Mass Effect Interview

IGN has published a four-page interview with BioWare's Casey Hudson, quizzing the Mass Effect project director about their upcoming sci-fi RPG.
Q: You just spoke a bit about inter-party interactions. One of the things we've always been looking for in a game like this is seeing the party really develop. In Knights of the Old Republic, you could be the most terrible person in the entire world and yet the good people in your squad would just follow you blindly. But we saw in one of the Mass Effect videos released an actual argument between a couple people in the party. Are decisions you make going to splinter your party and maybe build on themselves?

A: Yeah, it definitely will. And that is one of the fun things about giving you a squad where each of the characters has very different motivations. Therefore, you can imagine when we give you really opposite characters, having both of those characters in your squad or seeing how they respond to the things you're doing. We can throw those things in there and allow things to develop and react, but as a player it becomes clear why having certain characters in your squad or taking certain kinds of actions in the world start to really matter.

That is one of the things we were able to see in the X06 demo. As you're doing things, you may have people in your squad that disagree with you. But there may be someone else in your squad that disagrees with them. That's another thing that we do take to extremes where at some point it actually becomes potentially a fight to the death on issues that matter enough. That's one of the cool things about having a storyline that is really emotionally charged and on a big scale. If you're ready to go to extremes to smash down any barrier that 's in your way, the way you go about that could go against the way some of your squad members would like to see. It's something that draws out the importance of your choices in the game.