BioWare is gearing up for the release of Mass Effect: Andromeda on March 21st but before that date arrives they've been dropping new details on the game, including the insane number of speaking characters in the game.
Gamespot is reporting that BioWare's lead writer Mac Walters revealed at PAX East in Boston, Mass Effect: Andromeda will feature 1,200 speaking characters in the game, up from the 670 speaking characters in Mass Effect 3. Reports are stating that the number of speaking characters in the upcoming game is nearly more than both Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 combined.
According to the article, these aren't just no-nothing characters you'll encounter throughout your journey, or a bunch of shopkeepers you'll come across in your galactic travels. It's mentioned that a lot of these conversations will take place amongst your crew and squad mates, opening up lots of different dialogue options for gamers to explore as they trek their way across the galaxy.
They mention that a lot of conversations will be designed to be fluid and that the information you unlock in some dialogue trees will carry over into future conversations.
The most significant detail is that many of these conversations will be attached to civilians that players will need to unhatch from the Nexus station as they establish outposts across the galaxy.
Finding a habitable planet and fulfilling the necessary means in Mass Effect: Andromeda will allow gamers to then send down human pods containing civilians. These civilians will be tasked with certain objectives in order to keep the outpost up and running as human colonies are established on the planet.
Essentially, the way the game is setup the more you play Mass Effect: Andromeda and the more content you unlock, the more planets you discover, and the more outposts you build, the more people you'll be able to interact with. It basically means that the game should theoretically get bigger and more engrossing the more you play.
This revelation about the game's dialogue and interaction features should be a big selling point to people who really enjoy the dialogue and social interactions that are quite prominent in BioWare's titles.
There were some complaints about Mass Effect 3 aiming more-so for third-person action combat as opposed to being a real RPG. This was during the time when Gears of War was at the height of its popularity and EA wanted to cash in on the third-person action genre, so they tapered off the RPG elements to focus more on a cover shooter. It was a semi-success as far as merging genres was concerned.
It appears now they're honing in on offering a quality third-person shooter attached to a very social role-playing simulator. We'll see how well both come together and all 1,200 NPCs you'll be able to interact with when Mass Effect: Andromeda launches on March 21st.
