Mass Effect 2: Exclusive Interview

It’s the end of the world as we know it…

With excitement here in the office at fever pitch, we give you our exclusive Mass Effect 2 interview with lead game design Casey Hudson. The full, unabridged version…

How do you continue from Mass Effect’s amazing storyline?

We’ve been able to not only continue the story of Mass Effect 2 the way we wanted but whereas the first one was really ambitious, it was hard for us to even get all of that done at all. Now, we’re able to go through and not only continue the story but we’re able to improve every system from the combat to AI, the lighting, the way the characters interactions work… so, it’s a very similar experience but it’s kind of revolutionary in the fact that we’ve improved everything, it’s a familiar experience but overall it’s so much more improved.

(Talking of the nightclub on the Omega planet)

It’s a place called Omega and it’s a new location, it’s kind of the opposite of the Citadel, which was always elite high class and then this is the opposite. Omega is out in the Terminus Systems at the edge of the galaxy, very crime orientated with heavy industry completely lawless and therefore a lot of fun to adventure in. The Normandy is docked and there’s just a ton of things we’ve done, there’s better lighting and better character detail all of that kind of stuff.

After Life is a bar and a central location in Omega, it’s a huge location. It’s one of the special things we’ve put in for people as they’re going to have similar experiences to Mass Effect 1, but you’re going to go to so many new locations and find out more about this universe. It’s so much richer with so much more detail. There’re always lots of characters, things to do and people to talk to.        

Have you improved the dialogue system?
It’s a similar dialogue system to before but it’s much better. The characters move around and acting a lot better. There’s more movement and you feel even more so that you’re kind of in your own movie.

The other thing we’ve done is add-in the interrupt system into the dialogue. When Shepard looks through his sniper scope and realise that he has an opportunity,  you can pull the trigger. The whole game is sprinkled with these so now you pay a little bit more attention knowing that you get to do these cool things.

What have you done to improve the combat?
One of the things we’ve got now is the ability to map your powers onto the two shoulder buttons. A lot of the stuff is based on making the combat so that you can pause it, but now you can set it up to mostly play in real-time. Any time you tap the shoulder button it will fire the ability you’ve mapped there. We’ve got a lot of really cool new features, the classes are the same but they’re a lot more developed, it’s not just that we have tech and biotic’s and soldier powers and then mixtures of each, now they all have a lot of really specialised powers. The soldier can now carry all the weapons and do all of the weapon abilities, the special ammos and such. We now also got a heavy weapons system, which is over the top firepower that can be used when you’re in trouble. Jacob (a party member) can fire chrio-ammo that’ll actually freeze enemies and then they can be shattered by Shepard.

Much of the combat is now very much based in these physics cooperation scenarios. Where you’re putting someone in stasis or freezing them or throwing them up in the air and someone else taking them out. That’s part of the fun of being able to map powers is that I find it makes me much more opportunistic in terms of being able to use something. If somebody tosses an enemy up into the air you can just look over and tap the concussion round and it’ll just shoot them out of the level.

As much as we’re showcasing a lot of the combat stuff, the narrative and dialogue is something people assume is still going to be there. It’s gone through just as much improvement, it’s a combination of things, it’s better acting and performing, even better cinematography and how we portray the scene has been improved and it’s just that much more immersive. When you throw in things like the interrupt system, which I think when you play it being able to press a button during a cutscene can feel gimmicky, but because you are already interacting with these characters it just feels like a further more physical form, it actually puts you more in tactile involvement with what’s going on. It can be anything too, we’ve shown some of the hostile ones that are triggered off the left trigger but then there’s the other side. Say you’re talking to someone who’s dying, they’re coughing their last breaths and then as they just start to keel over the right trigger will flash and you know at that point you can do something to help them. Shepard will grab the guy and use his omni-tool to inject him with adrenaline or something and then the guy can talk to you again. It’s those kinds of things that can also make it more active in addition to just being higher fidelity.

To some degree I think the controls worked against the AI in the first game because when you would tell your squad members to move up you would tell them where but there’s two characters. Naturally they’re going to try and fight over the position, whereas now you can literally say I want both of you right outside the door as easily as just going ‘click click’. They will fight from those positions but if they get flanked and it’s not a good idea to be there, they’ll move off and find a better spot. In the same way, instead of telling two characters to target someone over here being able to target them separately means you can make them focus on different enemies and it just opens up a whole world of tactics you can use.

