Mass Effect Interview

Game-Spectrum has kicked up an interview with BioWare's Drew Karpyshyn about his work as lead writer on Mass Effect and author of the Mass Effect: Revelation novel.
Q: How did the work start with Mass Effect? Was there a general idea for what the game was going to be and you worked on that? Can you give us the process to get to where you are now with the game?

A: From the beginning we knew we wanted to make a game that evoked the atmospheric sci-fi films of the 70's and 80's we all grew up with: films like Alien, Aliens, Blade Runner and Terminator. Keeping that in mind, we began to look at what elements we loved about those films, and how we could capture their essence in fresh and original ways. Over the next few months the core team (the project director, the lead artist, the lead programmer, the lead designer and me) began to pull the pieces together until eventually we had everything in place. At that point we brought on the rest of the team and began full production. Three years later, here we are.