Mass Effect: Andromeda Interview
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Eurogamer recently chatted up Mass Effect: Andromeda creative director Mac Walters and producer Fabrice Condominas about a variety of topics, most notably their plans for the action RPG's squadmates, alien races, planned DLC, and more. An excerpt, as usual:
Mac, I remember you speaking to Game Informer and mentioning a squadmate that was cut in development. From the races represented I'm going to make an educated guess and say they were salarian. Can you say anything more about why he didn't make it and if we might ever see him again?
Mac Walters: You know game development is a constant series of decisions - there's always going to be some scope reductions. Because we decided to do loyalty missions that meant every squad member had their own special mission plus a significant amount of relationship dialogue. Ultimately, the only reason we chose to cut was because of that. It wasn't that we didn't like the character - I believe at the time it was just which ones were furthest along. As for whether we'd see them again in the future - it is possible. I think a lot of people like the idea for the character. But you never know - sometimes what we do is instead of coming back to it in the game he'll come back in a book or comic or something like that.
Mordin is my favourite character so, as a salarian fan, I hope we see him again.
Mac Walters: [laughs] Part of it too was we're playing up the Tempest crew members much more and we have a salarian on the crew. We put a lot of investment in that character.
He's the pilot, right?
Mac Walters: Exactly.
Just to clear up one more thing from that interview - you mentioned we might see additional squad members via DLC in the future. That confused me a little because I remember BioWare's comments after [Mass Effect 3 day-one DLC character] Javik that you probably wouldn't do a DLC squadmate again - because maybe you wouldn't have them the whole adventure or get the most out them. I wondered whether you meant a DLC squadmate more like Aria, who was available for a specific set of missions only.
Mac Walters: Yeah - I think there's a lot of different ways we could introduce new characters like that, new squadmates, whether they are one-offs for a mission... But I think Andromeda is more of a persistent experience, more of an open world than we've done before. Even once the critical path story, the main narrative, is done there's still a lot to accomplish. It's a game of exploration so if we wanted to create a space for a new follower we can do it. It's more a question of will we do it, at this point. I wasn't ruling it out, I think I meant, but it's certainly possible we'll bring in new characters before we get to a Mass Effect Andromeda 2.
