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Game Designer @TheRealCLZ plays Mass Effect
“I can’t view Mass Effect as a great game. I can’t. I’m proud of what we accomplished with what we had, but it will always be less than what it could have been, to me, just because of what we went through.”
CLZ worked on ME1 for about 2 years, and gives off a lot of interesting trivia about the game that I’ve never seen before, especially technical stuff, plus some stories from his time at Bioware. The link above is a 5-hour stream (intro up to Fist in Chora’s Den) and he’ll be playing the rest of the game in the following days.
I wrote notes in order and rearranged them - most are quoted directly from CLZ, others are paraphrased:
(Xfest 2005, first teaser) Shepard was supposed to be a very angry looking bald dude
they unveiled New Shepard at a team meeting - “he looked weirdly and distinctly like the project producer"
No one really thought it was the right look, there was a lot of complaints, so they asked for suggestions. Someone copypasted Mark Vanderloo’s image. Everyone thought it looked good, wondered if they could convince Mark Vanderloo to do a headscan.
Mark Vanderloo was a fan of games and gave them a good deal on the headscan
Meanwhile fShep did not get a headscan, even in ME3
Seth Green added some lines and the writers rewrote his lines to match what he did. “A chunk of Joker is just Seth Green doing whatever the hell he felt like”
Took 3 days to get Joker to sit in his seat. “[Joker’s] actual position is a few meters below the floor to the left/right” (an offset animation) due to collision problems
Nobody is actually sitting where they are sitting, they are offset from somewhere else
Kaidan is actually wearing Cerberus armor (the Onyx armor) on the field
Ashley’s Phoenix armor is actually medic armor - the same reason Kaidan’s in a Cerberus suit - they had accidentally released screenshots of them in that armor and had to stick with it
A similar story relating to this - a screenshot was released with a Vanguard in heavy armor. They requested if they could have Vanguards in heavy armor instead due to that screenshot, but that meant altering the balance of the game so they refused. Instead, there were artists who were not happy with the light armor, so they made new models for heavy armor; the old heavy armor became the medium armor (validating the screenshot) and the old medium became light armor.
There was a time when Ashley was assigned the wrong face and had a 5 o’clock shadow going on
Jenkins was just referred to as “redshirt” and was always slated to die at the beginning
The content on the Normandy pre-Eden Prime was supposed to be twice as long, about an hour’s worth; one was a scene of Jenkins pestering Kaidan to show him his biotics and Kaidan throwing him into a wall. it was cut because the pacing wasn’t good - it was too long, and would be information overload / confusing for the players. (note: probably the scene that Chakwas describes while she’s having ice brandy with Shepard)
original Nihlus was like “fuck you” to everything - “an asshole” - he didn’t think you deserved to be the Spectres
Nihlus was never intended as a party member
CLZ had a scene to showcase Nihlus being a badass on Eden Prime, but it was in a memory-heavy area, and late in development. It was cut eventually
the Nihlus scene was supposed to happen at the beacon dig site but the memory requirements were too high, so it was moved
Geth were inspired by their office lamps
the things Saren throws around in his cutscene were first represented by small cubes so he looked like a toddler throwing a tantrum
Benezia has no head under the headdress since they have to shave off polygon faces where not visible (note: this is usual practice in modeling, it is assumed these faces will never be seen so they are removed to save on memory)
They had an idea that for NG+, the player could snipe Sovereign at a key point when he ascends from Eden Prime and end the game right there, but they didn’t have time to implement that easter egg
The husks are actually positioned at the base of Dragon’s Teeth, so the animation is played for when they are lowered, then when they get off to realign with their position, and then collision is turned on so you can hit them with bullets
Volus, elcor and hanar are never seen walking due to memory; they have a skeleton with very few animations available, and could not be given walk cycles because the animations would exist with them all the time and these are unique animations that had to be loaded into memory
The Reapers weren’t called Reapers originally, but “Nazare” (“Nazari”?) (note: Sovereign was Nazara to the Geth in ME2). They ended with Reapers since Nazare sounded close to Nazi (a geopolotical team from Microsoft would review content from the game that would be problematic in certain regions, and pointed this out)
The Citadel was originally “the Oculon” - the eye at the center of the civilized universe. Apparently somewhere that name meant anal sex, so it also had to be changed
a lot of the Citadel had to be redesigned because of the demand on memory
Citadel Rapid Transit wasn’t planned, it was a result of the Lead Technical Designer getting tired of running around the Citadel
Garrus was one of the characters that was rewritten; originally he was a “stick-up-his-ass, lawful goody two-shoes paladin” then rewritten instead to be a “Dirty Harry in space”
Chorban was supposed to be checking the keeper near Avina, but was moved due to Avina’s “please do not disturb the keepers” line. He was moved up to the Citadel Tower to be in on your way out. The keeper he’s checking was added for that purpose, which made the final number 21 for the Scan The Keepers quest
Keepers don’t spawn in areas with combat so it’s possible to miss the one where you meet Tali since it’s not there
If you don’t answer correctly to Conrad Verner, he gets into a fight with a turian and has his head caved in
Chora’s Den had some of the worst memory issues
The chair in front of the dancing asari stripper was added overnight, surprising CLZ when he came to work next day
They wanted to add male strippers but were out of memory
Fist originally had a shaved head and shades
Flux was originally an open space right as you ascended the stairs.
They added a wall and door as sight blockers to help with loading/memory
Flux dance floor: besides dancing with Doran and dancing with your LI, one more thing that CLZ didn’t manage to implement was dancing with Wrex. He would stand there looking around awkwardly, then leave.
Blasto is a random joke Patrick Weekes made
CLZ: “Always take game previews with a grain of salt” - because there’s a lot of cheating
[ Xfest 2006 demo ] the part where Shepard grabs Garrus and chews him off did not make it into the game because it was not a real interrupt in implementation yet; Garrus could have finished talking and stood there for 10 minutes and you could still “interrupt” him that way
[ E3 2006 demo ] Ilos was supposed to be at night; they weren’t really showing off the galaxy map, they were pretending to play a flash video
Entire sections of the Citadel were deleted during the demo so the ship could “run with something resembling a framerate”
Q: “who gave shepard his dance animations?” CLZ: “I don’t remember who did the mo-cap for that, but the first time we ever saw the sexy dance, it was on a krogan. At a team meeting.”
the particular dance the krogan was doing is the standing dance that asari strippers and clubbers do
The guy CLZ worked with wanted to get things done and found a way to work in punching the reporter (Al-Jilani). They loved it and made it an official thing
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