Mass Effect 3, the third installment of the critically acclaimed Mass Effect franchise is renowned for its captivating narrative, immersive gameplay, and expansive universe. However, one aspect that has garnered criticism from players is its cluttered and confusing user interface (UI). In this case study, I'll delve into them and propose redesign solutions aimed at enhancing user experience and gameplay clarity.
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For the sake of context and better understanding of my thought-process when displaying my improvement suggestions, I've broken down the study to 3 main analysis topics: Quests, Codex and Messages. And each of these topics have the following:
1. The screen in game As Is and its purpose
2. The screen in game with my commentary sketched
3. My prototyped suggested solution
If you wish to skip the process and see only the results, just scroll all the way down! :)
Issues with the current UI/Writing and its importance to the gameplay
Quests and Codex: The absence of different tabs to organize various types of quests results in a confusing interface. We also have two tabs dedicated to the codex (which contains information regarding the universe), when it could have been a single one with a clearer structure.
Messages: During the playthrough the player receives several messages: from squad mates, from Admirants, civilians, other political institutions, important NPCs and many others. Some of which start quests that are never added to the quest tab. So once the player reads the message, it counts as read and if it has a call to action and the player forgets it, it's a piece of content lost to that playthrought.
Let's tackle in detail these 3 topics together.
1. Quests:
This screen displays the main quest menu.
Main quests, civilian quests, military quests, and DLC content are grouped together.
What is this screen and why does it matter?
In the same list, you have main quest, side quest, civilians requests, military requests, fetch quests, relationship quests and DLC quests.
The "Priority" indicates the main quest (as in: do it and you'll move the story forward, but there's also main-quest-related ones without the "priority" that can be missed), "N7" indicates military-related requests, "Citadel" are ones that you got from NPCs on the Citadel or can solved on the citadel, and there are also plenty others that falls under different settings and have the same wording.
A also importante thing to say regarding this game is that timing is EVERYTHING. There are time sensitive quests that only presents you this urgency through NPC dialogues. But as games and side quests go, we know you don't need to do them right away unless the game tells you otherwise. Thing is: there are a lot of quests that you have to accomplish within a set in-game time and the only way to discover that is to read sources external to the game.
Having a better hierarchy of information and organization regarding this amount of quests in such a rich and immersive world would improve player's agency and decision-making without feeling frustraded by not having all information needed to make important decisions.
I've inserted a commented sketch of the screen below:
I understand that keeping it somewhat vague in details regarding the impact of the quest puts the player in a more "realistic" setting where the actual Command Sheppard wouldn't know further without actually investigating it. Still, it also cuts out the player from content they can not access in the same playthrough as a consequence of the order of complexion of the quests, and this information is never presented in the game.
As an example: The quest "Citadel: Barla Von" regarding a banker, is no longer available after you complete "Priority: Tuchanka", regarding the possible extinction of a species. You would think that the more pressing matter here is the latter, but if you handle avoiding (or not) mass extinction before helping a banker out, you're locked from talking to him again and the quest is removed from your log. (The consequence of it is that you lose the chance of acquiring an important asset related to the main quest later on).
In another example: "Citadel: Improved Power Grid" is a fetch quest where you recover schematics of a better power grid and deliver it to a scientist working on the Citadel. The quest "Citadel: Leviathan" follows the same structure, which leads you to believe is another fetch or minor NPC quest residing in the Citadel, but it isn't: it's related to the discovery of another alien species linked to the ancient history of the universe and VASTLY changes the outcome of a huge end-game fight.
Not knowing what it was about and having wording similar to a simple fetch quest, makes it easily dismissible. (I just thought: "Leviathan sounds COOL, what is it??" and stumbled upon a HUGE quest). From one side, it's nice to be surprised but it's also easy to miss on entertaining and rich content.
My current improvement suggestion:
Prototyped screen with the suggested improvements. The aesthetic can be altered to be similar to the screen as is in the game, but this new element disposition would improve the UX.
For my prototype, I've made a few suggestions:
1. For the window with the lists of quests, I would make it smaller and have a similar wording structure for quests that share similarities. Instead of "mission summary", "codex" and "secondary codex", I would change them to "Priority", "Requests", and "Extra".
Priority: have main quests, may they be mandatory or not.
Requests: All side quests. They may or may not be time sensible and the player can choose when or how to tackle them.
Extra: Message quests (when an NPC messages you with a CTA) and DLC quests.
