It's a little mindboggling to think of how big BioWare has gotten over the past few years.

On the one hand, the company is developing two major RPGs in Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2. That alone would be impressive.

But on top of those games, BioWare is also tackling a new Star Wars MMO--a project so daunting, and potentially lucrative, that it almost dwarfs the more traditional efforts.

At last week's Game Developers Conference, I caught up with BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk. While I could have easily spent my limited time asking about just one of the games, I tried to cover all three with a few questions apiece--starting with the old-school RPG being demonstrated next door.

Shack: The PC version of Dragon Age seems very PC-centric, in that it has plenty of buttons and things. How are you porting that over to the console without losing functionality?

Greg Zeschuk: Yeah, I think what we do is--you probably saw the reverse version happen with Mass Effect PC. We were able to kind of amp it up a little bit. The way we describe it is, each version of the game is lovingly hand-crafted for the platform for which we deliver it.

So we've got the PC version pretty much nailed, and I think what we have been doing is thinking about how we adapt--we want the content to be the same. The fundamental experience is very similar, but the way you access it of course is different. So what we'll be looking at is how do you capture as much of the functionality in the game that's on the PC right now in the 360 and PS3 versions.

Also we have an analog to that too, where you look back to Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, how that played with over-the-shoulder... actually kind of a similar level of detail in terms of the game systems. So it's going to be a function of just picking the right ways to depict it. Our job isn't to overload the player with so many button presses, but try to make sure we're using the controller smartly and making it easy to play.

But I think the other thing too, just at a fundamental level, the overall console experience tends to be a little bit different, so we'll probably tweak difficulty and gameplay, that stuff. There are a lot of factors.

Shack: It seems like it would be less challenging to port it to console than if the game were truly turn-based. The real-time, over-the-shoulder "mode" seems very console intuitive.

Ray Muzyka: The great thing is you can play Dragon Age all real-time, if you just set the AI and your partners to be... like I want this guy to be an archer, I want her to be a mage that's more defensive or a healer, and just kind of go.

I've been playing a game a lot recently just behind the shoulder all the time on PC, and it plays really well. You can play, really almost--if you're the center of action, you have people around you that are doing really smart things that accompany you on the journey. And you can switch to them at any time if you want to possess their abilities, and kind of act as them, but you don't have to micro-manage moment to moment. You get different results if you do.

If you want to go top-down and play it more like a real-time strategy game, you can play it that way too. But it plays really well. It's interesting--in the office, we have a group of people who love playing it more as a top-down tactical, and we have a group of people that play it more as a hybrid that kind of jump back and forth. I'm really one of the camp now that is playing it behind-the-shoulder and playing it as more of a third person, intimate kind of thing. Which is probably more how the console players are going to naturally gravitate. And it plays really well.

Greg Zeschuk: Sometimes it's two groups [of developers] fighting together too. "No, tastes great! No, less filling! Top down, shoulder!" Wait wait, you're all right. And they go, "Oh, that's right. That's how we built it." It is designed for that. It's interesting--we got a lot of feedback from people who were very passionate about one of the views, to the point where we got them each good. So that's what we planned for in the first place.

Shack: Why did you choose to push the PC release of Dragon Age to the fall? Did you need more time, or were you looking to line it up with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 releases?

Ray Muzyka: I would say it's a combination of factors. One, we certainly make good use of any additional time we have to polish, iterate. But as you can see, hey it's like March, and you're looking at a game basically, and that's the real code, that's the build, that's the game. So it's looking great.

But we're definitely making use of the time to make it even greater. I also think this is a landmark in fantasy. This is dark fantasy, something that's really differentiated. And the people at EA and BioWare EA that we've shown it to, everyone is getting really excited about the opportunity that Dragon Age presents. Like EA looks at it and says, "Holy crap, this game is going to be big. It's an event. This is a landmark." And we want to make sure that we actually make the most of that, and really back it all the way, build up and make sure that it's got the opportunity to really be as big as it could be.

So the combination of factors were, BioWare always focuses on polish and quality. So we're going to make every spare minute we have to make it better and better. But we also recognize the importance of commercial success in our games. So we want to achieve the best of breed in both. And the good news is the fans are going to win, because we're making this game incredibly high quality.

We're also investing in it as a platform, making sure there's this deep integration of the online community, with the post-release content and user-generated toolsets. And just the polish of the underlying game itself is going to be pretty amazing. And we're launching it on three platforms in the fall.

Shack: Do you have any plans regarding DRM for the PC version?

Greg Zeschuk: We have plans, but they are currently secret plans.

Ray Muzyka: We want to make it a great experience. That's the goal.

Shack: How about digital distribution?

Greg Zeschuk: I mean, nowadays it's pretty much expected.

Ray Muzyka: Retail is still important. We know a lot of fans get the game that way and want to support our retail partners too. But digital distribution is increasingly the way a lot of fans are going.

Greg Zeschuk: Mass Effect PC sold quite a large portion digitally. I think you've seen the PC space, more and more people are obviously going that way. So we'll make sure we do some sensible stuff.

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