Dodge Mass Effect 3's myriad sidequests and you'll be punished with an unsatisfying endgame, developer BioWare has revealed.

Executive producer Casey Hudson told PC Gamer that players who take the time to explore the game will be rewarded with an "amazing" conclusion.

"If you do a little side quest, or you go off and do a major plot, these things contribute to the war effort," he explained.

"If you just rip straight down the critical path and try and finish the game as soon as you can, and do very little optional or side stuff, then you can finish the game. You can have some kind of ending and victory, but it'll be a lot more brutal and minimal relative to if you do a lot of stuff.

"If you really build a lot of stuff and bring people to your side and rally the entire galaxy around you, and you come into the end game with that, then you'll get an amazing, very definitive ending."

The keenly-anticipated follow up to 2010's game of the year is due out in early 2012.

Sounds like the same deal as the mass effect 2 ending, just scaled up.

I don't see how anybody can rush through a Mass Effect game. I do absolutely EVERYTHING in the game and I find myself wanting more at the end. Which is one of the reasons I usually start over right away.

I plan on exploring every inch of the world the player has access to, do EVERY possible side quest and experiment with all possible dialogue options through multiple playthroughs AND play the game with every class.

Basically, I plan on milking every ounce of possibility this game has to offer.

Loyalty Missions are not Side Missions. N7 Missions are Side Missions and those have 0 Impact on the ending in ME2.

What he said!



(And yet I still haven't been able to bring myself to play a full renegade playthrough. It's just not in my nature, however amusing)