Shack: Let's skip over to Mass Effect. Initially you guys promised players would be able to pick up their saved games in the sequel, but the trailer seemed to contradict that a bit.

Ray Muzyka: That's what it looks like, doesn't it?

Ray Muzyka: Everything we've said before about keeping your save games, keeping the continuity of the trilogy, is absolutely true. Everything we've said in the teaser is absolutely true as well. What does that mean?! How can it fit? That's a surprise.

Greg Zeschuk: We're full of secrets and mysteries.

Ray Muzyka: And you know, the fans are talking it up. We're excited by the reaction, because we released it knowing it would provoke that kind of reaction. And you know, it's a teaser, right? But we'll have more to show soon, and I think the fans are going to be very satisfied.

Shack: Would you say that Mass Effect 2 represents a major tonal shift for the series? Or is this a more traditional continuation of the story?

Greg Zeschuk: I think one way to describe it is the dark second chapter. That's one element, and that's the tonal element, is a little harder edged. I think from a pure development side, it's actually super exciting for us, because much of the time spent on Mass Effect was figuring out how to fit all that stuff on one disc in the 360 sense. And kind of, "Wow, it fit." And by the end, we actually had everything working, all the systems going. But during the course of development, we were mostly trying to build that stuff.

[With Mass Effect 2] we've been able to iterate, refine and look at the fan feedback, and do all the things to really tighten the game up. And there's a few key areas we're very high level working on it. One is just the overall shooter feel, and all the stuff to sort of further optimize the feel of the game. Story and integration--it's a tighter unit. It's hard to explain it, but it's a little less sprawling and a little more focused, but still creates exploration.

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Shack: My favorite part of Mass Effect was just exploring a major hub and solving problems. Or creating problems.

Ray Muzyka: What we're doing with the uncharted worlds is, we recognized that there's a lot of cool things you can do with them. One of the things we can do with them is still make them optional, but to make them important, make them totally integrated and add value to the game.

So in every case now, all the optional content is still optional, you don't have to do it. But if you do, your main story arc is going to be that much more satisfying and compelling. And we're really focusing on making the exploration richer as a result.

It's a tighter experience. More personal. It's darker. It's a darker tone. We feel like there's--it's not humanity's kind of naive entrance onto the galactic stage, where you're the tip of the spear of humanity, representing this sort of, "Oh, what's it all about? There's aliens, that's cool." Now you know there's something that's really dark, and the Reapers who've come and did some major destruction. Now you're left with, wow--

Greg Zeschuk: Your harsh introduction is over, and you're like okay, now what?

Ray Muzyka: This is not easy times. It starts off with a bang right away.

Shack: The other thing I loved about Mass Effect was the hard sci-fi feel. I mean, you had the moon in the game.

Ray Muzyka: That was one of my favorite moments. Just going to the moon and finding CCP. Not everybody saw it. It's like, this is cool. It's like one of those aspiration fantasies of seeing the Earth in the sky. Yeah, I love that moment.

Greg Zeschuk: I think the team from the very beginning, we went through this process, kind of setting our goals of the kind of sci-fi we wanted to create. Because, you look at the concept of sci- fi, there's a huge range there. There's super hard science, and some of it is very esoteric and time travel and all this confusing stuff. But there's an entire range that we've targeted--there's space fantasy over here, but then there's that set of plausible, believable, but still fantastic. And I think that's really where we wanted to set our goal. We said, okay, it's like 300 years in the future--could it be like that? Yeah, there's nothing so crazy that it couldn't be like that.

Ray Muzyka: The other end of the spectrum is hard sci-fi, like Larry Niven, stuff like that. But it's not space fantasy, it's not hard sci-fi, it's somewhere in the middle.

Greg Zeschuk: It's almost like realistic sci-fi.

Shack: Why the first quarter [2010] release? Was that a reaction to the traditionally bloated holiday release period?

Ray Muzyka: At BioWare our approach is, we make sure our games are great, and we release them when they're ready. And EA has been a great partner in support of that, because they know the commercial success of games they're going to experience is really related to the quality.

Shack: Do you know whether the PC release of Mass Effect 2 will be delayed beyond the Xbox 360 date?

Greg Zeschuk: No idea.

Ray Muzyka: We've confirmed we're working on PC.

Greg Zeschuk: We still have to work on software optimization and stuff, so...

Shack: Jumping quickly to The Old Republic.

Greg Zeschuk: That one's pretty good I hear.

Shack: [laughs] There was some noise about microtransactions a few months ago. Is that something you're still considering for inclusion in the game?

Ray Muzyka: Yeah, I mean it'd be intriguing. It'd have to be congruent with the game world. We haven't talked about the business models of TOR yet, so we're not confirming or denying anything on that front.

But you know, subscription models are something that the vast majority of fans in that space in North America and Europe prefer, and it's certainly something we see as an important business model. But you know, microtransactions, other forms of business models are intriguing too. We're looking at a variety of things, but we're not ready to confirm or deny any specifics yet.

Shack: It seems like certain types of microtransactions might fit well with the sort of single-player approach to an MMO that you're going for.

Ray Muzyka: We want something different from play sessions, where people can play through a story and feel like it's their own journey and story arc. But yeah, I mean, there are certainly ways to accommodate that within a subscription model too. And microtransactions don't always have to be game-changing elements. They can be things that add value, but are optional. So there's a variety of ways to pursue it.

Shack: There was also some noise about a console release, but all you've confirmed is PC right now. Are you ruling that out at this point?

Greg Zeschuk: We rule nothing out, but there's no comment. [laughs]

Ray Muzyka: The only version we've talked about is PC, and that's our focus.

Shack: Thanks guys.