On the Process of Effecting Mass

Dean Takahashi, of the San Jose Mercury News, has up a lengthy interview with Mass Effect project director Casey Hudson on the almost four-year-long development of the title. The two men go into some detail on BioWare's approach to game creation, as well as discussing the numerous technical and storytelling leaps they made with the game. "Hudson said, 'One thing I'm hoping people see in it is how much more there is for a player to make decisions on. It makes it really hard for us to develop, given the customization that we make possible in the game. For example, from the beginning, you are not pre-made as a character. You can play Commander Shepard. But you can also create your own character, male or female. You can choose your special abilities. Those are ways to make your game different and unique. These are things that make it much harder for us to make the game so that it is consistent all the way through, given your choices.'"

Comments

Suprisingly intelligent science and physics

[elrous0]

One of the things that most impresses me in Mass Effect is the sophistication and depth of the speculative science in the "Codex." If you go around and outside the Normandy and look at all its systems, you get some pretty heady entries into the Codex that deal with how the engine works, how faster than light travel works in this fictional universe, etc. It's the first time I've seen concepts like "red shift," "blue shift," relativity, etc. used seriously in a videogame (these aren't exactly everyday concepts for your average dullard). One of the sections I found particularly amusing concerned the fictional problem of heat on a combat spaceship. Since excess heat can only be vented into the vacuum of space via radiation, each ship has strips that run along the hull for conventional heat dumping, with combat ships also having the option to drain superheated coolant out into space in heavy combat situations. I've never seen a videogame deal with an issue with that much understanding of real world physics.

I don't know who wrote all these codex entries, but they must have put quite a bit of effort into them. Unfortunately, this isn't always matched with the rest of the game. For example, one of the weapons entries explains the "unlimited ammo" aspect of the game by the nature of the guns themselves. Rather than fire "bullets" as we think of them, the complex computers in each weapon actually shave an appropriate small mass of metal off a large solid block "cartridge," with its mass based on the velocity it will be fired at, the desired effect, the range to the target, and adjusting for other factors like wind, gravity, and planetary conditions. It's a pretty clever way of explaining a lame game convention. Unfortunately, the other game designers must not have gotten the memo about this, because in the equipment section the ammo is shown and treated exactly as if it were conventional bullets in conventional shell casings (the ammo graphics all show bullets and the text all refers to "rounds").