Mass Effect was one of GameSpy's favorite role-playing games in recent memory, and at E3 2009 the sequel is set to set the show ablaze. We had the opportunity to sit down with BioWare's Casey Hudson, Executive Producer on Mass Effect 2, to pick his brain about alien species, love interests, and exploring the farthest reaches of space.

Be sure to also check out the latest video of the game, a behind-the-scenes trailer that'll whet your appetite before the floodgates open during E3.



GameSpy: Thanks for meeting with me, Casey. What are your plans for Mass Effect 2 at E3?
Casey Hudson, Executive Producer: Basically, we've talked about the kind of game that it's going to be, and the things that we're going to try and do now. At E3 we're going to be pretty clear about exactly what's going on. We're going to show people exactly what the stuff in the teaser is all about with Commander Shepard.

GameSpy: Regarding the teaser, were you intentionally misleading the audience?
Casey Hudson: The great thing about that is that we weren't misleading the audience. It was actually alluding to the fundamental ideas that are in Mass Effect 2. It wasn't just a tease, people will see at E3 that what we showed was fundamental to what Mass Effect 2 is about.
GameSpy: In the original Mass Effect, decisions had a real impact on the game. Has that changed significantly in Mass Effect 2?
Casey Hudson: It's definitely a continuation of the idea that you can have agonizing choices and that they all have very real consequences to the story. The fun thing is that Mass Effect 2 is going to make people realize that their actions in the first game really did have consequences, because the results go beyond those in the first game.

I think it's something where people are going to realize that to such a degree that they'll want to go back and play the first game again with that in mind. For example, from the moment you start Mass Effect 2, you'll realize that the world that you left behind in Mass Effect 1 is where you start in Mass Effect 2. It starts out being shaped a little bit differently based on your endings and the choices you made.

All throughout the game, you'll see that if you made a decision in the first one, like where someone died in the first game, that character will be dead in the second. It makes you really think that when they reach a moment in Mass Effect 1, or Mass Effect 2, they're decisions that can impact the ending of the trilogy. That realization will make an impact. You'll recognize characters from the first game, and the consequences of decisions from the first game.
GameSpy: Something that I really admired about the first game was that the major decisions weren't a binary choice between good and evil. Often, no matter what decision you made you ended up losing in some form or the other. Do you feel that Mass Effect 2 will change how people feel about the outcomes of their decisions from the first game?
Casey Hudson: I think we want to reflect the spirit of what kind of situation you expected to be getting yourself into with a certain kind of decision. But it's definitely something where it's not going to be clear what the long-term result will be. If you did something in the first game, why the result is going to be different in Mass Effect 2 in a lot of cases will be interesting, surprising, it's part of the fun. In the story, if a character lived in the first game, you might be wondering what they're up to now, and you get to see that now. You'll see the results on the universe of them being alive.

Also, one of the important things we recognize is that not everyone played Mass Effect 1, or didn't keep their save.
GameSpy: That's my situation. I had two Mass Effect saves, but my hard drive failed on me and I lost everything!
Casey Hudson: That's too bad! The cool thing about Mass Effect 2 in that sense is that there are all these tie-ins to the first one, but it's also an excellent entry point for people that didn't play it or no longer have their save game, and then you can dovetail really nicely not knowing anything about what Mass Effect 1 was, because much of what's great in Mass Effect 2 is that it plays better, it's more accessible, everything about it is better and more broadly appealing. We want to make sure that even people who haven't played the first one go out and play Mass Effect 2. You'll probably want to go back and see the first one as a prequel.
GameSpy: What have you done to improve Mass Effect 2's gameplay?
Casey Hudson: What we've done with Mass Effect 2 in terms of gameplay is literally take every bit of feedback that we could find, list it out, categorize it, and come up with a fundamental set of design improvements that catches all those things.
GameSpy: What was the number-one criticism? Was it the Mako?
Casey Hudson: In terms of severity or frequency, it was actually the texture popping. One of the special things about Mass Effect is that you get so immersed in it, and it gets to feel like you're watching a really great science-fiction movie, and at some point it feels like you're actually there. But the texture stuff coming in is one of the things that hurts that experience. We optimized and optimized but we couldn't get it to where it was perfect. With Mass Effect 2 we have.
GameSpy: So you've completely addressed texture popping in Mass Effect 2?
Casey Hudson: Part of the thing is of course dependant on your hard drive and disc drive. As it's pulling textures at different speeds, that affects your system in different ways. If you're loading a save game, for example, the rate that it's pulling textures affects things. We had this issue with KotOR. It's part of a role-playing game where we're demanding lots of different resources off the disc, and the disc performance can affect it. It was one of the biggest issues and something that we felt we had to fix and get it right. So that issue is addressed in Mass Effect 2.