random" concepts & ideas Bioware was playing around with at the time, and they were looking to get feedback on how these ideas seemed. When that's done, below is included transcribed information from the private PAX Prime panel from another person. I'm sure this is considered beyond common knowledge by now, but I'm posting this primarily for those who haven't seen this info before or those who are new to the franchise.
----the Survey----
The Next Mass Effect Context:
The next Mass Effect game takes place in the Helius Cluster (a cluster of 100s of solar systems in the Andromeda Galaxy), far removed by time and space from Commander Shepard’s heroic acts and the final events of the Mass Effect trilogy. You are a pathfinder, a combat trained but un-tested explorer leading an expedition into the Helius cluster to establish a new home for humanity. As you explore this sprawling series of solar systems (over 4x the size of Mass Effect 3), collecting resources and building colonies, you will encounter the savagery of untamed lands in the form of cut-throat outlaws and warring alien races.
To survive and colonize the wild reaches of space, you will need to grow your arsenal, your ship, your crew and make strategic (and often uneasy)
alliances to fight against increasingly menacing foes. Along the way, you will encounter the remains of a once powerful and mysterious alien race, the
Remnant, whose forgotten technology holds the key to gaining power in this region of the galaxy. As you uncover who the Remnant were, and the mysteries their ruins contain, you are drawn into a violent race to find the source of their forgotten technology that will determine the fate of humanity.
Collect Resources to Fuel your Growth:
Scour solar systems and planets within the Helius Cluster to find valuable resources and blueprints of long forgotten alien technology that will allow you
to craft better equipment and weapons, such as improving your leg armor to allow you to jetpack jump, or upgrading your cryo-beam (laser cannon) to target enemies or do area damage around you to clear out close threats. As you build your arsenal and resource infrastructure, you will be able to explore deeper into the increasingly dangerous and resource-rich solar systems of the Helius Cluster.
A Capable Crew:
Throughout the story, you will recruit seven distinct crew members to fight by your side. Each crew member has a unique personality and specific abilities
that open up strategic options as you choose which two of them to bring into each mission. For example, Cora has the ability to deploy a biotic shield that
protects everyone in the bubble while still allowing you and your squad to fire out of it. Your crew will grow alongside you as you explore the Helius
Cluster, and you can choose how you upgrade your crew’s weapons, gear and abilities to increase their individual combat effectiveness. Create the perfect squad to react to any situation and to support your preferred gameplay style.
Your Crew, Your Story:
Your crew members aren’t merely hired guns – they are part of the living universe in the Helius Cluster that develops in response to your actions and
choices. Increase each crew member’s loyalty by pursuing missions that are important to that specific character. For example, when a Krogan colony ship has been stolen by one of the outlaw factions leaving the colonists stranded without resources to survive, your Krogan squad mate, Drack, is determined to strike out against them. If you take the mission and help him track down the outlaws’ hideout to return the ship to its rightful owners, Drack’s loyalty
toward you and your squad will increase and Drack will unlock a brand new skill tree.
Explore each individual’s backstory and develop your relationship with them through conversations and unique missions. True to Mass Effect, what you choose to say will directly affect your crew’s loyalty and relationship with you, and will open up different conversations and narrative opportunities at the end of the game depending upon how you approach each encounter.
Deployed Strike Team Missions:
The Helius Cluster is 1000s of light years across, and you can’t be everywhere at once. As you develop more colonies, resource bases and settlements, you have to be able to keep them safe. Spend resources to recruit mercenaries and develop an AI controlled Strike Team that you can deploy to take on randomly generated, time-sensitive missions. Strike Team missions take many forms, including settlement defense and Remnant artifact recovery, which will take real-time to complete.
Send your Strike Team out on a mission while you continue playing the main game and they will return, 20 – 30 minutes later, having gained rewards such as XP, currency and equipment based on the success of their mission. Spend money and resources to train your Strike Team and acquire better gear for them, which will increase their success rate and allow them to take on more difficult missions for greater rewards.
