The following is a transcription of the texts in the chapter "The Making of Mass Effect" within the book BioWare: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development, published in 2020 and written by Ben Gelinas.
BioWare Takes Players to a Galaxy Not So Far, Far Away[]
Mass Effect began its life in a vision document in the fall of 2003, shortly after BioWare released Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The project, code-named SFX, was conceived by Casey Hudson and a core team from KOTOR. The idea was to create an epic science-fiction RPG in an original setting wholly owned by BioWare. With the exception of Shattered Steel and Jade Empire, every BioWare game up to that point had been licensed.
Casey wanted Mass Effect to capture that similar feel of exploring space and far-flung planets with memorable squad mates while tackling heady sci-fi concepts, but in a setting BioWare owned that was conceived to work first and foremost as a video game.
"If we wanted to do a certain kind of toy or, you know, a novel or whatever, then that would be within our control," project director Casey Hudson says. "That was really the genesis of Mass Effect: let's have that same kind of fun that we had on KOTOR, but build a universe for us to do it in."
The Evolution of Mass Effect's Design[]
From the very start, the core of the Mass Effect experience was there, albeit at a sky-high level. SFX would offer a "powerful, character-driven story" in which players would "lead a small party of two or three, selected from a larger group of adventurers." Initially, players could control any party member; that later changed to players maintaining control of a single, customizable Spectre and issuing commands to a pair of AI squad mates.
"We wanted it to be about Shepard and you to be focused on Shepard being a battlefield commander, as opposed to switching bodies," lead designer Preston Watamaniuk says.
By the start of 2004, SFX's backstory began to take shape. In the initial draft, humans landed on Mars in 2250 and discovered evidence of an ancient alien race, as well as a powerful substance called Black Sand, which rapidly advanced technology to the point where faster-than-light travel was made possible.
Humans, suddenly capable of travel to multiple star systems, made contact with a multitude of alien species. At the start of the first game, these species, together with humans, maintained a fragile peace, with focus placed on the political center of the galaxy, a hub known as Star City, later renamed the Citadel.
Mass Effect Multiplayer[]
Multiplayer functionality was a vision for the series all the way back in 2003. The plan was for the first Mass Effect, an Xbox exclusive at launch, to take advantage of the platform's online components. Early designs saw players meeting in game at central hubs to interact and trade items collected in their otherwise single-player adventures.
By 2006, SFX had a name—Mass Effect—and a more specific story about conflict between organic and artificial life forms. The story's scope stretched across three games and included the option for full co-op multiplayer.
"Every single game, we tried to do multiplayer. It was something we discussed right from the get-go," Mass Effect writer Mac Walters says. "It always just fell by the wayside, like it was a bridge too far at the time, when you're trying to build something that's a new IP, on a new platform, with a new engine. With all those things, you've got to really focus on the core elements of the game."
While the original Mass Effect shipped as a single-player-only experience, multiplayer was eventually added in the series' third installment as a separate mode of play.
Mass Effect's Conversation Was Made in Jade Empire[]
At the core of Mass Effect was its story and characters—and the complexities with which players could engage with them.
Some of the series' earliest writing was actually done in a development build of Jade Empire. At first, there was no conversation wheel. Proto-Paragon and Renegade options existed as Friendly and Hostile, respectively. Commander Shepard was an unnamed human Spectre, portrayed silently by Jade Empire player character Wu the Lotus Blossom.
Players could converse with a handful of characters in Mass Effect's prototype. Many conversations tied into the player's choice about smuggling a weapon through Noveria Station—a mission that made it into the actual game. In the prototype, too, a merchant gave the player this quest, referring to themselves as "this one," though the word "hanar" never appeared.
The prototype also hinted at numerous pieces of now-established Mass Effect lore, including the player's ship, called the Normandy, the krogan, and memorable characters like Saren and Harkin, the latter a corrupt security officer voiced in the prototype by an actor who sounds suspiciously like Mark Meer.
In one prototype conversation, the player was even given the opportunity to end a conversation with the signature line "I should go."
