Mass Effect 2 Interview
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Why did you decide to make Mass Effect a trilogy? With the games, the books and other media, it has become its own brand now.
That's a very conscious decision. I guess when we started development on it, it was right after Knights of the Old Republic. So KOTOR shipped in 2003, or something like that? And Mass Effect shipped in 2007. So... I don't know how many years it's been but it's been a long time. We really invested in this as a franchise, a brand. As an IP that would last a long time.
We thought just the story arc that was written for it was a trilogy arc. So in some ways, it's as simple as that. That we decided to make a trilogy, so we did. Not a standalone game but a vision of a story arc that would transcend multiple games, each of them standalone. We also had a dream of being able to import save games, that hadn't really been done before. I think we were first to do that on 360, or one of the first.
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Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 are being released fairly close together, did you not want more room between the releases? Dragon Age is a big game and there's still more DLC being released for it.
Well, I have a portfolio and there are a lot of teams working on a lot of different things at the locations I manage. They're all working on really cool games. I think all the titles appeal to different fans but there's a lot of overlap too, of people who like BioWare games in general. I think people make room for great entertainment experiences and provided we over-deliver against their expectations every time, they'll make room for more titles.
I think three months apart, I think Dragon Age shipped in... November, so three months apart in terms of separation is a pretty good separation. But you're right, Dragon Age is a big game. It took me, playing every night for a month, two months to finish it. So I was very satisfied with it but it was a big investment. But that's the value I like to provide our fans.