Active Strike Team Missions:
When you encounter a Strike Team mission in the Single-Player mode, you can leave your Strike Team at their base and decide to tackle the mission yourself with your Multiplayer roster of characters. You also have the option of tackling the mission by yourself, or recruiting up to three friends to play with
you. The more friends you bring, the greater the challenge and the greater the reward. These missions will play out using the Next Mass Effect’s
multiplayer Horde mode (more details on this later).
These missions will include a variety of thematically appropriate objectives, like defending a Settlement against Khet attacks, or recovering a Remnant artifact off of a planet before an outlaw gang gets there first. By taking an active role in strike team missions, you can earn special Single-player rewards in addition to the usual multiplayer specific characters, weapons, weapon mods, and pieces of equipment which can be customized between missions. Additionally, players who join another person’s Strike Team mission will receive bonus in-game currency and multiplayer XP for helping others with their missions.
Multiplayer “Horde” Mode:
The next Mass Effect’s “Horde” multiplayer pits you and up to three of your friends against waves of enemy troops on various battlefields throughout the
galaxy. Players fight together to survive increasingly difficult enemy attacks and accomplish objectives, like disabling a bomb near a colony base or
assassinating a target. Progress through multiplayer missions to gain XP and earn new multiplayer specific weapons, characters, weapon mods, and pieces of equipment, which can be customized between matches. Multiplayer play will also earn you APEX funds (in-game currency), which can be used to purchase items and gear in the Single Player game.
Establish Settlements:
Search solar systems for rare habitable planets to establish a settlement that could serve as a base for humankind’s new home in the Helius Cluster. As you build permanent settlements, you will make strategic choices on where to focus your new base’s resources. For example: Recon Settlements will clear fog of war from the space map and give the player more strike team missions to choose from, while Mining Settlements will periodically supplement the player’s supply of crafting materials.
Dialogue:
Building upon the rich history of strategic dialogue that has defined the Mass Effect series, you can make meaningful choices in every conversation you
have with characters that impact the way your game evolves. The next Mass Effect adds deeper control over your conversations through a greater ability to interrupt and change the course of the conversation as it is happening.
During certain conversations, you will be able to take action-based choices, such as the option to pull out your gun and force someone to open a door instead of convincing them to do it through conversational guile. Action-based choices give you more options for how you approach dialogue with characters in the game and can lead to more extreme outcomes on the story as it evolves around the decisions you make when interacting with a huge cast of NPC characters.
Seamlessly Travel Through the Next Mass Effect Universe:
As you pilot your space ship, Tempest, across the 100s of solar systems that are seamlessly connected in the next Mass Effect, you will encounter new
planets filled with valuable resources, intelligent life, conflict, and alien technology that all give you opportunities to increase the power of your character, your ship and your team so that you can build them into a force that perfectly suits your gameplay style. Transitions between activities, like flying your Tempest (space ship) across a solar system to land on a mineral rich planet, then jumping into your Mako (land vehicle) to explore the surface of planet, all happen smoothly without loading screens.
Customize and Share Your Experience:
Discover new things in Andromeda Galaxy, like alien artifacts and natural wonders, that serve as trophies and decorations that you can use to modify the
look of your character, Tempest (Space Ship) and Mako (land vehicle). Customize the way your squad and your character look with clothes and aesthetic
modifications that you unlock throughout the game. Photos you take from the far reaches of the galaxy can be used to decorate your starship or sold to
certain characters.
Remnant Vault Raids:
Find and activate Remnant Monoliths to unlock Remnant vaults. Explore abandoned Remnant ruins to find and locate a powerful artifact, but once you remove it you will trigger the vault defenses that will arm traps, activate defense robots and even change the architecture of the vault itself to stop you from escaping. Fight your way out of the vault and you will be rewarded with valuable loot, including powerful gear, crafting resources and Star Keys that can be used to unlock massive orbital facilities in space that grant permanent stat bonuses.
Optional Elite Remnant Vault Raids are scattered around the Helius Cluster located in special orbital facilities that are unlocked by Star Keys. Similar to
the standard Remnant Vaults, you enter them to retrieve a special artifact which will trigger the vault defenses that arm traps, activate defense robots
and change the architecture of the vault itself to stop you from escaping.
