Bonus Content Disc/Beyond the Game

This is a transcription of the documentary "Beyond the Game" found on Mass Effect's bonus content disc released in 2008.

Menu Description

Discover how novels, art books, and possibly feature films or TV shows will explore the vast universe of Mass Effect.

Content

Ray Muzyka: We have a lot of big plans for developing up the Mass Effect universe with tons of ancillary products and... You'd look at different media, you'd look at different types of figurines and toys, books. And the books are a great example of the extension of the universe that's really compelling in form, so... The fans will definitely enjoy those if they haven't had a chance to read them before, and fill in the gaps, pry at a lot of backstory and also, in the future, they'll fill in the cracks between future installments in the franchise.

Casey Hudson: I think, when you win Game of the Year from someone like the New York Times, it really shows the way that the broader public is looking at your game in terms of an entertainment experience. That's really what we were trying to do with Mass Effect; is to look at what we're doing with games, and think about the way that human beings experience a story. Not even just the way that you play a game, but how do you want to be immersed inside a story. And what can we do next? The thing about Mass Effect as a story-telling universe is it is really big enough to create all these opportunities that you might want to explore. Even the Citadel itself, we actually intended it to be a place that's so big and so diverse that you could tell thousands of stories just on the Citadel alone. There are so many other planets, there are species with their own backstories... There's something about Mass Effect that goes beyond the fact that it's a game. It's actually a universe that you can think about as something unto itself and then you can go into it through a video game, you can go into it through a novel. But it's a story that we're telling over time, and there's many different facets to the story. And the novels, one thing I personally really like about the novels is the way Drew Karpyshyn has written the first two novels. I like the fact that you get the tactile experience. You get a sensory experience that you don't get through an electronic entertainment format. You can find out the way things smell and the way people use paper and razor blades still and things like that. These kind of moment-to-moment real-life things about what it's like to be in the Mass Effect universe. You read the novels and then you go back to playing the game or whatever it might be, and you have kind of a greater sensory experience with the universe. Mass Effect: Ascension is really cool because it actually explores the idea of the superhuman ability that's in Mass Effect called biotics. And we explored it a little bit in the game on a personal level through Kaidan who had some of the early implants that allow human beings to kind of sense and control this fifth physical force in the universe that, in real life, scientists are exploring as dark energy. And so we kind of brought that into the world of Mass Effect, but we kind of explored it a little bit on a personal level. In the novel, you get to see an entire school, basically, of kids that are prodigies in being able to use biotics; and one child in particular who is exceptionally powerful and just kind of learning how to develop and control this gift that she has.

Drew Karpyshyn: When we created Mass Effect, we obviously created a very deep and very broad world. We put in a lot of background, a lot of information about things that didn't come out in the game explicitly, and we want to explore that. So we thought a good way to explore that and let fans see a lot of this extra material was through the novel, Mass Effect: Revelation. So we basically set it up as a prequel novel. It talks about Saren, the main villain, and Anderson, one of the characters, the player's mentor, basically, in the game. And it sort of shows this past relationship that they had, and it details a little bit more about the universe as well. It kind of shows you a little bit of the political stuff, a little bit more about some of the species, and tied in with the game, it's a great way to get the full experience of Mass Effect to see really how vast and detailed this universe we've created is. We've been very careful not to bring too much of the characters into the books. For example, we're not planning on doing a novel about Commander Shepard because that's the player's story. We don't want to tell you our version of your story. You've got your own version of that story through playing the game. What we will do with the novels is introduce new concepts, new locations, new characters. So you'll probably get sort of a sneak peek in the novels. Mass Effect: Ascension, the next novel coming out, will go into a little bit more depth about the quarian race, the quarian species, and then they will play a bigger role in the second Mass Effect game. You will be introduced to a couple of characters that will play very prominent roles in the second Mass Effect game. Hopefully, fans will really appreciate the fact that they get that great story, and then there's so much more that we can tell and explore, not just through other games, but through other medium like books or potential other avenues.

Derek Watts: Mass Effect had a ton of concepts. I mean, I sent Jorg, he was putting it together with Prima, I sent him a giant folder and there was 20,000 images in there. Some were duplicated, but you can imagine how much it was to try and sort through, trying to keep track of the evolution of the character, because you're dumping them in finals, and we had "final final" folder, then "final final final", "really final." "Yeah, this is the one," and then we changed it again. But really, a lot of great art. I mean, we credited 11 people in here. We had a lot of different staff doing it. Casey ended up writing the whole book. He wrote it in about a week. It was a real tight deadline. I wasn't able to do that because I'm an idiot when it comes to writing, so Casey said "I'll do it," and he wrote it in like a week. He stayed up all night and got it all done, and then sent it off to Jorg, and Prima put it all together. Yeah, people were really excited about this. People were always asking, "when is that book coming", "when is that book coming?" Everybody was always excited to get their copy.

Casey Hudson: We've had a lot of interest for developing TV series, movies, things like that, and so we're definitely interested in doing those kinds of things, and really broadening out the experience of Mass Effect. I think a lot of people want to see what Mass Effect would look like as a live-action experience with actors and sets and things like that. Our goal, of course, is everything that we do, whether it's making a mobile game or a huge Hollywood movie, ultimately it's about the quality of the story-telling experience and whether we're really giving people something important in terms of the entertainment value and what they're getting out of the story.