Bioware: we always wanted multiplayer in Mass Effect

BioWare has been trying to get multiplayer into Mass Effect from day one, Mass Effect 3 creative director Casey Hudson has revealed in a new interview with Xbox World 360 (via CVG).

"To us it was always a fun, intriguing idea to partake in the Mass Effect universe with friends, to look around, kind of see it from inside with others rather than just taking part in this solo experience," Hudson commented.

"In general, that's the direction that videogames are heading; they're more social, more online, and we've been trying to find a way ever since Mass Effect 1 to integrate some kind of multiplayer.

"In those early days we were trying to figure out what kind of a game it was going to be, and were thinking of ways that maybe the whole story experience might revolve around a co-op [structure]. That, instead of there being just one Commander Shepard, he's in fact kind of lots of different heroes that can jump in, meet each other and interact.

"And by embarking upon that route we realised there was just a lot of things we simply couldn't do, or had to compromise when ensuring the solo experience was as great as we wanted it to be, so we dropped that idea and proceeded to perfect single-player, to make it really solid."

As most of you will know, Mass Effect is a game that turns on one single personality. The idea of sharing its vast universe of choices with another player is an eyebrow-raising one, to say the least. Imagine the stalemates over the fate of the Rachni Queen...

"Then, with ME2 we revisited the idea, deliberating whether you could perhaps take control of one of the other characters for a while, but - again - there were a lot of factors that would have compromised the single-player story," Hudson went on.

"So the difference really was that, with ME3, we adopted a fundamentally different approach to what the thing is about, which is that there is a whole intergalactic war going on, which wasn't the case in the previous entries. So Shepard is still the hero, making the big decisions, deciding what's going to happen with the universe and building alliances, but now there's armies all over the place, fighting to just hang onto different locations.

"That provided us with a different idea; now in multiplayer you can play as that crew of special forces, journeying around and helping Shepard with the war effort."

While Mass Effect 3's multiplayer offerings are considerable, and do impact the single player storyline, you won't be forced to sample them in order to get all the possible campaign endings.

Bioware "isn't sure" whether it'll add multiplayer to Mass Effect 4. Check out Matt's Mass Effect 3 hands-on for more.