The third entry in BioWare's Mass Effect series already has two games' worth of ideas and innovations to fall back on, but that's not enough for the studio. To make sure Mass Effect 3 is even better than its predecessors, sound designer Robert Blake reveals that BioWare has been sharing ideas and assets with Battlefield 3 developer DICE.

"We've been chatting to the guys over at DICE who did the Battlefield and the Medal of Honor stuff and we've been doing a lot of knowledge sharing and asset sharing with those guys," he said in an interview with gaming news site CVG.

"We're taking on board some of their environmental changes that they've done really well. The new [Mass Effect 3] Assault Rifle has different layers that change depending on what type of environment you're in, for example. There are lots of interactions between sounds - you can hear the different decay as shots echo off walls."

Blake says that one of the things he liked about DICE's work is the studio's focus on environmental interactions. "When you go into different areas things change quite drastically," he said. "They also have a sophisticated ducking system - when you fire your gun it will lower the volume of other people's guns."

All that sharing doesn't mean that Mass Effect 3 will feel closer to the Battlefield games than to its predecessors, however. Blake clarifies that the two games are still very different. What BioWare is doing is actually building on the foundations laid down by DICE. 

"We're big fans of the audio so we're definitely trying to build on the work that they've done, but at the same time they're very different games," he said. "Their [audio] focus is just the guns but we have spaceships, biotics and tech powers and all this extra stuff that we have to deal with."

Via [CVG]

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