However, Elite vaults ratchet up the difficulty of the encounter with increasingly powerful defense robots and traps, as well as roaming outlaws and deadly Khet patrols that are also in search of the elite artifacts. Elite Remnant vaults will test the limits of your combat and puzzle solving acumen, but with greater difficulty comes greater rewards. Gain rare loot, narrative acclaim and huge rewards for completing these daunting challenges.
Khet Outposts:
As you explore planets throughout the Helius Cluster, you will encounter Khet Outposts. These outposts are optional combat experiences where you enter the outpost and fight off waves of enemies. Destroy Khet outposts to earn XP, rewards and thwart their growing power in the region. Your allies will reward you with praise and increased narrative options as you fight to remove the Khet presence from the region.
Drive and upgrade your Mako (land vehicle):
Explore the surfaces of 100s of planets in the Helius Cluster in your versatile land vehicle, the Mako. Whether you are looking for a place to set up a
colony, searching for a Remnant vault or attacking a Khet Outpost, you will enjoy getting there in your Mako. Equip and upgrade your Mako in dozens of ways, like adding turbo boosters, upgrading your shield generator or adding a Hostile Detector to your radar to create the ultimate planetary exploration vehicle. Finally, get your Mako looking the way you want with a custom paintjob.
...
They asked my satisfaction for each of these descriptions.
----the PAX Prime '15 private panel----
So long story short I saw that tweet from Mike Gamble a few weeks ago that said "...if you love Mass Effect and are going to PAX Prime email me..." And so I did and then I stumbled upon this forum of like-minded people and thought I'd make an account in case there was something shown to support IT; cause if you're like me waiting for something, anything, is painful enough. Needless to say I was one of the 21 people that got to give feedback on the concepts as they showed them and gave us tiny cryptic bits of information.
So I'll start by saying that they did show us a metric shit-ton of concept art with very brief explanations. I don't even know of a logical order to start in.
They started off with the profound question of what N7 means to us which you might read into it not being a previous cycle I guess.
Then this was followed by asking us whether we wanted a direct sequel, a prequel, or something somewhere completely different at a different time. The resounding majority wanted a sequel series, which I think they knew already. And this is based completely off of my opinion but by judging the concept art it has absolutely got to be a sequel.
First concepts were of two new races. The first one being described as "Arrogant". They were really skinny, almost skeletal. Their bodies vaguely looked like a boney Turian. They had glowing eyes and a neck that frilled up from their chest (once they show it off you'll see how hard it is to describe. Their heads almost remind me of the aliens from Independence Day.
The second new race was described as "Ancient, Advanced, and Guardian". They had a similar color scheme to reapers and they looked like classic fantasy/sci-fi golems. Sleek rocky or metallic bodies with bright glowing lines flowing all over them. Some had fragmented pieces and shattered bits floating in place around them.
So I'm thinking sequel because new races are kind of hard to explain in a prequel especially when it does take place in the current cycle and I definitely know that for sure because the next few things they showed us were really nice cg models of an Asari, salarian, human, and krogan running in the new frostbite engine. They looked amazing by the way. Also they stated that, like humans having many different features from each other, they wanted to do that with other races.
That showed off some salarians and krogan with interesting face and bone structures. They also asked an odd but hard question for everyone. They showed a lineup of a character from each main race in the series and asked us which two would we get rid of if we had to. I couldn't do it but I was sadly surprised at how many people said Quarian and krogan.
Anyways, they showed off a random human model wearing various armors and configurations asking us what we liked and thought was potentially iconic. They also showed us a slew of land vehicles that would serve for different environments. And the most interesting vehicle was a personal sized Normandy-esque ship that could "fit a Mako-like vehicle in it". So the new races mingling with the old ones and a ship that looks like Normandy architecture, sounds like sequel material to me.
They said that as always characters and choices are most important and that they want to focus on exploration and discovery again. And then they finished by showing off too many concept art screens in rapid succession for me to be able to grasp anything. Just a whole lot of beautiful and interesting landscapes.
So that's that, I know it didn't quite answer any of our IT questions but if you're like me and have been holding out for 4 holding the answer to IT and the original endings of some dark matter stuff then the fact that this is most likely a sequel is great. And honestly what they showed us was absolutely amazing and I can't wait either way, I just love this universe so much. Thank you all for checking this out.
