Clarification on Mass Effect 3's Difficulty Modes

Mass Effect 2 was easily my favorite game of 2010. I have played through it half a dozen times, with a variety of characters, and still have a good time each time I run through it. When I first finished the game, Mass Effect 3 couldn't have seemed farther away. I didn't (and still don't) know if it can live up to the hype that started to build almost right away.

Of course, Bioware released another game last year, in between ME2 and ME3. Dragon Age 2 sounded like it changed key things but overall, I had high hopes for a sequel to such an amazing game. Well, we all know how that turned out. Dragon Age 2 wasn't a broken game but it was a rushed game and heavily flawed because of its repetition. That was the first time that Bioware really took a hit and I thought they might be losing their stride.

As more and more coverage has come out around the game, I can't help but feel skeptical. The inclusion of multiplayer made me cringe and hope that resources weren't diverted from the important places to cram it in. The second Spike VGA trailer looked flashy but extremely boring to play (run in a straight line to hit a button!). Even though I didn't look at any of it, the rumors about the story leaks make things sound messed up in that department too. Things keep building against this game that make me skeptical, something I would never have felt for a Bioware game before DAII.

Casey Hudson, project lead on Mass Effect 2 and 3, recently gave an interview with Game Informer. Of most interest to me was the part about the difficulty choice changes they are making. It was revealed a few months ago that instead of difficulties like Normal and Hard, the game would have Action, Roleplaying, and Story modes. It seemed bizarre at the time and the interview sheds a bit more light on the change.

Story mode makes the combat extremely easy in support of getting through the story. Action mode auto-fills in dialogue, supposedly in a mix of Paragon and Renegade choices. Roleplaying mode sounds like it will be most like the games before it.

Hudson argues that some people like to either play the game without making dialogue choices and some would like to play the game but can't get a handle on the shooting. This still doesn't make much sense. Those who don't care about the dialogue could have just blown through it like the did in the other games. As for the Story mode, who would want to play a game with shooting in it if they couldn't get the shooting down? Are there really that many people who can't just knock it down to Easy and slog through?

These changes seem strange but I can see now that they aren't really harmful to the core experience. As long as we pick the Roleplaying mode, things won't be any different. I can't really fault Bioware for doing something different even though it isn't really something that matters to a large majority of gamers.

Here's a link to the interview if you want to read it. It's got some more interesting information in it.

Game Informer Interview with Casey Hudson