Mass Effect Interview

TeamXbox was able to corner Mass Effect writer Drew Karpyshyn for a three-page interview about his contributions to the sci-fi RPG.

Q: I would think it was a challenge for you writing within the framework of what Mass Effect is supposed to be, which is not a straight-ahead, linear, everything-by-a-certain-role game. You have dialogue that branches on and off the main storyline, subquests, things like that. What were the challenges for you to do that kind of writing and make sure that you came back to where it needed to be?

A: Most of BioWare’s stories have been pretty open-ended. With Mass Effect, we even tried to expand on that. We tried to give you this whole galaxy that you could explore in your own way and in your own time. When you do that when you give a player that kind of freedom it’s much more difficult to craft this emotionally gripping story, because we don’t know when you’re going to run into something.

So, one of the things we tried to do is, we kind of tried to think in these.I started calling them (theme bubbles.) We’d say, we want to explore this theme the theme of morality.is it okay to do the right thing for the wrong reason or the wrong thing for the right reason? Does the end justify the means? If we keep that mind and interweave it through our plots and through a particular experience, we can say, here’s the theme we’re exploring.and there’s multiple answers. The player gets to decide, (How am I going to treat this particular situation? Am I going to reject this notion ? Am I going to embrace it?)

Based on that, we can still create compelling narrative, compelling interaction with these characters, but allow players the freedom to kind of do what they want and sort of keep them on the same thematic track toward an ending that will resonate with them, and actually have powerful impact and feel like it emerged from the story.that it’s not just something tacked on at the end.