Tag Archives: Casey Hudson

BioWare has said the story in Mass Effect 3 will be “shaped by over 1,000 variables” from the first two games.

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BioWare’s Casey Hudson has said that Mass Effect 3 will be a bit more fun and lighthearted than Mass Effect 2.

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Mass Effect’s lead producer Casey Hudson has told Videogamer the mining mini-game that debuted in Mass Effect 2 will be kept for its sequel.

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BioWare’s Casey Hudson has said that the development team plans to release a” constant stream” of DLC  that will bridge the  story between Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3.

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Mass Effect series project director Casey Hudson has revealed that your Mass Effect 2 save may not work in Mass Effect 3.

More below, but be warned: there might be some spoilerfics.

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Mass Effect 2 project director, Casey Hudson, has admitted that Hollywood is very interested in creating a Mass Effect movie, but currently there are no plans for one.

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Casey Hudson has implied that Mass Effect fans could expect the third installment in the franchise hit retail “in late 2011 or early 2012″.

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Casey Hudson, project director of the Mass Effect series, has confirmed that the game’s trilogy will end in this generation of consoles.

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BioWare’s Casey Hudson has said that Martin Sheen, who lends his voice to Cerberus head the Illusive Man in Mass Effect 2, really got into the part.

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BioWare’s Casey Hudson has said that even with Mass Effect 2 being an RPG – and remaining true to the genre – the action crowd will be pleased with the sequel due to the implementation of “state of the art shooting”.

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Earlier today, we posted the news that BioWare was already plodding away on the storyline for Mass Effect 3.

Now, thanks to the magic of the internet, you can watch the full IGN interview with project manager Casey Hudson where he talks about how the choices you’ve made from day one will have an effect on how the game ends.

Be careful kiddos. What you do may end up biting you in the ass at the very end.

Watch the vid below the break.

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During CES, BioWare project manager Casey Hudson sat down with IGN to talk all things Mass Effect 2 DLC , and admitted that the developers are already hard at work on the story for Mass Effect 3.

You might want to throw some cold water on yourself after reading this.

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Mass Effect 2′s associate programmer, Thomas Roy, has said on the official forums (login required) that the game’s ditched the elevator loading from the first game for typical load screens.

But, instead of boring old hat, the load times will offer “interesting visuals and information” instead of the long, boring screens with a progress bar.

Speaking of elevators, last week, BioWare’s Casey Hudson explained the “new” elevator scenes a bit more, via an interview with VideoGamer.

“The whole ship is so rich and full of things to do,” he said. “Even better, what used to be slow elevators or slow transitions from one deck to another now is faster transition and it actually is part of the narrative.

“You go to the elevator control and then you see what’s on the elevator control panel as the schematics of the Normandy reveal where you are in the ship, and they show you different decks as you transition. Then all of a sudden you’re there.

“So it makes it an interesting part of the narrative. I find that now, in between missions out in the universe, I come back to the Normandy and I just want to run around and do all the new things and check out the stuff I bought, talk to everybody, because it’s a lot smoother and there’s just so much more to do. I think people will be really excited about that.”

More through Joystiq.

BioWare’s Casey Hudson has told VideoGamer that side quests in Mass Effect 2 will have a sense of variety, as if the gameplay were “handcrafted”.

“When you find mission[s] out there in the uncharted worlds, there are always missions where something special happens, and you get really good handcrafted gameplay and art that you can’t see elsewhere in the game,” he said. “I think people will find them to be really rewarding, really rich, because there’s something different around every corner.”

He also talked a bit about the mini-games you will play to get resources off the planets.

“Instead of having to drive around on a planet in the vehicle as a mission, where you’re just really picking up rocks and having to jump out and do that kind of stuff, now it’s part of a really cool planet exploration mini-game where you’re spinning the planet around underneath you, you can feel with the controller rumbling, you can hear the sound of anomalies and resources being picked up by your sensors and close in on them and send space probes. So that part is a lot more interesting.

“Running around and getting resources is now in a cool mini-game instead of you doing it on foot.”

The interview spans eight pages through the link, so go do your business before settling in for it.

Via Joystiq.

BioWare’s Casey Hudson has told Computer World that players will notice Commander Shepard is not as powerful in Mass Effect 2 as he was towards the end of the first game.

Apparently, stats for the character have been reset to basic abilities so that an improved system could be implemented, but to compensate for the lack of prowess, his storyline will delve into the reasons why he is weaker than before.

“There’s something that’s happening with the story that explains what happens with your abilities,” said Hudson. “It’s something we can’t go into detail about for obvious reasons, but it actually happens the other way around. Our goal with the story, in terms of getting the game started quickly and players into really compelling story situations…that dictated and allowed us to do certain things including changing the way that your abilities work and the way you develop your character.

“Part of it, too, is the fact that we’ve gone in and improved literally every system in the game, your powers, the controls, aiming, the way that your character stats work and how you build a character, the inventory system, weapons, and so on. All of those things have been dramatically improved, so there’s no direct way to map the stuff you had in Mass Effect over to Mass Effect 2 anyway.

