Mass Effect 3: Ashley Williams, the Citadel races, "bulking up" and tugging heartstrings

Here's something for you to chew on, gender-in-games hobbyists: BioWare's cutscene direction in Mass Effect varies depending on whether there's a female or a male character in view. The specifics aren't quite as sordid as you may be expecting, however.

"Our females always look better with a longer lens on it," lead cinematic animator Parish Ley confesses to OXM, discussing how his techniques have evolved across the Mass Effect trilogy. "But aliens often look cool with a shorter, wide lens to take in all the crazy features, it accentuates that distortion."

Glancing over the thorny topic of how women (and, for that matter, men) are depicted and defined in Mass Effect - how about those aliens, eh? "They were great designs," boasts art director Derek Watts, albeit very firmly with the benefit of hindsight. Mass Effect's elegant Asari, concave-chested Salarians and swept-back Turians weren't dreamt up overnight after one too many Star Trek marathons; they're the product of considerable toil and sweat.

"Aliens are always such a pain in the ass," Watts goes on. "It would be nice to do more but you have to go through so many concepts and get everybody on board and it's a lot of work and drawing, so you start off being like "This is awesome! An alien assassin!" But then someone says that he's a romance character, which means he can't look ugly or crazy-looking.

"When you start to draw him you get to a stage where you just want it done and don't care what it looks like. If you ask us many months after the character has finished we'd be like 'that's awesome'. But if you asked us right after we were finished building it you'd be like 'don't talk to me about that guy - I hate his guts'.

How has BioWare adapted these hard-won, proven designs for Mass Effect 3? Like the warriors of Cerberus, the Citadel's races have put on extra layers for battle. The first game's "skin-tight" look is long gone. "Mass Effect 3, we wanted to bulk people up and make them look like they were part of the war."

Don't expect the armour to rival Gears for beefiness, however; each new chest-plate, helmet or greave has an echo in the first game's more elegant vibe. "It was something we had [a foothold] in straight from the beginning. It's grown and matured and the detail level has got much higher. The Turian heads have stayed the same, the Asari too - we still use Asari heads from ME1 - some of the armours are the same design.

"What keeps it consistent is that we have added a lot, but we haven't got rid of all of the Mass Effect 1 stuff. It all helps sell the style. Things like the the Salarian armours, those have come all the way from ME1, all we do is touch them up, tweak up the textures a bit. We didn't want to do too much work because the more you add to it, you have to go through skinning again."

Watts is surprised by how well some of the original Mass Effect models have aged. Even main characters like Ashley Williams, the models players will look to first in search of technical improvements, are built from used parts. "Ashley does re-appear in the game, wearing Alliance fatigues - fans were worried you'd have to have her wearing armour. We went back to the original headscan just to tweak it up a bit, put some make-up on and polished her hair. But overall that scan still held out from 7 years ago."

That speaks for the value of a good-quality face scan; BioWare frequently throws together its own faces, but you can't beat a genuine human profile. "We still scan in models for anyone who needs to look good in the game. For anyone who needs character in their face we use actors. The IIlusive Man was a model. If you want someone with more 'character' in their face like Zaeed, models don't have a lot of character in their face - they just look good."