BioWare experimenting with Dead Space-like HUD, greater enemy variation for Mass Effect 3

Ever wonder what the child of Mass Effect and Dead Space would look like? Probably, uh, pretty terrifying. (Generi-male Shep face. Necromorph baby body. Bam. Nightmares forever.)

BioWare, fortunately, seems to be taking a much more sensible approach to the question.

“That's one of the things that I love about Dead Space; the interface... it feels really immersive. I just want to touch the hell out of those buttons. So we are still investigating ways of putting some of our HUD elements into the environment... we'll see what we end up with,” wrote BioWare's Brenon Holmes in a post on the developer's official forums.

He added, however, that fancy health-displaying armor like Isaac's is probably out-of-the-question, as things start getting confusing when you're constantly popping from cover-to-cover.

Enemies, meanwhile, appear to be in for a more substantial shake-up - especially when it comes to their pre-"I'm currently engaged in the act of shooting you in the face" features.

"At the start of ME3 we put together a ME2 silhouette chart... some interesting stuff came out of that. Basically, it's very difficult to make out which enemy is which based purely on a lineup... some stand out a bit more (like Vorcha, Geth, Collectors, and the Oculus (dur, beach ball!)), but for the most part it's difficult to tell who's who," said Holmes.

"Even if you were able to easily recognise a given enemy, what are they going to do in a fight? What sort of strategy should you be using when engaging them? Sooo... one of the things we're trying for ME3 is to make it a lot easier to identify the various types of enemies. Silhouette of the character is a huge component of that, and our character art/animator guys have done a pretty awesome job."

Hopefully we'll see more soon, but we're not counting on anything until the folks at BioWare are good and ready. After all, we know how much they like their calibrations.