Untitled Anecdote 1[]
These screenshots are from among Mass Effect's earliest builds. The character in the top image, running from the tentacle monster, was an initial version of the player character, Shepard. The outfit was changed after the team agreed the red and white made Shepard look too much like a medic.
In the middle are early images of the Mako, the game's planetary exploration vehicle, though they didn't have a name for it at the time.
"We later used that vehicle as a krogan truck in Mass Effect 2," project director Casey Hudson says. "The IP was pretty far along in terms of concepting, so here you can see a volus, looking just like they did in the final game."
Untitled Anecdote 2[]
Early concepts of the central space hub known as the Citadel were drawn in pencil by project director Casey Hudson. The Citadel needed to be a space station that would open and close. When closed, it became this impenetrable fortress.
The top image is the final design, painted by art director Derek Watts based on a photo of a sculpture near Aswan, Eqypt.
Real Tales of Development: Naming a Sprawling Space Opera[]
As with any new IP, naming the game that would ultimately be Mass Effect was a struggle. The team did a number of different exercises, attempting to find just the right feel. They put out a call to all studio staff for ideas. They did polls. They made a name generator that combined words that they liked in random ways.
"When we found one that seemed pretty good, I would make a pretend logo for it in Photoshop, to see if I could make myself love the name, or find some visual potential in it," project director Casey Hudson says. "An example was Unearthed. I liked the idea that it referred to something being dug up (Prothean ruins on Mars) and also our ascendance to the stars (going away from the Earth). And in fiddling with a logo idea I could see a way to pop EARTH out with a planetary arc, leaving two letters symmetrically on either side."
A number of other names were floated, including BioWar and The Epsilon Effect. Casey says:
We knew that the game would have a central space station that would figure prominently in the setting, so some of the ideas were about basing the name on that—The Citadel, The Optigon, The Oculon... And we had a rare substance that would yield special powers, so "Element" was another word we tried.
I was a big fan of John Harris's book Mass, which had epic-scaled sci-fi ideas, so that was a word that came up often. Many of the names came from the idea that the IP featured a fifth fundamental physical force (in addition to the known four of gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear), so the word "Effect" came up often.
Ultimately none of the name ideas really felt right. One Monday morning we were going over the names and Greg Zeschuk said he had an idea on the weekend: "Mass Effect!" I said, "l don't hate it," which in the naming process is a high compliment. And it stuck!
A Prothean Experiment in Casey Hudson's Basement[]
There's a scene early in Mass Effect where Shepard is given a vision of warning from the ancient Protheans about the Reapers. It was meant for a Prothean mind, so Shepard only sees flashes and images, but the vision depicts the horrible things the Reapers did to Protheans: indoctrination, cybernetic implants...
"It was hard to imagine how we would do this, and CG was—and is—really expensive," project director Casey Hudson says. "Instead, I wanted to try doing it through photography and video editing. I went to a local grocery store and bought a few packages of the weirdest-looking meat I could find. I then set up a little photo shoot in my basement, combining the meat with some electronics parts—and some red wine for juiciness."
Casey used these props to create a video sequence where the photos were rapidly cycled and blurred, along with production paintings, to create a scary vision of an organic/machine experiment on the Protheans.
These live—action mash—ups of organic synthetic materials also served as inspiration for concept level artists working on these themes in Mass Effect.
Untitled Anecdote 3[]
Mass Effect was developed and released some ten years after BioWare's first game, Shattered Steel—and it showed. While the growing Edmonton studio retained its humble roots (see the lack of fancy offices in these developer photos), the team was evolving to combine homegrown talent with more and more industry vets eager to push the studio to new limits.
"We had a lot of fun," Mass Effect lead animator Jonathan Cooper says, who moved to Edmonton from Dundee, Scotland, to work on the series. "It was definitely the best decision of my life just to come over there and be fortunate enough to contribute to something like Mass Effect.
The Importance of N7: The Iconic Rank Has Its Origins on the Ski Hill[]
In the world of Mass Effect, N7 is an elite designation in the Systems Alliance military awarded for the highest level of skill in training and field ops. In the real world, it represents a camaraderie among fans of the Mass Effect series, and often, BioWare games in general.
The logo is subtle enough that players can wear it on their clothes, and only those who recognize it know that it's connected to a video game at all.
