Mass Effect 3 - Interview with Associate Producer Robin Theberge

Robin Theberge, Associate Producer at Bioware has been on a promotion tour for Mass Effect 3. She has talked to Atomic Gamer, Stevivor and Games.on.net.  First Atomic's article style interview:

“It got really stripped back for Mass Effect 2,” Robyn said, “but we’ve tried to bring back a lot more customisation. The game’s gone deeper again with the things you can tweak and upgrade, so we’ve had to make sure the GUI is up to all that. There are more powers, now, more detailed progressions with skills, and armour and weapon customisation is much more detailed.” The lack of detailed gear, and an inventory, in ME2 was possibly one of the most contentious changes between the first and second Mass Effects, and some loved it, others... not so much. “You can do all kinds of things with weapons now, like adding different clips, scopes and ammo,” Robyn told us, sounding quite pleased. “We’ve added a lot back.”

Then Stevivor which focuses on some general aspects:

Now, you work closely with the Audio team as well as the GUI and Visual Effects teams when it comes to Mass Effect 3. Of all the streams you manage, which is the most exciting, and why?

Robyn: I like them all, and I like them for different reasons. It’s kind of like being a parent, and I’m a den mother to my teams at times. Audio, I love because they’re familiar. I’ve done a lot with them already, and I feel very good about how much ownership those guys have, and how well we work together; we’ve got very good processes down. I like Effects because they’re very low maintenance as well. They’re just a two person team. I can check in on them once a day, and they do very well on their own. I like the GUI team a lot, because there’s so much I can learn. I joined them very late in the project, and I feel like I’m still learning a lot from them, and I feel that there’s so much we can do. I’m excited to keep working with them, at least for the next few months, with the DLC. There are things I see that I can do to make their lives easier as developers, and I’m excited to implement those changes

And finally Games.on.net with a quote on Femshep:

How much of an impact did player feedback – both in the form of forums etc. and in the telemetry data – influence the course of ME3’s development? Were there any major changes made as a result of how the community reacted to certain features in ME and ME2?

Robyn: FemShep is a pretty good example. Fans asked us: “You’ve got an iconic male Shepard, so where’s the female version?” Okay – done. Now we have one. Multiplayer is another good example. A lot of our fans, the true hardcore RPG players, didn’t ask for it, but there were a lot of people who did. People who got a taste of the Mass Effect universe and wanted to enjoy it with their friends, to team up and fight these battles. Now they can do that. Romances too: a lot of the choices we made with the way romances play out in ME3 was influenced by what players told us they wanted.