Mass Effect: Legendary Edition - Interview @c|net

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The director for Mass Effect, Mac Walters, has been interviewed by c|net along with environment director Kevin Meek.

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What advice would you give to fans looking to spice up their playthrough, with this new version of the trilogy, aside from switching from Paragon to Renegade or vice-versa?
Meek: I'd suggest for people to try different character classes. When I played Mass Effect 1 for the first time, I played as a soldier -- the generic right-down-the-center option, with access to all the weapons. I didn't know what type of game it was going to be or what the biotic powers were.

Now we've eliminated a lot of those class restrictions on weapons. You can choose Vanguard, which gives you a bunch of biotic powers and still use whatever weapons want. And then when you get to Mass Effect 2 and 3, those powers let you do all these really fun things like lifting people up and throwing them off buildings, and warping yourself across chasms to slam into enemies.

Walters: Another good one is the DLC, especially in 2 and 3, if you didn't play it before. We used that additional content to experiment with the level design and gameplay -- there's some really cool and fun stuff. If you finish Lair of the Shadow Broker (a piece of DLC from Mass Effect 2), you can re-spec all your characters, plus all these other cool bonuses that come with it.

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Whenever I've talked about this collection to people, a lot of them will bring up the negative response to Mass Effect 3's ending. What would you say to those players, especially those on the fence about the Legendary Edition?
Walters: The ending's extended cut was part of the DLC, so that's part of your new baked-in experience with the Legendary Edition. But I guess people have to make up their own minds about it -- we haven't changed any of the story. It's also been a little bit of time, so people play through it as a whole and then reassess. If they still have the same feelings about it then, that's fair. I know I viewed the trilogy in a very different way now that it's all together. I'm hoping other people will see it that way as well.

Meek: I think the sci-fi beats of the ending might hit people in a different way now than they might have nine years ago. Playing it as a whole trilogy and treating it as one giant arc, rather than three arcs, goes a long way to potentially changing people's experiences.