Vile treachery: When you 'ran' on the Citadel in Mass Effect, it just changed the FOV to make it look like you were going faster

Just to say it up front: I'm very smart. My mom says so. That means it's totally fine that, according to recent Tweets from former BioWare cinematic designer John Ebenger, I've been bamboozled into thinking my characters are moving faster when they aren't, thanks to techniques like «speed lines» and «whooshing sounds.» Yes, I've basically fallen for the video game equivalent of when you trick a dog by pretending to throw something. I'm not at all upset and I'm handling it very well.

We owe this latest reveal of game developer villainy to Twitter user @dyingnome, who tweeted on Saturday that a Dragon Age: Inquisition dev once admitted that they «just added some wind lines» to obscure the fact that DA:I horses weren't actually going any faster while sprinting. Ebenger quoted the claim to confirm that yeah, BioWare did that—just like it'd done in Mass Effect, too. Scoundrels! Illusionists!

Same thing in Mass Effect 1 when you try to run on the Citadel. No change in speed, just in the FOV of the camera to give the illusion you’re moving faster. Can’t remember if that stayed true for 2 & 3 or if load times were better by then https://t.co/I0uLYIhWDqJune 9, 2024

According to Ebenger, who worked on both Dragon Age and Mass Effect games while at BioWare, every time you were «running» on the Citadel in Mass Effect 1, the only thing that changed was the camera FOV. You were still going at walking speed—just, you know, more dramatically, because the camera was tighter.

The reason, Ebenger says, was load times. If Shepard was actually sprinting through the Citadel, it would've overtaxed how quickly hardware of the era could stream in assets. Considering how much time I spent in the Citadel's elevators for similar reasons, should I really be surprised? No. But I'm writing about games on the internet. Overreacting is my god-given right. Luckily, even my voluntary outrage doesn't have much of a leg to stand on in 2024: Shep can actually run through the Citadel in the Legendary