Mass Effect 3 to be friendlier to new players

BioWare's Nick Clifford has said Mass Effect 2's opening sequence wasn't approachable enough for those jumping on board the series.

"In all honesty, we didn't do a really good job of new player orientation," the marketing manager told IGN.

"If you didn't play the first game then 2 was pretty jarring for the first half hour."

With Mass Effect 3, BioWare hope to address that, by swapping out references to past events if players haven't imported a save.

"If I'm a new player and some guy walks up to me and is like 'Ohhhh Shepard! Remember that one time?' I would be like 'No. I don't remember that one time,'" Clifford added.

"So we wanted to make sure that there aren't those moments that the player is like, 'Who is this? What's going on? What are they talking about?'"

Sadly, no mention was made of a similar feature for those who have just forgotten what happened over the last two space epics. Mass Effect 3 launches in early March for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.