When BioWare was talking about how you simply won’t walk into a room in Mass Effect 3, see some cover and know there’s a fight coming, they took a jab at legendary third person cover based shooter series Gears of War.
While talking with Xbox world 360 (thanks, CVG!), senior environment artist Don Arceta said, “You play a game like Gears of War and they just have sandbags everywhere, and we really don’t want to do that.
“We really want to get away from arbitrary things placed just for the sake of gameplay.”
About cover placement in Mass Effect 3, he said: “We have a lot more integrated cover, so you don’t walk into a room and immediately know there’s going to be a combat there.
It’s about making these spaces feel natural and not forced. It shouldn’t ever feel forced, by gameplay or art – it really should be this perfect marriage.”
Noel Lukasewich, the other senior environment artist pitched in with his own comments: “Yeah, you don’t want to walk through a room and go, ‘okay nothing’s going to happen here. There’s no cover for me here,’ and then you walk around the next corner and you just see a sea of these chest-high things – you basically see the fight ahead.”
Stay tuned for more info on ME3.