Pax East 2012 Mass Effect 3 panel coverage continues from Part 2

Chris Priestly: The next question has to do with Tali's face. It's kind of a two part question. One - why did we choose to show Tali's face at all in the game. Two - why was it how it looked?

Mike Gamble: Well you know, the first question is quite obvious, a lot of people wondering how Tali's face look like, and we wanted to do it in a tasteful way, that did not necessarily throw it into the game engine, we thought that a gift from Tali, from the picture, is probably the most perfect way to do it. In terms of what Tali's face looked like and why it was the way it was, we often use source material, source art for many things within our game. In the case of Tali's face we wanted something that would be photo realistic, we wanted the level of fidelity to be there, we wanted the color to be right, essentially make it as close to the picture as possible. And it's not like it's the first picture we stumbled upon. We poured through thousands and thousands of source art to lock in. Plus there was the artistic vision. And so we were able to combine those two to create Tali's Face.

Patrick Weeks: Could all the Samara Cosplayers stand up? (Points at one of them) If I remember correctly, you are the face model for Samara. Great example of how a real face can make a difference. Liara, her face is based on a real face model. Same goes for Shepard, same goes for Miranda, and we really felt that Tali deserved that same treatment. We wanted her to be based on a real person because there are people for whom that relationship is important as the relationship with Miranda, or Liara, or any of the other love interests. (Cheers from audience)

Chris: We got one final question, this one keeps popping up, do we have any comments about the indoctrination theory (Cheers from audience)

Mike Gamble: The Indoctrination Theory illustrates again how committed the fanbase is. (Laughter from Audience). We don't want to comment either way on it, here is why. We don't want to be prescriptive on how people interpret the ending, especially with the Extended Cut, DLC coming out, we don't want to be prescriptive with how people think things ended, we want the content to speak for itself. And we'll let it do so.

Chris: Well I want to get the rest of the team involved here as well. Alex, is a level designer, and is also a fact checker and information buff. I know you got some stats for us.

Alex: As we were preparing this panel, I went over the content from ME1 to ME3, trying to get a feel of how our content has evolve with time, and I hadn't realized how crazy we were. Let me give you a couple of numbers. Let's start with something really concrete, you all know the Normandy right? I contend that the Normandy is the most complicated piece of content ever created. We've had the same designer on it for three games, and thank god, because I don't think anybody else could stump that. Just to give you a couple of numbers to keep you in perspective.  In ME1 there were 136 conversations on the Normandy. Bumped up to 172 in ME2. In ME3 there are 300 conversations that occur on the Normandy. 150 of them are ambient conversations that go on whether you interact with them or not, but 150 of them are full conversations, and some of these are multi-part, so that turns out to hours and hours and hours... across the entire game I talked to our localization people, I got some crazy numbers. We got literally 300,000 VO words that were recorded, and that's in seven languages. We got a team of 21 translators who in total translate about four million words. As a designer I get to play with a lot of different assets created by writers, by artists. Just in the Normandy there were about 15,000 nuts and bolts, pieces that were put together lovingly by hand. So, again, just to try and see the evolution from Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 3, I got a few other interesting numbers. Design team - we started out with 23, in ME2 we were 55, Me3 57. So we basically almost did double the amount of work. But from our end, we did a lot more content. A couple of extra numbers. The number of plot variables has increased insanely. Started out with 3500 in ME1. Some minor. In ME2, bumped up to 6,400, Me3 has got 15,000 plot states. One of the thins we voluntarily tried to push from ME1 to ME3 is to bring life to our characters. And one way we do that is by creating a set of rules that help us determine how a different actor transforms from one emotional state to another, to give performance.  In ME1 the system we had had about 3,000 rules to determine that. ME2, 15,000 rules. ME3, 64,000 rules, to just handle animation and acting.

Mike: We kind of created this problem for ourselves. That's what happens when you work on an open ended game with variable plot states. Each progressive game you make things more complicated. Behind all of these things, Mass Effect 3 was a culmination of all of those plot states, all of those variables, all of those things. It was difficult to do, we had to work hard. Designers were not making double levels, they were making double content.

Alex: ME3 probably has three or four times the conditional content that ME2 had. Because we were building on all the choices from ME1 and ME2, we had to choose from an Immense list of choices, and we couldn't address every one, it's not feasible,  but with the design and writing team we came up with a set of important decisions and try to make Mass Effect 3 as much as your story as it is ours, and I think we were fairly successful.

Next: Part 4: ME3 panel continues - Sabotaging the Genophage Cure