Mass Effect 3 Interview

IGN managed to wrangle up an interview with BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk about the final installment in the Mass Effect trilogy, and to keep things interesting (and bewildering), they relate the interview as if they’re playing out a cutscene in one of the three games. Facial hair and tonsil talk incoming:

Me: Mass Effect 3 pulls the trilogy toward its end. How hard has it been to tie up all the loose ends?

Ray: I just finished an end-to-end play and it blew me away. For me, it’s definitely the best of the franchise. It has a lot of elements that are going to be very compelling like the multi-player and the decision-making, with consequences.

It ties everything together but it’s also a brand new adventure. It’s an incredibly accessible entry point. The Reapers have invaded Earth and it’s up to you as Shepard to take it back. So that’s a pretty powerful, emotional journey right from the beginning.

It brings this chapter of the Mass Effect universe to an epic conclusion but it’s also an entry point. If you’re going to enter it anywhere, this would be the place to do so because it’s just so intense. It’s so polished. It brings everything together and wraps it all up in a very powerful way.

This is happening. In the universe where I live, because of the choices I have made, I am speaking to two of the most influential game-makers in the world, the guys behind Mass Effect and Star Wars: The Old Republic and Dragon Age. It’s hard for me to imagine interviewing anyone in the game biz who is a bigger deal right now. I select a question that seems appropriate to this moment, one that might provide some insight into their processes.

Me: That seems to be the biggest challenge facing game makers today – managing options and choices and giving people a real sense of consequence. How difficult is that as a storyteller?

Ray: We’ve done a lot of work on choice before but now we’ve really focused on having those choices have decisive consequence and emotional impact on you. If you go this way, well this is going to happen and it just hits you in the gut. It makes you sit back and say, ‘holy crap’. It’s emotionally powerful.

Greg: For us this is a passion, this is a craft. We see it as an art as much as a science. So the team really takes it seriously. It helps that so many of us have been working together for a long time. That continuity helps.

Ray is clean-shaven. Greg is splendidly whiskery. Neither of these observations help me. I consider making some wise-ass comment about them being actual real life doctors. ‘Can you take a look at my tonsils? Haha.’ Perhaps not. The doctors are in full flow. I allow them to continue talking about how they crafted one of the year’s biggest entertainment events.