Number of ways to play Mass Effect 3 is 'astronomical'

Players have the opportunity to 'do whatever they want with the remainder of the story,' says Hudson.

The number of options available to the player in Mass Effect 3, which will determine the outcome, is "astronomical," executive producer Casey Hudson has told Destructoid.

Hudson explained that with Mass Effect 1 the team at BioWare was "launching everything," starting "huge threads to the later stories". With the second game BioWare had to be careful to not only link back to the first, but also set the scene for the third game, a task Hudson says made Mass Effect 2 the "toughest one to make".

"But with Mass Effect 3, this is really the opportunity to do whatever we want with the reminder of the story – which means players can do whatever they want with the remainder of the story," said Hudson. "Your decision can have much bigger consequences, things that you've done earlier can have much bigger consequences.

"So we can really throw around a lot of big impacts from your decisions, from prior games and from decisions you'll make in Mass Effect 3."

He concluded: "It's really astronomical. The number of different ways that you can play it, the combinations of different decisions that you can make, and then all the different ways that the story can end up, depending on what you're doing."

Earlier this month BioWare said its high-level vision for Mass Effect 3 hasn't changed.

Mass Effect 3 will be released for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC on March 9 2012.