Mass Effect 3 Can Haz Multiplayer?

Dear Reader,

Word on the street is that “Mass Effect 3” is going to feature a 3-player co-op mode, set in a series of unique missions that run parallel to the campaign proper. Besides the obvious questions of veracity, we also have to wonder if such a thing would make it all the way from a Bioware board room to our home entertainment systems. Multiplayer modes get cut from games like it’s their job. They almost cut the multi from “Halo.”

But putting such considerations aside for a moment, the most basic question is whether this is a good idea. Should “Mass Effect,” as a franchise, enter the troubled waters of simultaneous play? They could end up like “Bioshock 2,” a big honking disappointment. Or, even worse, they could make something actually worthwhile and never get due credit for it, a la “Dead Space 2.”

And yet, if they get it right, maybe this is a chance to change “Mass Effect” forever.

The biggest problem I have with this announcement is not Bioware dipping their toes, but them doing it so daintily. Three player co-op? Three? What kind of number is that? For decades we gamers have been maintaining friendships in even numbers so as to avoid being a man down or an odd one out. Now you’re tossing all of that out and taking us back to prime numbers? It can’t be!

More seriously, though, I recognize that this is in keeping with the standard squad size which Bioware has been proselytizing since KOTOR. But that number was arrived upon when game design necessitated two NPCs in orbit like tiny moons around one self-absorbed human. Now that you’re re-thinking what makes up the party, why wouldn’t you re-think the size of the party itself?

I want four people. There, I said it. But that’s not the real issue. The real issue is: who are we going to play as? Because so help me, Ray and Co, if you make me throw out my campaign character for some co-op specific mannequin doll I will murder your face. The purpose of any multiplayer game is to distribute the pleasures of the single player out to multiple people at the same time. If we cannot join forces with our compatriots, clad in the armor we designed ourselves over the course of an entire trilogy, you have failed in this endeavor. Put simply: if I can’t play as my signature character, don’t bother.

There’s a real opportunity here. RPG fans have wanted the discrete universes where their god-like avatars live to cross-polinate for decades. At long last giving us a level platform where our meta-creations can mingle at the punch bowl, figuratively speaking, could make you heroes (more than you already are).

And if they could compete? If I could finally settle the argument about whose Commander Shepard is the best? Then you might just paint your masterpiece yet, Bioware.

–AA

but you get used to being happy