Mass Effect 3 Will Thankfully Overhaul The Combat Experience.

When we think of that game, we can't help but think of naff combat. It's not just naff combat though, it's the worst. Seriously, we can't think of a bigger blockbuster shooter that has worse combat than Mass Effect 2.

Of course Mass Effect gets away with the gameplay being rubbish because of the story and the characters. But with Mass Effect 3, BioWare's looking to tighten up the entire combat experience. Thank God.

“If there’s one thing the programmers always want to do better it’s definitely the AI, so we’ve done a lot of work on that,” Mass Effect 3 gameplay designer Christina Norman said.

“We still have some more work to go, but we want you to feel that the enemies you'’re fighting are more complex, that they have multiple behaviours, and that they’re reacting to what’s going on.

“Now we look at enemies as a force, with units within the force, and each of them has a role.

“You end up with this really cool chessboard thing, where you have a knight and a bishop, they’ll work together in one way but if you have a knight and a rook, they’ll work together in a different way. It’s giving our level designers and combat designers a lot more opportunities, not with heavy scripting, but just by combining these pieces that work together in new and interesting ways.”

With smarter enemies, comes the need for smarter players, and BioWare wants players to think about mobility.

“So the player is never thinking, ‘I’m walking into this safe place with great cover, I’ll stay there and fight’ but more ‘how am I going to move through the battlefield as the enemies move through the battlefield against me?’” Norman explained.

Enemies are also set to get a makeover, with "bullet-sponges" out of the window.

“If you can interact with the enemy in specific ways by shooting at weak points? Use the environment against them? Those are the factors that make larger enemies more interesting to fight,” she added.

Of course, if the weapons still handle like pea-shooters then BioWare will have focused its attention in the wrong area. We're going to assume that if they're smart enough to overhaul the AI, they are also smart enough to make the guns fun to fire.