Mass Effect: Evolution Comic Book Series Revealed

Dark Horse and BioWare’s original Mass Effect: Redemption comic series must have been pretty well received, because word comes via IGN that they’ll be releasing another four-part series (entitled Mass Effect: Evolution) in January that provides some background information on the Illusive Man.

“The basic idea was that the Illusive Man is, by nature, one of these guys we don’t know much about,” Walters, the writer of the Mass Effect games, told IGN in an interview. “Going forward in the games we were thinking we didn’t want to reveal too much about him [in the present], but we could look into his past and see how he became the Illusive Man and, maybe moreso, where Cerebus came from and how it started. We certainly have a lot of material we’ve developed internally about this that’s not out there publicly and we thought this would be a great forum to share that.”

“Evolution is a story from the early days of the Mass Effect universe, not long after the discovery of the Mass Relays connecting our solar system to the galaxy,” Miller revealed to IGN. “It shows us one of those important moments when humanity realized just how dangerous that galaxy was. Yes, there’s wonderful opportunity out there, but there are also perils; as our story opens, we’re in the middle of the First Contact War with the alien turians. We don’t know much about the enemy, and they don’t know much about us and, as we’ll find out, there’s a lot more at risk than losing a starship or a colony.”

“One of the questions we asked ourselves when developing the Illusive Man for the game was who was this guy and how did he get here,” Walters said, when asked to detail why Bioware chose to focus in on the Illusive Man. “How does someone come to have this much power and view this world the way he does? And really there’s no way to explore that in the game otherwise he wouldn’t be illusive! So the opportunity to explore him [made sense to us].”