Bioware has finally lifted the curtain on its upcoming Mass Effect Remaster, the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and while it will include much of the DLC from all three Mass Effect games, there are a few things that won’t make the cut. We now know that one of those missing pieces will be the stellar multiplayer from Mass Effect 3, which I along with many others spent quite a few hours in back when the game first released. In an interview with GameInformer, Environment and Character Director Kevin Meek and Project Director Mac Walters explained why they decided to not include that as part of the package.
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“I had all of these analogies early on to try to help people understand what this remaster is going to be about,” they said. “It’s one thing to take a 1982 Porsche that needs to be fully restored, but now I want you to imagine that it was actually buried in concrete. So you’ve got to chip away at all of that, and every time you go to try something it’s like ‘is this even going to work?’ Do I blow the engine turnover? You know, it’s just a lot of work. And I think people underestimate what it’s like to do this game, because – at every step – you are given an agonizing choice of ‘is this the thing that we want to spend our time on and really try to improve it’ and ‘where will this lead us down the road?’”
Not only would it add development time and take away resources from everything else, but it would bring up several important questions and possible complications long term.
“I feel strongly that we’ve chosen the things that are what the majority of our fans were most passionate about. On the topic of multiplayer, it was just really hard,” they said. “Getting all of the online systems working and functionality would have been another large chunk to do but at the same time, there are a lot of other logistics involved. The economy is built completely differently. Then questions came up like, “Do we support it post-launch? What about people who are still playing multiplayer today? Do we try to find a way to somehow do crossplay between the PS3 and PS4?”
I’m personally a bit bummed it didn’t make the cut, but completely understand why it didn’t. In this already crowded multiplayer space, it wasn’t likely to make a huge dent, and that’s a lot of time, money, and energy devoted to something that is not the primary focus.
Do you feel like they should’ve included multiplayer? Let us know in the comments or as always you can talk all things Mass Effect and gaming with me on Twitter @MattAguilarCB!