Summary:
- Opened with "What does N7 mean to you?"
- Asked if they'd like to see a sequel, prequel, or something different. Overwhelming majority said sequel.
- "Arrogant" race. Thin and skeletal. Glowing eyes. Necks that "frilled up from their chest".
- "Ancient, advanced, guardian" race. Like sci-fi stone golems with Tron-like glowing lines over their bodies and floating fragments/shards.
- Asari, Salarian, Human, and Krogan shown in Frostbite 3.
- Want to bring across the model variety of human models to other races, giving them more diverse bone structure.
- Showed a line-up of the series' main races, and asked fans to pick two if they had to get rid of them. Most picked Quarian and Krogan. Speculation: The game has multiple playable races in campaign, and BioWare wants feedback on which they should be.
- Multiple human armor configurations shown. Asked which would be most iconic. Speculation: Marketing query, to work out what should be on the box.
- Multiple land vehicles shown.
- Focus is on character sand choices, but they want to bring back the focus on exploration and discovery.
They didn't show any female krogan to my remembrance, there were several various head configurations with face plating on the forehead, jaw line, and chin. They looked very synthetic, give a typical rock golem the Tron Legacy makeover and you've got it. Reaper color scheme though. Kind of like Sylux from Metroid Bounty Hunters; slightly less robotic in appearance.
They did say that exploration and story are very important and that one of their goals to strive for was "a stranger in a strange land like ME1" I think that's the way Mike Gamble worded it.
Mike did mention that they were looking into leaving a kind of debugging-like menu in the game for picking plot flags when making a save file so you can have the exact file you want without having to do another crazy long play-through or going through a really limited motion comic.
Also off topic, something else I remembered that was mentioned but not shown. They really want to do crazy customizable armor. Down to different pieces, colors, textures, materials, and whatnot.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And there you have it! Most of you ladies n gents have probably seen this info 1000 times but it's always interesting to note all this information came long before Bioware revealed anything officially. What they have revealed so far seems to match what we see here above. And with more solid info allegedly coming during the Fall 2016 and in light of recent events, I for one will be keeping a very close eye on this thread.
----the Survey----
The Next Mass Effect Context:
The next Mass Effect game takes place in the Helius Cluster (a cluster of 100s of solar systems in the Andromeda Galaxy), far removed by time and space from Commander Shepard’s heroic acts and the final events of the Mass Effect trilogy. You are a pathfinder, a combat trained but un-tested explorer leading an expedition into the Helius cluster to establish a new home for humanity. As you explore this sprawling series of solar systems (over 4x the size of Mass Effect 3), collecting resources and building colonies, you will encounter the savagery of untamed lands in the form of cut-throat outlaws and warring alien races.
To survive and colonize the wild reaches of space, you will need to grow your arsenal, your ship, your crew and make strategic (and often uneasy)
alliances to fight against increasingly menacing foes. Along the way, you will encounter the remains of a once powerful and mysterious alien race, the
Remnant, whose forgotten technology holds the key to gaining power in this region of the galaxy. As you uncover who the Remnant were, and the mysteries their ruins contain, you are drawn into a violent race to find the source of their forgotten technology that will determine the fate of humanity.
Collect Resources to Fuel your Growth:
Scour solar systems and planets within the Helius Cluster to find valuable resources and blueprints of long forgotten alien technology that will allow you
to craft better equipment and weapons, such as improving your leg armor to allow you to jetpack jump, or upgrading your cryo-beam (laser cannon) to target enemies or do area damage around you to clear out close threats. As you build your arsenal and resource infrastructure, you will be able to explore deeper into the increasingly dangerous and resource-rich solar systems of the Helius Cluster.
A Capable Crew:
Throughout the story, you will recruit seven distinct crew members to fight by your side. Each crew member has a unique personality and specific abilities
that open up strategic options as you choose which two of them to bring into each mission. For example, Cora has the ability to deploy a biotic shield that
protects everyone in the bubble while still allowing you and your squad to fire out of it. Your crew will grow alongside you as you explore the Helius
Cluster, and you can choose how you upgrade your crew’s weapons, gear and abilities to increase their individual combat effectiveness. Create the perfect squad to react to any situation and to support your preferred gameplay style.