"A badass or a boy scout, everyone is a part of that N7 club," business development director Chris Bain says, adding that the N7 logo has become so popular as a brand that "on the licensing side, we often joke that we're licensing N7, not Mass Effect."
The origins of the N7 didn't come from weeks of brainstorming or some wild tale. Series art director Derek Watts got the idea from a beloved set of N77 bindings he used when skiing.
"I remember skiing when we were coming up with a logo, some kind of graphics to put on Shepard's armor," Watts says. "I removed one of the 7s from the N77 and thought: 'That sounds great.' I typed it out in the font we were using. It looked really good. And I just decided to add that red section on the end... I didn't think much about it—just, 'Hey, I'll put this on there.' And then it really took off."
Bio-Trivia: Tali's Name Used to Be Talsi[]
Coming up with the names for alien species is one thing. Finding names for individual alien characters is a heck of a hard thing to brainstorm. Writers will end up with pages of weird words before settling on one that sounds weird in just the right way. Sometimes, a word will be close, and all that's needed is to take out a letter, as in the case of iconic quarian squad mate Tali, who was originally Talsi.
Mass Effect Intellectual Property Guide 2007[]
Mass Effect presented a new galaxy to explore: our galaxy, populated by an array of alien cultures, planets, and tech foreign to players. This was not Star Wars. This was not Dungeons & Dragons. This was a new IP from BioWare—only its third, after Shattered Steel and Jade Empire—and it was a lot.
So, the narrative team distilled the core elements of Mass Effect into a sleek-for-2007 guide to the new intellectual property, meant to allow anyone on the team or otherwise supporting the game's development or promotion to catch up. The book outlined the game's alien species, its themes, and its plans for its human hero, Commander Shepard.
This book was confidential when printed, and this excerpt is the first time the public has seen these pages.
Untitled Anecdote 4[]
In a nod to classic TV sci-fi, some aliens in Mass Effect were specifically designed to almost look like human actors wearing makeup prosthetics. The asari, for example, have human faces, albeit blue and framed by alien features.
Early versions of the asari actually had hair.
Untitled Anecdote 5[]
"The guideline for the turian was: we want them to be birds of prey, Mass Effect concept artist Matt Rhodes says.
Matt experimented with a variety of shapes for the turian.
They wanted a wide range of alien life. Some closer to human, like the asari (opposite). Some definitely not (see the various iterations of turian, left).
"We're interested in character. We're pulled to personality," Matt says. "So for all the aliens, if was a challenqe fo make sure their personality could still come through."
Bio-Trivia: BioWare Patented the Conversation Wheel[]
When developing Mass Effect, project director Casey Hudson and the design team led by Preston Watamaniuk decided to reinvent BioWare conversations, using a wheel to display options instead of the list found in more traditional BioWare RPGs at the time.
Casey had been frustrated with reviews of Jade Empire that had criticized the actioncentric game for being too wordy.
"I'm like: story is words. You go to a movie, the entire movie is words. It's people talking. And so what is it about our games that is making people feel like they're wordy?" Casey wondered. Then he thought: "In a game, you kind of need to feel like you're continuing to play it. Maybe you should continue feeling like you're playing it actively even into the dialogue."
Casey and a handful of other talented developers came up with a wheel, using positions connected to the axis of a thumbstick or a mouse to give players quicker access to conversation options. Lines that had been written verbatim for silent protagonists were now paraphrased to fit at points around a circle.
"It kind of gave a new experience with dialogue where you did start to react based on emotion," Casey says, "and that's ultimately what we're trying to bring out in our games."
It was an idea bold enough that BioWare decided to patent it, a first for the studio.
US Patent US20070226648A1: Graphical interface for interactive dialog[]
Abstract: A system and method for creating conversation in a computer program such as a video game. A plurality of classes of dialog is provided and a conversation segment is assigned to each class. A graphical interface is displayed during operation of the program that provides a choice indicator, wherein the choice indicator has a plurality of selectable slots, each associated with a dialog class. The graphical interface is consistent as to the position of dialog classes throughout at least a segment of the program.