“That said, we’re taking into account all of your accomplishments in terms of building a character from the first game. So things you’d expect to be acknowledged, like if you were a level 60 character, or you were highly Renegade and don’t want to start out at the middle again. If you import your save game from Mass Effect, these kinds of things will be acknowledged in ways that map across to the new system.

“You will feel, even in terms of the character that you build, that you are continuing as that character.”

Hudson goes on to chat about the new vehicle and other ME2 details, and talks a bit about emotional attachment in games like ICO through the link.

BioWare’s Casey Hudson has sat down and explained to PC World how players’ Mass Effect saves come into play with Mass Effect 2.

Apparently, the firm has taken every possible ending and integrated it into the sequel so that the experience can be as flawless as possible.

“[Mass Effect 2] is completely different from anything you’ve played before, because it’s literally, potentially threaded into everything that happens,” he explained. “When you’re playing the first game, everything that you do is setting a variable so that as the story progresses we know that you did a certain thing on a certain planet, and then internal to the game, we can reference those things. Your Mass Effect save game contains all of that information.

“When you import it into Mass Effect 2, now we can continue mining all that information. And it’s not just what your ending was, or a couple of the big choices, you know, where we could have stuck a conversation at the beginning and asked you what you did and moved on. This is literally hundreds of things.

“Anytime we have a plot or a character or situation in Mass Effect 2, we think about what you did, potentially, in the first game that might affect said plot or character or situation in the second. We can look at each variable and dynamically change what happens in the moment. It ranges from small things like, by way of example, Conrad Verner was a fan of Commander Shepard’s that you met in the first game, and it’s like you meet this guy in an alley and you can be nice to him or you can be a jerk to him, and at the time you might have been thinking of it as just a trite role-playing convention, good-guy bad-guy, and that’s that.

“Jump forward two years. Now you’re playing Mass Effect 2, and oh my god, who’s this, it’s Conrad Verner! And based on what you’ve done, you realize that while the moment in the first game maybe seemed throwaway, now Conrad’s back and involved in another plot in a game you’re playing two years later…and what you did two years ago is meaningfully affecting what’s happening.

“That’s a small example.”

More through the link.

Looks like Shepard will be present in Mass Effect 3, providing nothing horrible happens during Mass Effect 2.

According to BioWare’s Casey Hudson, Shephard can be killed in Mass Effect 2, but will return for the third and final game – just not as you would think.

“If your Shepard dies in the end of Mass Effect 2, that’s the end of him/her,” Hudson told IGN. “In that case, you can play Mass Effect 3 as “a” Shepard – just not “your” Shepard. As in real life, not being able to keep living is really the main down-side of death.

“So if you care about playing the next game with your character, make sure you survive this one.”

More through the link.

BioWare’s Casey Hudson has revealed that certain choices in Mass Effect 2 could result in a bloodbath at endgame.

“At the beginning of the game, you start to get an idea of something really scary, really dangerous, that you’re going to have to do at the very end of the game,” he told NowGamer. “To get ready for that you’re going to have to build up your crew, build the best team that you can, build up your ship, and then when you think you’re ready you’re gonna go in and do it.

“If you don’t do a lot of the stuff, or make the right kind of choices, the ending will be a bloodbath, and the people that you brought with you will die, and it’ll be a great ending, but it’ll be that kind of ending.”

Previous squad members from the original game will make an appearance, but you won’t be able to recruit them.

“All the squad members that you pick up are completely new characters”, he continued. “Some of them from races that have never been in your squad before. It’s going to be larger squad, a lot more varied and very, very different kinds of characters.”

More through the link.

1UP was privy to a behind-closed-doors Mass Effect 2 demo with project director Casey Hudson who reveals that Shepard isn’t dead at all silly, and Mass Effect 2 will allow you to explore “the most brutal parts” of the universe.

The piece goes on to talk about Thane, who Hudson describes “the most deadly assassin in the galaxy.”

However, if you fear that Mass Effect 2 will be all about shooting stuff, think again:

Mass Effect 2 is still more RPG than shooter and really shines when the game enters into the dialogue-driven cinematic storytelling choosing. BioWare has added a new twitch element, called “Interrupt,” which can be used to force action into conversation when the appropriate blinking icon (the Left Trigger, for example) appears on-screen and is quickly pressed. Frustrated by a stalling interrogation? “I’ve got nothing more to say to you,” offered up an NPC, crossing his arms in dismissal. No problem. Just “interrupt” with a quick shove … out the window. “How ’bout goodbye,” Shepard absurdly one-lined as the man plunged to his death. Wait, there was more: “So, when do we read him his rights?” followed up a squad mate.

Full thing through the link.

Mass Effect 2 project director Casey Hudson has told GTTV that a third Mass Effect game is likely to include space combat.

“There is no actual space combat in Mass Effect 2, but thats something that we wanna have as part of the trilogy at some point,” he said.

He also gave the first solid details on the game, including news of new romantic encounters and how your Mass Effect 1 game save will affect play in the second title.

Get all that here.

In addition, first early footage of ME2 leaked overnight – and here it is.