The following is a transcription of the texts in the chapter "The Making of Mass Effect 3" within the book BioWare: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development, published in 2020 and written by Ben Gelinas.
End of an Era Marks the Beginning of Another[]
Mass Effect 3 marked the end of Shepard's story as the events and decisions made during Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 played out in epic fashion. Shepard pulled together what remained of the galaxy's forces, now under full assault from the Reapers, for a climactic confrontation with a compromised Illusive Man. Mass Effect 3 brought together squad mates from the first two games, added new characters, refined series gameplay, and introduced a wildly popular cooperative multiplayer mode that saw players taking on waves of geth, Reapers, Cerberus troops, and Collectors.
FemShep Says Goodbye[]
Saying goodbye to Shepard was as difficult for the development team as it was for players. Mass Effect 3 voice-over producer Caroline Livingstone remembers being in the booth with Jennifer Hale for her last session as FemShep. Scenes they worked through included some pretty heavy stuff: Anderson's death at the end of the game and a quiet character moment with Garrus.
"We were in the session, and we both just started crying," Caroline says. "l couldn't come on the line and give her notes because I was crying, and she was crying. And so there was just this long, like, minute-long pause of nothing, nothing, nothing—just silence through the airwaves. And then I came on and just told her that I was crying and she said: 'I'm crying!'"
Kinecting with the Squad[]
Mass Effect 3's Xbox and PC versions included voice support for Microsoft Kinect, allowing players to control their squad and choose conversation options by speaking out loud. The system required developers to teach Kinect hundreds of commands in a variety of accents across multiple languages.
"You could go into the bar and just talk to different people," game director Casey Hudson says. "I loved walking up to a character and starting a conversation and putting the controller down. And literally just talking to the character in the game."
But the result, while useful, also made for some awkward moments. The Mass Effect series has become famous for the difficult choices often presented to the player, and the third installment was no exception, forcing players to make life-or-death decisions in conversation.
"What I've heard from a lot of people is when they get to a really difficult choice point, they put down the controller and they really think about it. They'll go and walk around the room and go get something to eat and come back and sit down, because they're really thinking about what they should do," Casey says.
The presence of the Kinect in Mass Effect 3 sometimes helped players make these decisions inadvertently. Numerous players accidentally said "geth" or "quarian" while talking out a particular decision, only to turn back to the game and find Tali dead.
Untitled Anecdote 1[]
Mass Effect 3's game-long climactic battle to save Earth from the Reapers showed the toll the invasion took on humanity's home planet and far beyond.
Untitled Anecdote 2[]
In the first Mass Effect, players chose between two genders for their Shepard. FemShep, as the female version came to be called, regrettably did not feature in major marketing for the series until Mass Effect 3, where she appeared in a trailer and on a reversible cover for the game upon release. Subsequent BioWare releases, like Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and Anthem, have taken increasing care to not gender their protagonists in cover art.
Tanks for the Souvenir: Shell from Live Fire Recording Makes the Rounds[]
To capture combat sounds for Mass Effect 3, designers took a field trip to CFB Wainwright, a military base southeast of Edmonton.
"They gave us a big tour of this base and I got to record whatever I could find there," Mass Effect 3 audio designer Joel Green says.
"I was looking for weapon sounds or anything cool that we could use for Mass Effect primarily, and the tour ended with us getting to drive and shoot tanks. Like full-size tanks. I wish I knew what the model was. But I actually got to go inside and sit and, like, pilot and shoot real shells."
The force of the sound sent waves through Joel. He remembers feeling his whole chest compress when it went off. The perfect amount of power for the Black Widow, the game's most powerful sniper rifle.
After the trip, the soldiers let Joel keep the 105mm shell he fired. When Joel left BioWare, he gave the shell to Mass Effect 3 gameplay designer Corey Gaspur, who in turn gifted it to Anthem gameplay designer Boldwin Li.
The tank shell now lives under Boldwin's desk, one of the weirdest desk toys in an office full of desk toys.
Sometimes he forgets it's there.
"He kind of passed this down to me, a bit of the passing of the torch, I guess," Boldwin says, smiling. "Either that or he didn't want to look at it anymore."
Bio-Trivia: Multiplayer Characters in ME3 Were Voiced by Police, Military Personnel[]
Multiple unnamed characters based on combat class and species were created for Mass Effect 3's popular multiplayer mode. To voice these characters, whose lines were overwhelmingly based on combat and teamwork on the battlefield, BioWare enlisted the voice talents of local police and military personnel trained to deliver authoritative commands.
Untitled Anecdote 3[]
Concept for the payload device at the end of Mass Effect 3. The device needed to attach to the Citadel while essentially serving as a giant trigger, art director Derek Watts says.
