I’m Ryan Warden, the External Producer for Mass Effect Trilogy. I’ve been with BioWare for almost nine years now – lately I’ve been working to help bring you Mass Effect Trilogy for PlayStation 3, and today I’m honored to be able to write a post for PlayStation.Blog!
We began work on Mass Effect Trilogy in earnest last April, shortly after Mass Effect 3 had shipped. The trilogy was complete, but there was a slight complication — there were people who had missed out on one (or more) titles in the series. Clearly this included PS3 owners, who had never had the chance to play the original Mass Effect. Mass Effect Trilogy was a great opportunity to rectify that!
We partnered with Edge of Reality, an external team with whom we’ve worked on many previous projects. Edge of Reality has a deep understanding of how PS3 works, under the hood, so we thought the project would be a perfect fit. We had a huge head start because of the work we had done with Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 for PS3, but we still wanted to maintain the look and feel – the classic experience – of the original Mass Effect.
“We got some huge gains in performance.”
We tinkered with the audio engine, and with the way that memory was allocated to various chunks of the game. We brought over some lighting and visual effects improvements from Mass Effect 2 and 3, and combined them with the original Mass Effect systems. In essence, we invited the Wu Tang Clan to a rap battle… and it paid off. We got some huge gains in performance – especially with regard to texture popping, which has been dramatically improved – yet we were still able to maintain the classic look and feel of the introduction to the Mass Effect universe.
At the end of my first playthrough during development, I saw a scene that had once been so familiar – the Normandy jumps to FTL, the screen fades to black, and That Song kicks in. I had sat through this scene countless times during the development of Mass Effect. Every single time, the delay-soaked guitar of Faunts’ “M4 Part II” put a grin on my face, just like the first time I saw it. I’m lucky that I got to relive the eight years of my life that I’ve spent working on the Mass Effect series. And now PS3 owners can experience the full trilogy for the first time.
You can finally create your Shepard at the beginning of Mass Effect, and bring that same character through the rest of the series. You can stand on the moon, drive the Mako across an asteroid, chase a rogue Spectre to the edges of the galaxy, and deliver right hooks to your heart’s content. Then you can pop the Mass Effect 2 disc in the tray.
I’m really proud of the work that the team has done to bring Mass Effect Trilogy to the PS3, and I can’t wait for you to play through the whole series. I hope you enjoy it!
When I first heard that Mass Effect 1 is coming to PS3, I was estatic. I never thought ME1 would come to PS3 because of MS controlling the 1st game. Thank you for bringing this game for the PS masses. I will get chance to play Mass Effect with full experience.
I wish you guys would give games like this free for plus members!
KZ1, ME1, Max P 1…maybe one of the FF classics.
Btw on a separate note, how come you guys dont have max payne 2 ?
That be really amazing!! I can only hope lol.
i got a game breaker glitch for you guys… yesterday i started playing ME1 after downloading it from psn. it had a few issues here and there where the audio cuts out on conversations… now today the sound is completely gone! i can’t play this game if i can’t hear anything. are you guys planning on patching this soon?
Sorry, just fixed the no sound issue… i’m playing on a different tv and it must have been an issue on the switch. anyway, i did notice some cutting of audio from time to time. will there be a patch on it?
@ jml_809
Bioware developers have already stated numerous times (including in this post) that “Pinnacle Station” dlc will NEVER be coming to the PS3 Mass Effect 1. The source file has been corrupted and conversion to the PS3 has been deemed physically impossible.
That DLC is never coming to PS3.
@omega_alpha_619
But then at least they should update the trilogy to include all of Mass Effect 2’s DLC and all of the pre order bonuses, Collecters Editon stuff, and DLC to Leviathan. They can you know just use the voices from Pinnacle Station and recreate the entirity of the other parts from scratch.
I played me 1 and 2 on my pc and i remember how maddening were the loading screen (and the elevators) now i will play the trilogy on my ps3 but did you fix those little problems???
Ryan, thank you so much. Enjoyed the trilogy on PC but will be getting the PS3 release as well as I prefer gaming on consoles. I’d also like to thank you for your comments, they’re hilarious, dude.
Been having audio cut off issues with the game from time to time. I really hope bioware takes a look into this issue as audio is such a huge factor with this series. Other than that I hope it enjoys digustingly good sales and therefore encourages a patch for this glorious game.
Very thankful for the time, effort, and thoroughness of the efforts put to the making of all of your ME content. I do have one question because I bought ME on playstation network but not the trilogy. Will any ME 2 game, ( the regular copies that didn’t come with the trilogy ), still come with the patch to import your ME 1 character?
Will ME1 be coming out on its own on disc or is the only way is to get the disc version is on the trilogy?
@ 111 – From what I’ve read so far around the ‘net, they do not have any plans to release the first game solo outside of the PSN digital copy. I would love to have the game with a case and disc, but unfortunately we’ll have to settle. Still worth it!
Also, thanks to Ryan for answering all of our questions. As a fan, I appreciate the immense effort you and the rest of the team have put into this series.
TY SOOO MUCH FOR BRINGING ME1 TO PS3 :) :) ……… but it is soooo broken!!!! some audio is messed up, AI is all over the place (broken not stupid(stupid is normal)), i’ve had lag issues (like points in the game where everything stutters and then catches up), even got stuck on a loading screen… the PS3 I have is less than 6 months old, and i’ve never had problems like this with other games… PLEASE FIX, because i REALLY like this game :)