The inclusion of multiplayer in Mass Effect isn’t a ‘me-too’ addition, developer BioWare feels that adding the ability to play with other gamers is a natural progression for the series and wanted multiplayer in from the start.

Creative director Casey Hudson told CVG that the team has constantly been toying around with the idea of multiplayer in Mass Effect, ever since the first installment hit. The idea was revisited in ME2 — but never saw the light of day due to concerns that it’d compromise the single-player component. With ME3, however, the team saw an opportunity to strike a balance.

Then, with ME2 we revisited the idea, deliberating whether you could perhaps take control of one of the other characters for a while, but – again – there were a lot of factors that would have compromised the single-player story. So the difference really was that, with ME3, we adopted a fundamentally different approach to what the thing is about, which is that there is a whole intergalactic war going on, which wasn’t the case in the previous entries. So Shepard is still the hero, making the big decisions, deciding what’s going to happen with the universe and building alliances, but now there’s armies all over the place, fighting to just hang onto different locations. That provided us with a different idea; now in multiplayer you can play as that crew of special forces, journeying around and helping Shepard with the war effort.

Sounds like you can put those concerns that multiplayer was tacked on to rest. Mass Effect 3 is due out March 2012.

Follow this author on Twitter.