Mass Effect - Dev Blog & Screens

The official BioWare blog at IGN sees an update from Mass Effect's Principal Lead Designer Preston Watamaniuk on designing character classes:

Time for an update! I have been asked to step in and give Casey a break. Given all the talk about character classes, I thought I would comment on some of the decisions that go into their design.

We built the rule set for “Mass Effect” from the ground up to emphasize the ranged combat employed by weapons, biotics and tech. Two ideas drove the rules — and eventually — the class design at the high level:

1. Core Mechanics (what you can be skilled at)
2. Active Gameplay Mechanics (what you can actually do to enemies)

In other news, GameSpot has some new screens.