Come December 4, PlayStation 3 owners will get their first experience with the original game that started it all. The Mass Effect Trilogy has been dated for an early December release and the teams at Bioware and Edge of Reality worked diligently to bring the original to the PS3 in all its glory.
Bioware's Ryan Warden talks about the Mass Effect Trilogy
The Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game will arrive on November 6.
(via the Bioware Blog)
Bioware's Ryan Warden talks about the Mass Effect Trilogy
To be completely honest, I thought that it was unlikely that we could port Mass Effect in less than a year. It might take three years. Maybe even twenty-three! Fortunately, the team at Edge of Reality, an external team we’ve worked with in the past on many projects, thought otherwise. So we decided to try.
There were some complications. The audio technology that we originally used was no longer supported by its developer… and the engine didn’t support the PS3. “No problem,” said Edge of Reality, and they found a solution. The levels and art assets in Mass Effect were massive and streaming into memory would probably have to work differently on the PS3 – which is NOT a trivial issue. “Shouldn’t be a problem’” said Edge of Reality, and they found a solution.
Then there was performance. At the outset, we didn’t know what we’d find with Mass Effect, and wouldn’t know until we were hip deep in development. We needed to see the game in motion to make fixes, and fixing performance issues isn’t easy. It’s a little like realizing you’ve lost your car keys and then trying to answer, “When are you going to find your keys?”
We found a solution, but the solution took a lot of time and effort. It wasn’t easy, but early this summer, we had the game running and feature complete – something that made eyes bug out of heads around the office.
There were some complications. The audio technology that we originally used was no longer supported by its developer… and the engine didn’t support the PS3. “No problem,” said Edge of Reality, and they found a solution. The levels and art assets in Mass Effect were massive and streaming into memory would probably have to work differently on the PS3 – which is NOT a trivial issue. “Shouldn’t be a problem’” said Edge of Reality, and they found a solution.
Then there was performance. At the outset, we didn’t know what we’d find with Mass Effect, and wouldn’t know until we were hip deep in development. We needed to see the game in motion to make fixes, and fixing performance issues isn’t easy. It’s a little like realizing you’ve lost your car keys and then trying to answer, “When are you going to find your keys?”
We found a solution, but the solution took a lot of time and effort. It wasn’t easy, but early this summer, we had the game running and feature complete – something that made eyes bug out of heads around the office.
The Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game will arrive on November 6.
(via the Bioware Blog)