2. Would separate the right side of the screen with pertinent information regarding the selected quest;
The upper window contains information regarding who solicited the request, which race they are, the location of the quest, and a meter for time sensibility regarding its completion.
Since Shepard has Specter access (and the shadow broker on board the Normandy) it wouldn't be absurd that they would have more detailed information regarding it.
3, The lower window has the information regarding what's the quest about and its CTA. In this same window, when the player is already tracking and progressing through it, a log will be updated so the player knows what the next step is, and what's expected of them.
So that the tracking quest system would work, I would also implement a "track mission" button.
Here are both screens next to each other:
Game screen as is
Proposed improvement
Also, the gameplay screen where I would add a small mission log for accessibility without the player having to open the menu every time (this would be enabled when the player selected the "track mission" button in the quest log).
Currently, this may also prove to be an issue: when you're interacting with the galaxy map in Normandy's war deck, you can't open any menus. This forces the player to try and remember the names of the several systems they must go through to reach their intended planet of destination and most of those names are not easy to remember.
At the top right corner, a mission tracker would be visible to the player. It could be static in this position at all times, updating as the players progress in the quest, or it could be also that appeared when prompt; by pressing R3 in the controller, for example.
2. Codex
Screen displaying the first tab of the Codex
Screen displaying the second tab of the Codex
What are these screens and why do they matter?
The codex is the player's encyclopedia about this universe they're exploring. Explains different alien races, technologies, organizations and affiliations between them, spaceships, historical events and a rich variety of topics related to the lore of the Mass Effect universe.
In this iteration of the franchise they decided to part this knowledge in two different tabs that present informations regarding very similar topics in different profundity levels. As I see it, grouping vastly different quests together but spacing out further information about the same subject in two distinct tabs seems odd.
Below you can see how the player can read further into the topic:
In this screen you can see how the topics can be expanded and with that it's displayed an imaged to illustrate the subject and a description on its history.
The current setting is having a list with similar topics apart from each other, for example:
Aliens: Concil Especies
Aliens: Extint Expecies
Aliens: Non-concil races
Each one is interactable and expands on different information regarding a same subject group (that being "Aliens"), which creates a very big list of correlated topics but dispersed.
Bellow you can read the sketched screen:
Screen describing what each of the topics are and what is missing.
As noted, there are similar informations in the list that are spaced out and described as something a part from the rest.
For better readability, I would create a different ambient for these informations and give them more space and structure, giving them the importance that they hold in explaining further details about the story that aren't conveyed in dialogues.
Screen describing how I would implement changes in the general menu structure and placement of elements.
Regarding the changes I would implement in the main menu/pause screen:
1. Instead of "Main menu" (which, to me, it's the exact screen we're in) I would change the copy to "Title screen". This way we can understand that we will close the game and see the game's title screen.
2. I would remove the "Resume" button from the main buttons wheel since we already teach the player how to leave this screen by pressing "B" in the Xbox control.
3. I would include the "Codex" menu in this wheel of options in the same position that "main menu" currently is.
Bellow there's my suggestion for this new menu, dedicated to the Codex.
Prototype:
Prototype with the elements placement I would apply as improvements.
Here are both screens side to side
Codex screen as it is in the game right now
Codex screen as my suggestion
3. Messages
Screen depicting the "messages" menu and how it's structured.
What is this screen and why does it matter?
Regarding the messages menu, we run into a similar problem to the Quests: several different topics from different characters bundled up in the same screen and you can't sort them of flag them as important if you want to.
And why would we want to do that? Some of these messages, such as this one in the image by Garrus Vakarian (aka my Turian bf) he's inviting Sheppard for a meeting next to a specific area of a specific location. Problem is, this information only exists in this message. It doesn't turn into a quest, you can't track it down, you can't set it apart from others that are just "thank yous" and "have 500 credits". This sort of message leads to more interactable content, yet can be easily missed if the player doesn't keep track of it on its own.
Bellow you can see the sketched screen:
Sketched screen explaining what each of the messages are and which ones have CTAs.
Here we can see that, in this screen I've selected there are messages related to DLC content that are actually quests, but aren't displayed in the "missions" menu.
Of course, these are highly optative quests, the player may or may not have interest in complete them and they won't have severe consequences if skipped, but they also don't give the player any means of remembering if not on their own.
Bellow you can see my suggested messages menu.
Messages Prototype:
Here are both screens side by side
Here are all the prototype screens designed for this case study
Here's also the Figma file I've used to work on this study.
Thank you for your interest and attention!
Feel free to reach out if you'd like!