Mass Effect 2 Interview
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What is it about Mass Effect's blend of sci-fi and RPG gameplay that's made it so accepted by gamers?
I think, ultimately, it's gotta be a good game, it's gotta be fun. One thing we focus on is... there are the bullet points that a videogame can have that make it marketable, and make it good on paper, but there's also a totally separate thing that makes people fall in love with it. You can't really say what those things are, but we know how to pursue those moments, and those points of interactivity. All these little bits that help you fall in love with the setting and the characters and the overall experience. That, to me, is what's really important.
There's that aspect of fantasy fulfilment you get to have your own ship, you get to choose where you want to go, you get to make decisions that affect the people that you're with on an emotional level. What might seem like a minor difference with other games is, in almost every other game you're a single character and you run through hallways doing things by yourself. But, as we know from real-life experience, one of the best ways of doing something is being able to turn to your friend and say, (Oh my god, wasn't that amazing?) and later to be able to say (hey remember when we did so and so?) It's about the people that you're with and how that shared experience makes it better.
That aspect we had in KotOR and Mass Effect, we're taking it even further in Mass Effect 2, the idea that you have '˜friends' inside the game that you share the experience with, and you have that feeling at being able to look over at somebody and know that you went through that together with them. When you make a choice, these choices affect these people that you've invested time in. It's little things like that can help people fall in love with a game rather than just playing it, and it's that which we try to develop.
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Is it still the same fundamental gameplay structure? Travelling the universe on the Normandy?
It's very similar to that in the sense that you've got your ship; you've got the galaxy map; you can explore. It's just that now, whereas in ME1 you might say, '˜I'm going to go completely off the core story and do a side-mission', you might find something interesting on a planet way in the distance, but in ME1 that might be the end of that little subplot. In ME2, likely the reason that you're going out to do that, is because someone in your squad has business that they need to take care of out there, and by doing that they're now better equipped or they're more loyal to you. In some of the cases this is how you get your squad members, is you go out to the edge of the galaxy and do something, and meet someone amazing and now they're with you.
