Hungry-hungry news hippos VG24/7 have posted the date for the climactic last piece of Mass Effect 2 downloadable content, which will supposedly pave the way for Mass Effect 3. In case you missed it in the headline up there, beaming out at you like some kind of… big… date, it’s March 29th. You want details? I’ve got details.

Entitled “Arrival”, the new adventure will see Shepherd sent to the “border of the galaxy” “to rescue a female undercover agent that might have evidence for an upcoming Reaper invasion”. And a Reaper invasion is, as VG24/7 note, the exact thing that seems to be going on in the teaser trailer for Mass Effect 3. Very tidy of you, Bioware. VG24/7 also bring world from series producer Casey Hudson:

    “All year, we have been extremely honored and humbled by the reception we have received for Mass Effect 2 from players around the world, including our post release DLC.”

    “Mass Effect: Arrival is an exciting extension to Mass Effect 2 and will show players just how close the Reapers are to returning and completing their deadly harvest.”

Lovely. Arrival will cost 560 BioWare Points, or £4.33, which is precisely the amount of money you’d save if you had tap water instead of milk for your cereal from now until the DLC is released. Man! I should write for Lifehacker.

how to get bioware points 

GDC Europe organizers revealed new lectures for the August show, including BioWare talking about Mass Effect 3's new creatures, IMVU discussing "continuous deployment", and Slant Six speaking about  production pipelines. Taking place Monday through Wednesday, August 15-17, 2011 at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost, GDC Europe 2011 takes place alongside gamescom.

Main Conference sessions already announced include Brink, Blue Fang and Crysis 2 talks, and a lecture that compares the different creature creation pipelines used on Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3.

Scylla Costa and Brenon Holmes of BioWare will present a Production track talk called "From Boxes to Life! How to Prototype and Develop Creatures: Mass Effect 2 and 3 Case Study". In another session attendees will learn how releasing updates to customers 20+ times per day is possible in the Programming track talk "Using Continuous Deployment to Move Fast and Release without Pain". IMVU's Brett Durrett will discuss why it’s important, and how to successfully implement the system at a company of any size.

Finally, the lecture "Supersize Your Production Pipe!" from Slant Six Games’ Paul Martin (SOCOM: Confrontation, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City) offers insight on how to create new, or enhance existing, content authoring tools and data transformation pipelines.

GDC Europe organizers revealed new lectures for the August show, including BioWare talking about Mass Effect 3's new creatures, IMVU discussing "continuous deployment", and Slant Six speaking about  production pipelines. Taking place Monday through Wednesday, August 15-17, 2011 at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost, GDC Europe 2011 takes place alongside gamescom.

Main Conference sessions already announced include Brink, Blue Fang and Crysis 2 talks, and a lecture that compares the different creature creation pipelines used on Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3.

Scylla Costa and Brenon Holmes of BioWare will present a Production track talk called "From Boxes to Life! How to Prototype and Develop Creatures: Mass Effect 2 and 3 Case Study". In another session attendees will learn how releasing updates to customers 20+ times per day is possible in the Programming track talk "Using Continuous Deployment to Move Fast and Release without Pain". IMVU's Brett Durrett will discuss why it’s important, and how to successfully implement the system at a company of any size.

Finally, the lecture "Supersize Your Production Pipe!" from Slant Six Games’ Paul Martin (SOCOM: Confrontation, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City) offers insight on how to create new, or enhance existing, content authoring tools and data transformation pipelines.

While Electronic Arts has invested millions into making Star Wars: The Old Republic an online powerhouse, Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey said that an MMO based on BioWare's Mass Effect could bring in even more money for the publisher.

"Looking forward, we believe BioWare could develop an MMO based on their highly successful Mass Effect franchise, which should have a considerably better (relative StarWars MMO) margin profile, given the dilutive nature of the LucasArts royalty," Hickey said in a recent investor note.

