BioWare Interview

GameInformer’s much-touted interview with BioWare’s Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk is now available, and while Mass Effect 3 is the primary subject of conversation, they also touch upon a range of other topics – including unannounced projects and the feedback they’ve received since the release of Dragon Age II. A generous snip:

Speaking of the PS3 version of Mass Effect 2, a lot of fans are wondering why the first game was not ported as well.

Muzyka: Well, it’s a range of factors. We made the determination that the game we thought represented the franchise the best was Mass Effect 2. And we brought it over and are really happy with the result. And as a result of investing a lot of effort into ensuring that it ran well and looked great and played great on PS3, now we can bring the trilogy to a close on PS3, and 360, and PC.

We knew the fans would want an introduction to the Mass Effect story arc so we added a special introductory sequence for the PS3 fans that kind of brought them into the mix and allowed them to make some epic choices that made the story their own and made it that much more personal.

One of the things that we’re really aware of for Mass Effect 3 as well is that we have a lot of new fans that are entering the fiction every time we launch one of these games. So we want to make sure it’s accessible and can appeal to someone who hasn’t played the first two games. Regardless of whether you played Mass Effect 1 or not or Mass Effect 2 or not, we want to make sure you have a great experience in Mass Effect 3. If you’ve played the first two games we want your choices to mean something. It’s really about building it for all of the different audiences we have to accommodate and delivering it at high quality.

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Bioware is juggling a lot of triple-A franchises right now. Is there room for new IP?

Muzyka: Well we have a mix of old and new and licensed and internally built properties that have turned into licenses over time. I think we’re interested in all of those possibilities. We have some games that haven’t been announced yet and some new platforms, some new genres that we haven’t announced yet that we think will be pretty exciting. Obviously, we love science fiction. We love fantasy. We’d love to extend into some new things in the future, too. Some of the stuff we haven’t announced yet I think the fans will really enjoy and hopefully be surprised and delighted.

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Looking back at Dragon Age II, there was some fan disappointment with certain aspects of the game. Is there anything behind the scenes that you think contributed to that and are there any big changes in store for the next installment?

Muzyka: It’s been polarizing to see the feedback, frankly. There’s been a lot of people that have been really delighted about what we’ve provided in Dragon Age II. People rating it 90 to 100 and really being happy with all the features and the focus on action intensity and the voiced protagonist and the way the story unfolds with the framed narrative and a lot of the things that are quite innovative and different.

There are other people that were expecting more Dragon Age Origins and more of the spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate. Some of them have expressed disappointment. It’s something we really take seriously. We’re taking that feedback to heart and we’re seeing what we can do to continue to surprise and delight our fans in the future.

We’ve actually attracted a lot of new people to the franchise. Dragon Age II is selling faster than Dragon Age Origins. It’s probably part because it’s drawing a lot of new fans in. And that’s exciting to us. But our core fans are really important to us. I can’t emphasize that enough. They helped get us to where we are today. They’re the core of what we do, and we want to make sure we’re making games that satisfy them.