Mass Effect 3 - Interview with Casey Hudson

CVG has a three-page interview with Casey Hudson where he talks about DLC, the alternate endings, mobile tie-ins, facebook apps, the system to replace the planet-scanning from ME2, the exclusive deal with Origin and much much more. To start us off, here's a quote about how tie-ins from iOS apps will work in the single player game on pc or mac - at least this is how I understand this quote:

If I'm, say, playing Mass Effect 3 on the Xbox 360, presumably I'll still be able to finish it without playing the iOS app?

It's interesting because, on the one hand, people really don't like the idea of any kind of fiction or any kind of gameplay outside the game experience that has nothing to do with it, and they also don't want to be required and essential. So we look at it as providing options for people to choose where they want to spend their time. So, for example, you might be only able to put so much time into the single-player story, but you might do a lot of commuting, so you can play the iOS game and find ways to get better and better degrees of success in the single-player story by doing some of that other stuff

And a quote about the different endings in the game

Are there alternative endings depending on what you do in the game?

 It's not so much that there is a fixed set of alternative endings, but all of your choices really determine how things end up in the universe. So, how you approach the end-game, for every player, you're going to have a different set of results in terms of who is alive and who is dead, and which civilisations survived and which ones were wiped out. There is a huge set of consequences that start stacking up as you approach the end-game. And even in terms of the ending itself, it continues to break down to some very large decisions.

And a quote about the combat:

I think we've gone full circle in terms of the combat: people are playing it, and saying it is competitive with the very best shooter experiences, and yet it has so much more as a game, with the role-playing elements and a really great interactive story. That's probably the key thing: that now you're able to experience a whole new level of combat gameplay.