It ended up becoming quite the engineering feat to visualize how this thing would move and connect to the Citadel.
Bottom: An early concept of the game's ending encounter.
Untitled Anecdote 4[]
With the Illusive Man's turn toward proper villain and a new multiplayer mode, Cerberus became a full—fledged enemy faction in Mass Effect 3. Concept artists explored creating an antiteam, where Kai Leng was almost the anti—Shepard, with an elite squad to counteract your team (opposite par, bottom). The idea never went beyond the concept phase.
Bio-Trivia: Mass Effect 3 Was Released on the Nintendo Wii U[]
For years, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood had the honor of being the only BioWare game made for a Nintendo console. That was until Mass Effect 3: Special Edition. Released on November 13, 2012, the Wii U-exclusive version of the game included Genesis 2 (a sequel to the original interactive comic from Mass Effect 2 meant to catch up new or migrating players) and unique gameplay features that took advantage of the console's touchscreen GamePad.
Balancing Combat: Corey Vs. Brenon: How Designers in Mass Effect 3 Entered an "Arms Race"[]
Balance is an essential part of game design. In something with a lot of guns like Mass Effect or Anthem, if the player is overpowered, they may not feel challenged. Likewise, if enemies are too strong, the player's liable to get frustrated.
The solution is often finding a satisfying middle ground. But for Mass Effect 3 designers Corey Gaspur and Brenon Holmes, it was war.
Brenon's job on ME3 was to design the enemies, while Corey handled the weapons Shepard used to take those enemies down.
"He was obsessed with bigger, heavier guns," Brenon says. "We had this sort of informal competition where, like, he'd make this crazy, overtuned gun that would just murder all the enemies in the game, and then I tuned some stuff to bring up their health to compensate."
As development progressed, the guns just got more powerful, leaving Brenon to beef up his factions—and outright invent new ways to stop Corey.
This led to Phantoms: ninja-like Cerberus operatives wielding monomolecular blades. Corey had in turn designed consumable rockets that could wipe out entire waves of enemies. Corey must've figured a rocket would make short work of Brenon's space ninjas. Brenon had other plans.
"Corey was playing multiplayer, and I was watching as he shot a rocket at a Phantom," Brenon recalls. "I had just added the ability for her to cut rockets. She cut the rocket in half...
"Corey just turns and looks at me and is like: 'Really, dude? I just shot a rocket at this Phantom and she's fine? Not even damaged? Zero damage?'"
"It was the arms race," gameplay designer Boldwin Li says. "Bullshit creatures and then bullshit guns. And then bullshit creatures and bullshit guns."
Boldwin and Brenon say this friendly rivalry helped elevate Mass Effect 3's gameplay. Corey had a real knack for making a gun feel so good to fire it had his fellow designers scrambling to keep up. It was his version of balancing.
Before Corey passed away during Anthem's development, he mentored Boldwin in all things weapon design. And the arms race continued. Boldwin remembers one ME3 gun that Corey designed—the Arc Pistol—that was causing problems for enemies. It was just too powerful—and the pistol seemed hell bent on staying that way. Boldwin would tune down all the gun's stats, and it still did basically three times the damage it should have been doing.
"I was like, what the hell? And then I looked closer," Boldwin says. "It secretly fired three bullets for every pull of the trigger!"
Boldwin laughs: "Corey, you sneaky jerk."
Longtime Mass Effect gameplay designer Corey Gaspur passed away during the development of 2019's Anthem. The game is dedicated to his memory, along with the memory of BioWare Austin technical designer Nathan Mayes.
Untitled Anecdote 5[]
A collection of character and armor concepts for Mass Effect 3. The helmet on the character to the right was initially designed for Revolver.
Bio-Trivia: The Kakliosaur Began Life as a Desk Toy Mash-Up[]
Ancient krogan war mounts known as kakliosaurs made an appearance by way of a fossilized skull sought by a salarian scientist in Mass Effect 3: Citadel. But the lizard-like beasts actually began their life as an inside joke in the writers' room after ME3 writer John Dombrow placed a Grunt figure on the back of a twelve-inch tyrannosaurus toy he had on his desk. Lore was brainstormed to justify the toy mash-up before someone asked: Why don't we put it in the game?
The writers and editors loved the kakliosaur so much that ME3 editor Karin Weekes had custom coffee mugs made.
Bug Report: Romance Is Dead[]
Release: Mass Effect 3
Priority: 1 (Severe)
Description: Tali and Shepard slept together in Mass Effect 3. It was a nice moment. The problem: the scene was firing after she's supposed to be dead. This particular playthrough of Mass Effect 3 had Shepard siding with the geth.
