BioWare’s Jesse Houston has dropped a rather unexpected bit of information in the company’s latest podcast – apparently the PS3 version of Mass Effect 2 is powered by the new Mass Effect 3 engine.
“One of the first things you’re going to see is improved graphics,” he says. “We actually created the engine for Mass Effect 3 and used that to make Mass Effect 2 PS3. So we took the content, the story and all of the other assets that made up Mass Effect 2 and we put it into the Mass Effect 3 engine.”
Of course, both game engines are basically built on Unreal Engine 3, but considering the subtle – but significant – visual improvements between the first and second game, PS3 gamers can probably expect something nice to look at. And hopefully less texture pop.
Houston also mentioned something about an “improved” planet scanning mini-game. Perhaps the biggest improvement would be removing it altogether, but any improvement is, well, sure to be an improvement.