Your Crew, Your Story:
Your crew members aren’t merely hired guns – they are part of the living universe in the Helius Cluster that develops in response to your actions and
choices. Increase each crew member’s loyalty by pursuing missions that are important to that specific character. For example, when a Krogan colony ship has been stolen by one of the outlaw factions leaving the colonists stranded without resources to survive, your Krogan squad mate, Drack, is determined to strike out against them. If you take the mission and help him track down the outlaws’ hideout to return the ship to its rightful owners, Drack’s loyalty
toward you and your squad will increase and Drack will unlock a brand new skill tree.
Explore each individual’s backstory and develop your relationship with them through conversations and unique missions. True to Mass Effect, what you choose to say will directly affect your crew’s loyalty and relationship with you, and will open up different conversations and narrative opportunities at the end of the game depending upon how you approach each encounter.
Deployed Strike Team Missions:
The Helius Cluster is 1000s of light years across, and you can’t be everywhere at once. As you develop more colonies, resource bases and settlements, you have to be able to keep them safe. Spend resources to recruit mercenaries and develop an AI controlled Strike Team that you can deploy to take on randomly generated, time-sensitive missions. Strike Team missions take many forms, including settlement defense and Remnant artifact recovery, which will take real-time to complete.
Send your Strike Team out on a mission while you continue playing the main game and they will return, 20 – 30 minutes later, having gained rewards such as XP, currency and equipment based on the success of their mission. Spend money and resources to train your Strike Team and acquire better gear for them, which will increase their success rate and allow them to take on more difficult missions for greater rewards.
Active Strike Team Missions:
When you encounter a Strike Team mission in the Single-Player mode, you can leave your Strike Team at their base and decide to tackle the mission yourself with your Multiplayer roster of characters. You also have the option of tackling the mission by yourself, or recruiting up to three friends to play with
you. The more friends you bring, the greater the challenge and the greater the reward. These missions will play out using the Next Mass Effect’s
multiplayer Horde mode (more details on this later).
These missions will include a variety of thematically appropriate objectives, like defending a Settlement against Khet attacks, or recovering a Remnant artifact off of a planet before an outlaw gang gets there first. By taking an active role in strike team missions, you can earn special Single-player rewards in addition to the usual multiplayer specific characters, weapons, weapon mods, and pieces of equipment which can be customized between missions. Additionally, players who join another person’s Strike Team mission will receive bonus in-game currency and multiplayer XP for helping others with their missions.
Multiplayer “Horde” Mode:
The next Mass Effect’s “Horde” multiplayer pits you and up to three of your friends against waves of enemy troops on various battlefields throughout the
galaxy. Players fight together to survive increasingly difficult enemy attacks and accomplish objectives, like disabling a bomb near a colony base or
assassinating a target. Progress through multiplayer missions to gain XP and earn new multiplayer specific weapons, characters, weapon mods, and pieces of equipment, which can be customized between matches. Multiplayer play will also earn you APEX funds (in-game currency), which can be used to purchase items and gear in the Single Player game.
Establish Settlements:
Search solar systems for rare habitable planets to establish a settlement that could serve as a base for humankind’s new home in the Helius Cluster. As you build permanent settlements, you will make strategic choices on where to focus your new base’s resources. For example: Recon Settlements will clear fog of war from the space map and give the player more strike team missions to choose from, while Mining Settlements will periodically supplement the player’s supply of crafting materials.
Dialogue:
Building upon the rich history of strategic dialogue that has defined the Mass Effect series, you can make meaningful choices in every conversation you
have with characters that impact the way your game evolves. The next Mass Effect adds deeper control over your conversations through a greater ability to interrupt and change the course of the conversation as it is happening.
During certain conversations, you will be able to take action-based choices, such as the option to pull out your gun and force someone to open a door instead of convincing them to do it through conversational guile. Action-based choices give you more options for how you approach dialogue with characters in the game and can lead to more extreme outcomes on the story as it evolves around the decisions you make when interacting with a huge cast of NPC characters.