Untitled Anecdote 6[]
The original concept for the krogan face is based on a bat. "There's a particular kind of bat that has this really wide, squidgy face. We just used its face on top of this weird body and it kinda worked," Mass Effect concept artist Matt Rhodes says.
The musculature of the synthetic life forms known as the geth (top) was inspired by fiber-optic cables, with flexible plates of armor attached to protect it.
Untitled Anecdote 7[]
This concept drawing of Saren lifting male Shepard up by the neck (left) inspired a similar scene in the game. The staging wasn't planned until designers saw the art.
As big as Mass Effect's galaxy was, many developers on the project say it all came together remarkably well thanks to collaboration like this between disciplines all working toward the clear vision of an eighties-sci-fi-inspired space opera.
Untitled Anecdote 8[]
Mass Effect concepts mashed up the game's wild alien locations and bold alien design to explore how these elements might interact with one another. Often, art director Derek Watts would draw a location, and location and concept artist Matt Rhodes would go in and add the characters.
Untitled Anecdote 9[]
For a period while Mass Effect was in development, a private equity investor group called Elevation Partners that included U2 frontman Bono was a major shareholder in BioWare.
BioWare cofounders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk remember demoing Mass Effect's opening to Bono while they were down in Los Angeles. "He had ruptured a disk, so he was ih agony," Ray says. "He was lying down. He put his legs up. He couldn't move." In spite of this, Ray says Bono leapt off the couch in excitement when they showed him the game's first few minutes.
"The audio design's great. This whole thing... it's genius!" Greg remembers Bono saying. Both Ray and Greg say they learned a lot from Bono. "He talked about the importance of the band being the team. And treating everyone equally," Ray says. "And the importance of running U2 as a business and how that would translate, brainstorming about how that worked from a games perspective."
Finding Mass Effect's Cover Art[]
BioWare has a history of celebrating its games with iconic key art made up to look like movie posters. Finding the right cover art for the first Mass Effect was notably tricky, with numerous iterations floated and rejected before the team found one that really popped—Shepard and team in the foreground, ready for a fight, and antagonist Saren menacingly looming above.
A Helmet Tells a Heck of a Story[]
Dragon Age art director Matt Rhodes got his start drawing helmets for Mass Effect, including one that would become Shepard's iconic "second face."
In game, Shepard could have whatever face players chose for the character. But in combat, while exploring planets, and even in some conversations, Shepard would don a specific helmet, one that needed to be distinct and memorable.
"It was like trying to come up with the face for the protagonist, really," Matt says. "When you're designing any helmet, that's how you have to think about it: Would this character be happy wearing this as their second face?"
Matt estimates he designed between 250 and 270 different helmets for Mass Effect all told. It was kind of a rite of passage for him, then a junior artist breaking into the games industry.
"When you start, you think it's just different shapes," he says. "As you get older, you start to learn that it's trying to think of different stories."
Watermelons and Slime: That Sound Is Not What You Think It Is[]
BioWare's audio designers have gone to clever and often messy lengths to capture sound effects that mimic sword blows, laser fire, and magical attacks. Stand-ins for these sounds may include everything from smashing watermelons with sledgehammers to sticking fists into various goos. It may not look pretty, but it's the sounds that count.
Bio-Trivia: There's a Secret in the Background Sound of ME3's Normandy[]
If you've played Mass Effect, you've likely heard its iconic main theme, written by Jack Wall and Sam Hulick, which plays over the game's opening and other key moments in Shepard's story.
The audio team had fun trying to slip the song into unexpected places throughout the trilogy. "We were very aware of how powerful that track was for the fans," longtime BioWare audio designer Joel Green says, "and it was tempting to overuse it for any moment that we wanted to make really emotional."
One creative repurposing of the theme was in Mass Effect 3, where it was slowed down and reworked as ambient sound for the inside of the Normandy SR-2.
"If you listen to it for a really long time, just stand in the Normandy and listen. you'll actually hear the notes change slowly," Joel says. "It doesn't sound like music. It sounds like a background ambiance, but it's there."
