The Mog Blog

Shepard has a bunch of friends to join the fight... It's true!

With rumors and speculations of Mass Effect 3 featuring multiplayer of some sort, Bioware has finally thrown down the gauntlet and revealed that it will indeed feature cooperative multiplayer as well as adding a new system called Mass Effect 3: Galaxy at War. Galaxy at War and multiplayer details were posted on the Bioware forums by Chris Priestly. One thing that Chris quickly and promptly iterates is that the multiplayer aspect is completely optional and is not required to get the full single player Mass Effect experience.

Of course, there will be people freaking about stuff like this anyways.

Galaxy at War is a four player cooperative side game that will run parallel to Mass Effect 3 in story. The idea is that Shepard is off doing his own thing (the single player campaign) while you, being your own character in whatever race or class you want, will be joined up with three others to ” form an elite Special Forces squad, and combine their weapons, powers and abilities to devastating effect as they fight together to liberate key territories from enemy control.”

I read this as “spam Charge all day and zip through the world.” Don’t lie, you would do the exact same thing.

For those worrying about how the single player will be affected by the development of the multiplayer portion, Chris eases the fire by stating “a dedicated team from our recently formed BioWare Montreal studio has been focused on creating the multiplayer game features while the main game continued to be developed by the team in BioWare Edmonton.”

And if you’re also worried about the quality of both in general (like what happened with the boss battles in Deus Ex: Human Revolution): “Both teams are integrated under the same leadership group that produced Mass Effect 1 and 2, led by Casey Hudson. Rest assured that no compromises were made to either of these modes in the development of Mass Effect 3.”

So what is Galaxy at War? Chris states that it is “a new way for players to manage and experience the galactic war from multiple fronts, including a new 4-player co-op mode. The key to saving the galaxy is the “Galactic Readiness” level, measured by Commander Shepard’s ability to apply every possible asset – people, weapons, resources, armies, fleets – in the final battle against the Reapers.” What does this sound like to me? Farmville for Mass Effect. Heck, you think I’m kidding? It continues with “We are not going into details about the other components of the Galaxy at War at this time except to say we are designing each to make sense for that platform. Each component will be able to affect a player’s “Galactic Readiness” level in a different way. Again, participation in any or all ME3:GaW elements is entirely optional.”

The Galaxy at War system is clearly going to be more than just a 4-player co-op game. To me, this easily reads itself as something that will have Facebook integration. It would not be the first time that Bioware would do something like this as the Dragon Age series always did have a presence on Facebook and even rewarded players something for their non-casual gaming counterpart.

So, 4 Player co-op, possible Facebook game and a “Galatic Readiness” level that can be raised high enough to get the best ending in single player. Good or bad vibes? I’m not quite sure yet!