Hickey also pointed out opportunities for EA to leverage the Battlefield license, saying that the company could release a new entry in the series on an annual basis.

"We suspect they could release a Battlefield franchise game annually, switching between Battlefield and Bad Company versions, similar to how Activision manages their Call of Duty franchise."

EA has previously acknowledged that it considers the upcoming Battlefield 3 to be in direct competition to Activision's Call of Duty franchise, noting that the title was "designed to take [Call of Duty] down."

Executive producer Casey Hudson of the Mass Effect series reveals that the studio used parts of the DLC for the second game as 'experiments' for the third.

The new features like the car chase on Illium were to "broaden that envelope of gameplay" for Mass Effect 3, which has more "action moments" like those.


The Shadow Broker DLC, which is the second from last release by BioWare for Mass Effect 2, included two major boss fights as well as a car chase through a planet's skyline. The last level was a major hazard with huge gusts of wind altering how certain abilities worked.

"Some of the stuff we did in our DLC was very successful, and were in a way prototypes for what we’re doing here. So when you fought the Shadow Broker, there’s a different scenario for how you’re fighting this huge guy who’s smashing parts of the environment, and charging you, and you’re working together," explained Casey Hudson.

"Or you’re on the back of that big ship, and there’s wind. And we had the whole car chase thing in the Shadow Broker. So with some of these things we’re just kind of experimenting with stuff to broaden that envelope of gameplay that we’re doing in Mass Effect 3."

As for what the next instalment has to offer: "One thing that we’re doing is just making the entire experience feel a lot more… it’s the moment to moment unpredictability, the variability. Anything can happen. We’ve got these action moments, little micro-cutscenes and stuff that lead in and out of actual gameplay," he continued.

"We’ve got lots and lots of epic situations that you’re in for gameplay and combat stuff that we’ve never done before." Also confirmed are squad mates returning from the original game, and that other major characters will be in their somehow. BioWare has been keen to tease relationship consequences await those who slept around with the crew.

Mass Effect 3 releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC early next year.

The various choices that impacted the ending of Mass Effect 2 were pretty complex, and now Mass Effect 3 is primed to amplify that feeling by tying together choices from all three games. BioWare's Casey Hudson explained how this will bring it all together in an interview with PC Gamer.

"I think a way to think about it is if you made decisions early on, you'll see them affecting this," he said. "And the decisions you might want to make that go against those prior things are gonna be harder."



Like Mass Effect 2, all of your decisions will culminate at the end, and it will reward you for being more thorough. "All the different things that you do, if you do a little side quest, or you go off and do a major plot, these things contribute to the war effort," Hudson explained. "If you just rip straight down the critical path and try to finish the game as soon as you can, and do very little optional or side stuff, then you can finish the game. You can have some kind of ending and victory, but it'll be a lot more brutal and minimal relative to if you do a lot of stuff."

He says that if you take your time through the game, rallying the various factions of the galaxy around the war effort, "you'll get an amazing, very definitive ending."

BioWare is excited to be unveiling their Mass Effect 3 E3 demo next week, which felt like "insanity" getting it done revealed executive producer Casey Hudson.

Gameplay designer Christina Norman reckons it’s their "best demo, and our best game" in the studio's history. Mass Effect 3 is no cakewalk promise BioWare.


“I'd say developing our SW:KOTOR #E3 demo was "casual" difficulty and the #ME1 and #ME2 ones were "normal". This #E3 feels like "insanity",” twittered Hudson.

While Christina Norman said she “saw the basically final mass effect 3 e3 demo today...wow. No doubt in my mind our best demo, and our best game, ever." For those unaware of Mass Effect’s difficulty scale: Casual, Normal, Veteran, Hardcore, and Insanity.

The focus in the third instalment is on a small squad with "deeper relationships and more interesting interplay", said Hudson. Already confirmed are love interests with some outcomes coming back to haunt previous decisions made in the bedroom.

Mass Effect 3 releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC early 2012.