Mass Effect Cinematic Preview/Interview
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This November, Microsoft's Xbox 360 will play host to the story-heavy, science-fiction, role-playing game "Mass Effect." The makers of that title have found a new way to back up the most-cinematic-ever claim. In their effort to create the most cinematic title gamers have ever seen, the "Mass Effect" development studio, BioWare, has hired people who make movies out of video games not the film directors who brought the world "Doom" and "BloodRayne" movies, but the people who actually turn games into virtual movie sets: machinima makers.
"There are times when you reflect on the works you do and say, 'Yeah, this kind of is pushing the limits and it's bringing something new,' " Paul Marino, one of those machinima makers, told MTV News in a recent interview.
Marino is one of the most prominent members of the machinima community, a group that uses games such as "The Sims," "Half-Life 2" and "Neverwinter Nights" as staging grounds for its own stories. Until early this year, Marino's main gig was running an annual Machinima Film Festival in New York. But he has spent the bulk of 2007 working in Edmonton in the Canadian province of Alberta, helping ensure that the interactive conversations featuring "Mass Effect" 's Jack-Bauer-style Commander Shepard have the verve of the best verbal showdowns in feature films. He and the handful of other BioWare recruits from the machinima field know that that's not the standard for most video game conversations.
