It's that time of year again. With E3 just around the corner, the game's industry getting ready to splurge all of last year's profits on showing the world their latest fares for this year, as rumours begin to fly around the internet, with this one being one of the more unusual.
The Mass Effect series has quickly gained a (well deserved) reputation as being some of the greatest stoires ever told. Offering an epic sci-fi tale, with an entire galaxy on the brink of extinction, Mass Effect games have always gone out of their way to create an entirely believable world, with realistic characters, love stories, and tragedy, that certainly outshines an episode of Eastenders.
All of which is why, when some potential Mass Effect 3 boxart popped up on the EA store, it certainly raised a few eyebrows.
Huh?
The eagle eyed amongst you will have spotted the strange purple ribbon that says "Better with Kinect". Could it really be that Mass Effect 3 has Kinect support? If so, how will it play out in the game? Mass Effect's always been a pretty serious role playing game, dealing with serious topics in a mature, adult way - so obviously slapping Krogan Volleyball on the end of it, or letting you pop moves as the game's ambiguous lead, Commander Shepard, on some alien dance floor doesn't seem like that likely. There also weren't any references made to Mass Effect in the stickers that Microsoft sent out to journalists - and having Kinect functionality in a Mass Effect game would presumably be something Microsoft would want to shout about.
Of course, any Kinect integration could be a lot more subtle. One of the more interesting applications for Kinect when it was originally shown was its ability to track your voice, and even read things into it - telling if you're lying, or angry, by the tone of your voice. As dialogue, and how you converse with other characters is an incredibly important part of Mass Effect - if you say the wrong thing, you end up changing how people feel about you, which affects the entire story, and could have severe consequences - perhaps this is how Mass Effect 3 would integrate with Kinect - by letting you literally talk to other characters? Read the line it gives you, and Kinect could interpret how you mean it, which would decide how the other character reacted.
On the other hand, as unlikely as any Kinect integration may seem, it does seem incredibly unlikely that this is simply a mistake. Unless it's an elaborate red herring, it's not like EA would have simply slapped a massive "Better with Kinect" logo on the front of the box for no reason. I mean, even Microsoft have never made a mistake like that. Right? Right??
Apologies for the tiny font - here we can see, in a screenshot from Xbox.com, Damnation, 2009's epic Steampunk, er, masterpiece... with a "Better with Kinect" logo. Which is pretty impressive, for a game released two years before the motion tracking sensor.
Oh.
Of course, as with all of these rumours, there's only one way we'll know for sure. Microsoft's E3 press conference kicks off on the 6th June at 5:30pm UK time. If it really does have Kinect functionality, we're bound to find out for sure then. Make sure you check back, as we'll bring you the news as (if) and when we get it.