Bug Report: Mako Tornado[]
Release: Mass Effect
Priority: 2 (Moderate)
Description: There isn't enough friction between the Mako's tires and the ground, causing testers to lose control of Shepard's vehicle and send it spinning into the air like a tornado.
Part of the problem is the Mako's rear-wheel drive, programmer Brenon Holmes says.
"As it turns, the front end comes up, and then it starts spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning faster and faster and faster until it just flies up in the sky."
Note: "Betting on the House: The Importance of Poker at BioWare" has been omitted on this page due to being directly unrelated to Mass Effect.
Cerberus's Misery Outpost[]
Cerberus originally had a larger role in the first Mass Effect. Before it was cut, players could explore an entire outpost dedicated to the pro-human faction.
"I called it Misery," says Mac Walters, a writer on Mass Effect. "It was this planet with a little outpost that said, 'Welcome to Misery.'"
The Reaper Sound Is Literally Garbage: Sound Designers Found the Signature Cry of Mass Effect's Enemies in the Woods Outside Edmonton—Then the Cops Showed Up[]
BioWare's audio teams take regular field trips with microphones and recording equipment to capture strange sounds for use in games. Early in Mass Effect's development, three designers—Michael Kent, Steve Sim, and Michael Peter—decided to drive out to Elk Island National Park, a protected forest area about half an hour east of Edmonton, in search of unique clips.
The car they took belonged to Peter, who had recently moved from California to work at BioWare.
Once the trio reached the park, they set off to record anything that sounded remotely interesting.
Kent promptly fixated on a garbage can: a metal bear-proof receptacle with a heavy lid that creaked horribly when opened.
"It was, like, ominous, spooky, tonal, and almost musical," he says. "I decided to throw a mic into the garbage and just record it moving. I didn't know what it was going to be till later."
Kent and the other designers had a lot of fun in the park, driving around in Peter's car with the California plates, looking for more sound to capture.
"We made lots of noise," he admits, "throwing logs around. Rocks. Not doing any damage, just making a lot of noise."
Then they noticed an old camper parked in the woods. There was an old couple inside, looking at them through the window. Frowning.
"Eventually a police car shows up," Kent says. "They pulled us over and said: 'You guys gotta stop doing what you're doing.' which is making tons of noise, disturbing everything. 'And we're towing your car.'"
It turned out Peter's California plates were expired.
The cops drove the audio team to the outskirts of Edmonton, "at which point I got a phone call," says Mass Effect audio producer Shauna Perry, "and I had to pick them up, like three little boys. With the audio department, especially early on, my role was definitely Mom."
"We got a stern talking-to," Kent says. But it was worth the trouble for that weird garbage-can sound.
"Once we got the sound back, we started playing around with it, pitching it down, and all that stuff."
Then Casey Hudson heard it and proclaimed: "That's the sound of the Reapers." A sound that, in some form or another, has been used in every Mass Effect game since.
Real Tales of Development: The Trouble with Getting Too Good at Your Own Game[]
As a team of specialized developers builds segments of a massive game like Mass Effect, it's up to leadership like lead designer Preston Watamaniuk to shepherd the course of a project as a whole. That means playing the game. A lot. On a game like Mass Effect, Preston will play through the entire game for months on end. He did twelve full play-throughs of Mass Effect 3 and estimates he put at least four hundred hours into Anthem.
All that practice will make Preston atypically good at even a game's trickiest gameplay. In the original Mass Effect, it's why he got a reputation for being among the best Mako drivers in the galaxy, or at least in the studio:
The hours that you put into playing the game should be more than anyone else on the team. And the number of bugs that you file should be comparable with some of the best QA on the project...
That's why, with the Mako, I was reasonably good at getting around. And there were moments that I remember the QA guys going: "You can't beat Matriarch Benezia on Insanity. She's impossible." So I went in there and I beat her and then I was like: "Yeah, that was too hard. Now, let's make it easier..."
Later, with some distance, you realize just how hard it is to critique something when you're living with it. There are things that I could have done to Mass 1 to make it an infinitely better, more playable, more understandable game with better UIs that were simple, and very simple, clean cuts or changes that I could have made. But when you're living with it, it's very hard to see those things.
You have to almost get a full game away from something before you can see that.