A Visit with Bioware CEO Ray Muzyka

A trip to the windy plains of Edmonton for a day filled with all things Mass Effect™ is quite enough to get a gamer's blood pumping, but spending a half hour chatting with Bioware CEO and co-founder Dr. Ray Muzyka is just as enlightening as any demo or hands-on time with the game.

The adventure begins November 22nd.

Emotional Mass Effect
Many games begin with the developer seizing on one key factor, one motivating force that drives both the overall structure of the game, and the game mechanics as well. I asked Ray what the genesis for Mass Effect was:

"I think as a studio what we're really trying to do is convey emotion, and that's expressed through every aspect of the game … whether that be the story and the characters, the exploration, the combat. At the core level, really make the player feel something. Really make them feel like they care about the characters, or that they even dislike characters. That's a valid expression, too. Some characters you don't want them to like, you want them to dislike them. That's still a great story if you feel something."

We are doing digital distribution and post-release content. We haven't revealed what we're doing yet … we are going to build something for sure.

Bioware's drive to instill an emotional response in the drama, the dialogue, the expressiveness of the world and characters, isn't limited just to the quiet, story-driven moments either. As Ray puts it, "In combat you feel real genuine fear at times, real visceral, adrenaline, nail-biting excitement. You're just looking forward to it and it's so satisfying, such a wave of relief washes over you when you finally just barely get through combat that's really, really hard."

The Disparate Experience
From the makeup of your party, your chosen class and equipment, what missions and planets you choose to explore, and perhaps most of all, how you react and communicate with the characters throughout the game, no two Mass Effect experiences are quite alike. I asked Ray how critical the unique player experiences are to the team:

Will you bring Wrex along?

"Depending on who you bring with you in your party, depending on which abilities and Biotic powers and weapons you use, depending on how you've chosen the story to unfold, depending even on an area—which side of the area you entered—there's even multiple places where you can kind of sneak up on people, if you poke around nooks and crannies … it's going to be a very different experience."

Muzyka says, "With the exploration, you just feel a genuine sense of awe sometimes when you're on an uncharted world. You don't have to take the moment, but you're just looking up and looking around and saying, 'Man, this is really beautiful.' It's like you're on an alien planet."

It's not just what different players experience, sometimes your own experience differs. Ray notes, "I'm finding things playing through the second and third time I never saw the first time at all, and I know the game quite well."

Beyond the Dialogue
Much has been made, rightfully so, about the game's dynamic dialogue system, but Mass Effect's role-playing innovations stretch even farther. I asked Ray what features he would highlight:

"I think the interface as a whole … the combat interface, the Biotic wheel, the weapon wheel, those are really, really accessible. They make the game a pleasure to play. It's like you're the main character in this interactive fiction. You're the actor and director simultaneously. With other things, we've really pushed the digital actors, we've really innovated and tried to make them a lot more expressive, realistic, credible, emotionally compelling."

Speaking of digital actors, it's shocking to realize, as Ray points out, that "a lot of it's procedural, so we have great technical animators and lots of great programmers that have actually come up with the procedural face animation, and a lot of the conversations are not touched by an individual animator."

You never know what's just around the corner.

That so much expressive, believable emotion can filter through conversations never manually altered by an animator is an outstanding testament to Bioware's technology.

How Long
It's safe to say Mass Effect will stand proudly among the longest, most expansive games yet available on Xbox 360™. But exactly how long and how expansive is the experience? Here's what Ray had to say:

"It took me about thirty to forty hours to do just the core story, and another twenty, thirty hours of uncharted worlds beyond that. I think most players will probably spend forty to sixty hours, somewhere in there … this is a big game. It's all at the same production value too. It's all consistent high-quality. I'm amazed, the team has done an amazing job."

Extending Mass Effect
Not since The Elder Scrolls® IV: Oblivion™ has a game been so perfectly suited for post-release content. With literally an entire galaxy to explore, the possibilities are endless. I asked Ray if they were looking to release downloadable content via Xbox LIVE® Marketplace:

"Yes, yes, we are. We are doing digital distribution and post-release content. We haven't revealed what we're doing yet … we are going to build something for sure. We're just not sure about the details yet."

Excellent news indeed.

Thanks so much to CEO and co-founder of Bioware, Dr. Ray Muzyka, for taking the time out to chat up Mass Effect with Xbox.com.

Article by Ryan Treit