Seamlessly Travel Through the Next Mass Effect Universe:
As you pilot your space ship, Tempest, across the 100s of solar systems that are seamlessly connected in the next Mass Effect, you will encounter new
planets filled with valuable resources, intelligent life, conflict, and alien technology that all give you opportunities to increase the power of your character, your ship and your team so that you can build them into a force that perfectly suits your gameplay style. Transitions between activities, like flying your Tempest (space ship) across a solar system to land on a mineral rich planet, then jumping into your Mako (land vehicle) to explore the surface of planet, all happen smoothly without loading screens.
Customize and Share Your Experience:
Discover new things in Andromeda Galaxy, like alien artifacts and natural wonders, that serve as trophies and decorations that you can use to modify the
look of your character, Tempest (Space Ship) and Mako (land vehicle). Customize the way your squad and your character look with clothes and aesthetic
modifications that you unlock throughout the game. Photos you take from the far reaches of the galaxy can be used to decorate your starship or sold to
certain characters.
Remnant Vault Raids:
Find and activate Remnant Monoliths to unlock Remnant vaults. Explore abandoned Remnant ruins to find and locate a powerful artifact, but once you remove it you will trigger the vault defenses that will arm traps, activate defense robots and even change the architecture of the vault itself to stop you from escaping. Fight your way out of the vault and you will be rewarded with valuable loot, including powerful gear, crafting resources and Star Keys that can be used to unlock massive orbital facilities in space that grant permanent stat bonuses.
Optional Elite Remnant Vault Raids are scattered around the Helius Cluster located in special orbital facilities that are unlocked by Star Keys. Similar to
the standard Remnant Vaults, you enter them to retrieve a special artifact which will trigger the vault defenses that arm traps, activate defense robots
and change the architecture of the vault itself to stop you from escaping.
However, Elite vaults ratchet up the difficulty of the encounter with increasingly powerful defense robots and traps, as well as roaming outlaws and deadly Khet patrols that are also in search of the elite artifacts. Elite Remnant vaults will test the limits of your combat and puzzle solving acumen, but with greater difficulty comes greater rewards. Gain rare loot, narrative acclaim and huge rewards for completing these daunting challenges.
Khet Outposts:
As you explore planets throughout the Helius Cluster, you will encounter Khet Outposts. These outposts are optional combat experiences where you enter the outpost and fight off waves of enemies. Destroy Khet outposts to earn XP, rewards and thwart their growing power in the region. Your allies will reward you with praise and increased narrative options as you fight to remove the Khet presence from the region.
Drive and upgrade your Mako (land vehicle):
Explore the surfaces of 100s of planets in the Helius Cluster in your versatile land vehicle, the Mako. Whether you are looking for a place to set up a
colony, searching for a Remnant vault or attacking a Khet Outpost, you will enjoy getting there in your Mako. Equip and upgrade your Mako in dozens of ways, like adding turbo boosters, upgrading your shield generator or adding a Hostile Detector to your radar to create the ultimate planetary exploration vehicle. Finally, get your Mako looking the way you want with a custom paintjob.
...
They asked my satisfaction for each of these descriptions.
----the PAX Prime '15 private panel----
So long story short I saw that tweet from Mike Gamble a few weeks ago that said "...if you love Mass Effect and are going to PAX Prime email me..." And so I did and then I stumbled upon this forum of like-minded people and thought I'd make an account in case there was something shown to support IT; cause if you're like me waiting for something, anything, is painful enough. Needless to say I was one of the 21 people that got to give feedback on the concepts as they showed them and gave us tiny cryptic bits of information.
So I'll start by saying that they did show us a metric shit-ton of concept art with very brief explanations. I don't even know of a logical order to start in.
They started off with the profound question of what N7 means to us which you might read into it not being a previous cycle I guess.
Then this was followed by asking us whether we wanted a direct sequel, a prequel, or something somewhere completely different at a different time. The resounding majority wanted a sequel series, which I think they knew already. And this is based completely off of my opinion but by judging the concept art it has absolutely got to be a sequel.
