The gaming industry has a few highly anticipated titles coming up right now, but one of the most prominent ones is definitely “Mass Effect 4”, as the game has been the hot topic of many online discussion boards for a long time now. The way the last game in the series ended came as a bit of a disappointment to some fans, and many are now looking up to “Mass Effect 4” as a possible recovery for the series, and the title that can win back fans’ trust in the franchise as a whole.
The game will focus quite strongly on its combat this time, and we are probably going to see many more additions to this side of its gameplay compared to previous entries in the franchise. In addition, a lot more thought is now going into the high-level design of the game and the direction of some of its levels in particular. The lead level designer for the game gave some insight into how the studio was handling the levels of the game and how everything was supposed to come together in the end, and he talked about how the team needed to have a very specific vision for the overall design of the levels in order to make them suitable for an RPG like that.
Fans of the franchise have been curious for a while now how the team behind it manages to put together such an expansive adventure with so many different aspects to it, and according to Colin Campbell, the key to that is – perhaps unsurprisingly to most – proper communication. He described that his team constantly had to juggle various ideas back and forward and they were regularly playing around with different themes for the levels, and he also gave some insight into the process of how those ideas are propagated from the higher levels of the game’s designer team down to the actual developers and designers.
But in the end, the main creative direction is coming from the designers themselves as they are given the task of trying out different combinations for any given theme that they have been requested to work on. There are apparently many variables that a designer can play with once they’ve been given a more general theme, and as a result each part of the game will have a unique feeling to it, and players will be able to get a sense of each designer’s individual contribution.
Furthermore, we got some information about the combat of the game and what kinds of options players will have for disposing of their enemies. This will apparently be a much more major focus in the new title and players will have a much more diverse range of features at their disposal, and even though “Mass Effect” isn’t traditionally a combat-focused franchise, it looks like this particular game is going to do quite a lot in this regard and it will offer something enjoyable to shooter fans who like to run around intricately designed levels.
Other than that, the game is going to tie nicely to the previous entries in the franchise, and we are apparently going to see various references to the past of the franchise. We don’t know yet just how extensive those connections are going to be, but we definitely expect that the writers will put some effort into making fans have a familiar feeling with this game and giving them a warm welcome once they fire it up for the first time.