"Shepard, I backed you when I was just a kid on her pilgrimage, I backed you when the Normandy was a Cerberus ship," Tali says. "Wherever you go, I'm with you."
True Tales of BioWare: "It's Okay. I'm Just Killing My Best Friend."[]
One of Anthem associate producer Jennifer Cheverie's fondest memories working on Mass Effect 3 had her crying at her desk. It was Jen's first year at BioWare and she was working as a content tester. The bulk of the job was running passes through levels and filing bugs for their designers.
One day, her manager assigned her a different task: test a series of cinematics featuring Mordin. Jen was excited. Mordin was her favorite character in the series. Then she looked at the test instructions. Among the scenes she would be testing was his death—specifically, the Renegade version of the scene:
This is even before, like, all the audio and everything was in, so you don't have the sad music or anything like that playing in the background. I remember sitting at my desk and my hands just went to my face because there's that moment where you hit the Renegade trigger and then Shepard pulls a gun on him as he's walking away. And it's the Carnifex: the gun he gives you from Mass Effect 2.
I burst into tears. And I was crying for the rest of that day.
Where else am I going to have a job where I'm sobbing at my desk and everything's fine? People are waving to me as they walk by and I'm like, "It's okay. I'm just killing my best friend."
Untitled Anecdote 6[]
Top: Taking a familiar location from ME2 and seeing it in a state of disrepair. The artist smashed up the Illusive Man's den.
Middle: Before the concept team had the story of the game to work toward, they explored wild ideas of their own, including this image of the crew stealing back the Normandy to go after the Reapers.
Bottom: Chaos.
Untitled Anecdote 7[]
With the exception of Shepard's visions in mummified form in Mass Effect, Protheans were not seen until Mass Effect 3. Concept artists had free rein to design an alien that read as ancient while still fitting in Mass Effect's universe.
Shepard's Story Ends[]
Mass Effect 3 marked the end of Shepard's story, one that took a trilogy to tell, with players exercising unprecedented agency over the way it played out. Wrapping up the story was a massive feat. In a way, the entirety of Mass Effect 3 is an ending. But for many players, the real end of the game came down to its final moments, their last with a character they'd been with from that first tense distress call from Eden Prime.
And while the critical reception for the game was extremely positive, many fans were unsatisfied with the ending, which became one of the most controversial in the history of games.
"There's a whole bunch of things that came together to make it incredibly intense and emotional for players. I think the biggest one was the sense of finality, that whatever it was that happened in that very last moment... was it," project director Casey Hudson says.
"We were, on the one hand, at the end of a marathon trying to finish the game and the series. But as developers we also knew that there would be more. We knew that we would continue to tell the story. In retrospect, we didn't fully appreciate the tremendous sense of finality that it would have for people."
For Mass Effect 3, Casey envisioned an ending that posed new questions, something in the tradition of high sci-fi that left players dreaming about what their particular galaxy's future could hold.
"Frankly, there's a lot more that we could have and should have done to honor the work players put in, to give them a stronger sense of final reward and closure," Casey says.
AAA games are massive undertakings with a million moving parts. Somehow, they come together, but even the best-planned projects don't turn out quite like the developers hope. From beginning to end, video game production is a series of compromises. It's rare, if not impossible, for developers to ship a game they are entirely happy with.
"I think people imagine that when you finish a game, it's exactly the way that you wanted it to be. But whether people end up loving or hating the final result, we work hard to finish it the best we can, knowing that there's a lot that we would have wanted to do better. I think that's true of any creative work."
As the dust settled after the initial reaction to the ending and later its epilogue, meant to show the wide-reaching ripple effects of Shepard's final choice, players emerged mostly asking for one thing.
"Now, most of what we hear, after both Mass Effect 3 and Andromeda, is: 'Hey, just go make more Mass Effect.' And that to me is the most important thing," Casey says. "Knowing that players want to return to the Mass Effect universe is what inspires us to press on and imagine what comes next."
Real Tales of Development: Mass Effect 3's Midnight Launch[]
The day Mass Effect 3 launched, there were midnight launch parties across North America, including a huge one in Southgate Centre near the Terrace Office Tower. Numerous developers, including Mac Walters and writer Sylvia Feketekuty, sat at long tables, signing autographs and greeting hundreds of fans as they reached the front of the line to receive their preordered copy of the game.
When midnight struck, the line was long enough that it took several hours for everyone to get their games. Sylvia remembers one fan in particular:
It was three a.m. Some guy who drove up from Calgary with his friends. He was, like, one of the last people in line. I think he was sort of tired-drunk. He threw himself across the signing tables, pulled up his shirt, said: "Guys, sign my abs!" And, like, I did it, because he waited so long. It felt impolite not to. So I hope he enjoyed his copy of Mass Effect 3.