First concepts were of two new races. The first one being described as "Arrogant". They were really skinny, almost skeletal. Their bodies vaguely looked like a boney Turian. They had glowing eyes and a neck that frilled up from their chest (once they show it off you'll see how hard it is to describe. Their heads almost remind me of the aliens from Independence Day.
The second new race was described as "Ancient, Advanced, and Guardian". They had a similar color scheme to reapers and they looked like classic fantasy/sci-fi golems. Sleek rocky or metallic bodies with bright glowing lines flowing all over them. Some had fragmented pieces and shattered bits floating in place around them.
So I'm thinking sequel because new races are kind of hard to explain in a prequel especially when it does take place in the current cycle and I definitely know that for sure because the next few things they showed us were really nice cg models of an Asari, salarian, human, and krogan running in the new frostbite engine. They looked amazing by the way. Also they stated that, like humans having many different features from each other, they wanted to do that with other races.
That showed off some salarians and krogan with interesting face and bone structures. They also asked an odd but hard question for everyone. They showed a lineup of a character from each main race in the series and asked us which two would we get rid of if we had to. I couldn't do it but I was sadly surprised at how many people said Quarian and krogan.
Anyways, they showed off a random human model wearing various armors and configurations asking us what we liked and thought was potentially iconic. They also showed us a slew of land vehicles that would serve for different environments. And the most interesting vehicle was a personal sized Normandy-esque ship that could "fit a Mako-like vehicle in it". So the new races mingling with the old ones and a ship that looks like Normandy architecture, sounds like sequel material to me.
They said that as always characters and choices are most important and that they want to focus on exploration and discovery again. And then they finished by showing off too many concept art screens in rapid succession for me to be able to grasp anything. Just a whole lot of beautiful and interesting landscapes.
So that's that, I know it didn't quite answer any of our IT questions but if you're like me and have been holding out for 4 holding the answer to IT and the original endings of some dark matter stuff then the fact that this is most likely a sequel is great. And honestly what they showed us was absolutely amazing and I can't wait either way, I just love this universe so much. Thank you all for checking this out.
Summary:
- Opened with "What does N7 mean to you?"
- Asked if they'd like to see a sequel, prequel, or something different. Overwhelming majority said sequel.
- "Arrogant" race. Thin and skeletal. Glowing eyes. Necks that "frilled up from their chest".
- "Ancient, advanced, guardian" race. Like sci-fi stone golems with Tron-like glowing lines over their bodies and floating fragments/shards.
- Asari, Salarian, Human, and Krogan shown in Frostbite 3.
- Want to bring across the model variety of human models to other races, giving them more diverse bone structure.
- Showed a line-up of the series' main races, and asked fans to pick two if they had to get rid of them. Most picked Quarian and Krogan. Speculation: The game has multiple playable races in campaign, and BioWare wants feedback on which they should be.
- Multiple human armor configurations shown. Asked which would be most iconic. Speculation: Marketing query, to work out what should be on the box.
- Multiple land vehicles shown.
- Focus is on character sand choices, but they want to bring back the focus on exploration and discovery.
They didn't show any female krogan to my remembrance, there were several various head configurations with face plating on the forehead, jaw line, and chin. They looked very synthetic, give a typical rock golem the Tron Legacy makeover and you've got it. Reaper color scheme though. Kind of like Sylux from Metroid Bounty Hunters; slightly less robotic in appearance.
They did say that exploration and story are very important and that one of their goals to strive for was "a stranger in a strange land like ME1" I think that's the way Mike Gamble worded it.
Mike did mention that they were looking into leaving a kind of debugging-like menu in the game for picking plot flags when making a save file so you can have the exact file you want without having to do another crazy long play-through or going through a really limited motion comic.
Also off topic, something else I remembered that was mentioned but not shown. They really want to do crazy customizable armor. Down to different pieces, colors, textures, materials, and whatnot.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And there you have it! Most of you ladies n gents have probably seen this info 1000 times but it's always interesting to note all this information came long before Bioware revealed anything officially. What they have revealed so far seems to match what we see here above. And with more solid info allegedly coming during the Fall 2016 and in light of recent events, I for one will be keeping a very close eye on this thread.