One of the things we learnt from the first game, you don’t want to contaminate the really good shooter feel with the inability to aim and things like that because of your skills. Even in real life, if you do manage to get a cross hair pointing in a certain direction, your bullets going to go there. So where does all your character progression go? We’ve always had your special powers, we’ve always had other skills that you have and so we’ve just kind of moved some of the things that really shouldn’t be part of the skill, which is just being able to point your weapon. It’s one of the reasons why all the character classes are unique and different because each one has very special powers. Whether it’s a physics based biotic thing or tech power. So now you put all your development into those things.

How exactly does the save file system work when players bring their characters from Mass Effect 1?
Some of it ties into the story aspect, which we can’t really talk about yet, or ever because it’s part of the fun of the beginning of the experience. But, the other thing is the classes are the same and some of the powers are the same but because everything is really up-graded it wouldn’t map over anyway. However, what we are doing is we’re looking at the character that you’re importing and we’re saying; you’re level 50 and therefore this is what it translates to in intrinsic bonuses in this game. Are you a level 60 when you import your character? It will say; you had all of these things about your character and therefore it changes your starting point for this game. But then it also starts you in this new scheme of how your character progresses.
It’s the middle chapter, does it have to get darker and more intense?

People would make a comparison to Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, in general that’s kind of what happens in storytelling anyway within the three act setup and typically you’d expect certain things to happen in each of them. Within a game you’ll have the three acts of getting into the trouble, going through your trials and finding your darkest point and then rising out of it. If you think about it, Mass Effect 1 starts with a totally idyllic naïve universe and by the end Shepard has shown that there is something real happening and now if this really scary thing is happening what is it actually about, what are the details? You have to dig deeper into the darker parts of the Mass Effect universe, it’s still the same universe it still has this sleek beautiful idyllic side but you’re digging more into the darker aspects of it. Because it’s a non-liner game you can explore all of it, you can go back to the Citadel, it’s all still there but what you end up doing is a little rougher and darker.

Can Shepard really die?
It would ruin the narrative arc if you died and this is something that’s interesting, people have trouble figuring out what we mean by that, but literally this is a trilogy about commander Shepard. It’s about your ability to take that character through the biggest story we can tell, but on the other hand if we’re going to be serious about players going on a suicide mission there has to be the ability for some of your squad, perhaps all of them and even your own character to die as a part of that final mission. Obviously if you do die then there’s nothing to carry forward into a third game, so one thing I thought of doing was as a way to get across the fact that we’re serious about this is to say in Mass Effect 3 you can import you character but for a dead character the game would just be a funeral scene and that’s your storyline. But what it really is about, it can happen, it’s a great ending and it’s one of many possibilities. People are worried we’re giving too much away about the ending by saying death is possible but that tells you nothing about what you’re doing or why. It just enforces the seriousness that you want to build a team that is loyal, you want to make the right decisions and part of the fun of it is to make sure that you’re going to survive.

A major criticism was the side quests, have these been improved?
The side quests were a part of the game where what we were trying to accomplish was almost impossible for any dev team to do. In addition to that, it being the first game but now we’re able to look at things like that and say what can we do to make them richer? But, we’re taking kind of the opposite approach with those, with each thing that you do in the expanded universe when you go off the beaten path should be something that is so different from the rest of the game that it changes your expectations for what you’ll find out there. Whereas with the first game once you’d seen one or two they became very similar. Now, we’re using them as an excuse to do things with game systems and gameplay, story that are bizarre, fun and just different to what we can do in the main story.

Is there a new Mako or vehicle for Shepard and crew?
We’re working on a new vehicle, we haven’t announced how we’re going to use it and certainly in terms of the side missions a lot of the focus is on either story or on-foot combat that is as good as the main game.

A lot has been made of the underlying sci-fi tech in Mass Effect being based in the real world, is this true?
When we start with creating a new IP we have to think about where on the line does it exist, is it fantasy or hard reality? We very intentionally chose a point on that scale where we didn’t have to force people to understand or worry about the science, but if they know about science or are interested then all of these things have a justification and it’s not done in a way that would offend them. Some of things in Mass Effect are based on amazing things that are happening in real science, which is the discovery of dark energy and the fact that it could overturn everything we know about physics and it’s just such a wonderful loophole that I don’t think anyone else is even featuring it as a corner stone of an entire IP.

What kind of story is Mass Effect 2?

I guess it was kind of what happens after the coming of age story, which is; you’re an adult, you think you should have a handle on things but you really don’t. It’s the ways you fall down in trying to get control and that’s kind of what’s happening with humanity in Mass Effect 2. We are recognised, but with that comes having to take responsibilities and struggle for control that always alludes you.