Ripten Interview: Founders of BioWare Talk Mass Effect 2, Story in Games and Psycho Mantis
by Jonathan Zungre on April 7, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk
Emily Balistrieri and I had the rare opportunity to interview the founders of BioWare, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, the minds behind Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire and Mass Effect about BioWare’s upcoming titles, as well as experience the almost tangible passion and curiosity that they have for making games, discussing the future of narrative and even their opinions on characters that break the fourth wall such as Psycho Manits. It’s a unique look into the thought process of two visionaries, so if you’re into BioWare or ever want to create a game yourself, please read and enjoy.
Emily Balistrieri: So tell us something that you didn’t tell anyone else.
Ray Muzyka: At this stage it’s hard to remember what you told anyone.
EB: Yeah, it’s true. It’s been all day.
RM: We could just start talking randomly…
Greg Zeschuk: That’s a dangerous question because sometimes we say random and crazy things.
EB: Hey, random and crazy works.
Jonathan Zungre: So yeah, what are you guys excited for in the future of BioWare?
RM: I think our best work is still ahead of us. I really believe that. Like, I think all our games are very different. I’m really happy with our portfolio because it’s quite diverse. Like, you look at Dragon Age — it’s a different kind of fantasy; it’s dark heroic fantasy. It’s going to be very differentiated from all the other kinds of fantasy that you’ve seen before, especially from us. It’s a more mature, gritty kind of world, choices with consequences, and we’re not pulling any punches, basically.
And then Mass Effect. Mass Effect 2, it’s a refinement of everything we did in the past on Mass Effect, but we’re really taking on all the challenges that we wanted to solve based on feedback after the original game. So we’re really addressing the shooter aspects of the game and amping the intensity moment to moment in terms of the action. Also tightening the exploration and making that a much more important part of the game; even though it’s optional still, it’ll actually enhance your main story experience and we’re making it feel very intense. You can grab control of the action more, even in conversations, things like that. I think people are going to see Mass Effect 2 as a real revolution compared to the first one, which got a lot of acclaim, but the second one I think is that much better again.
The Old Republic is something again very different — it’s an MMO in the Star Wars universe, and we’re very excited about that. And then beyond that we have a couple things that — a couple few things actually — that aren’t announced yet that we’re excited about too that are actually different from any of these products, different in the setting, target audience, business model, the genre, the gameplay, some are more of those different aspects. So I’m just very excited about all those things because I think they’re all cool in different ways. I love playing them all. They’re all unified by the story, by the vision of emotional engagement, but beyond that they’re all quite diverse and different.
JZ: Expand on that emotional engagement concept, because I’m a big BioWare fan, and I feel that you guys do story and character interactions very well, perhaps because of that emotional engagement. If you could, tell me a little more about that.
GZ: Yeah absolutely, that’s really our ultimate goal. As a company, we sort of describe ourselves as building story-driven entertainment, but there’s a reason behind that, and the reason is to try and emotionally engage the player. We sit back and go, “Imagine a world’ where technology is a commodity, so no longer are we competing on, “Hey, who’s got the best engine and the most characters on the screen?” What are you going to compete on? Well, grabbing the player and getting their attention. And our feeling in a lot of ways is that story is one of the best tools for that. I mean, action can do that sometimes, but story is the area we’ve decided to really focus on.
RM: And the broader definition of that, maybe, is narrative. Story is one form of narrative, but there are other kinds, too.
GZ: And I think, well if you’d like to talk about that..
JZ: Yeah, what do you mean by that?
GZ: Yeah, talk about narrative. You can do your narrative discussion.
RM: Ok, sure. I’m kinda passionate about narrative.
PR: He can go on for a half an hour, just so you know. ;D
All: Ha!
RM: *unclear* But I think there are different kinds of narratives in games, and story and voice over and dialogue are one form of narrative but they’re by no means the only or the best, necessarily. They’re one of the things we pursue — and we certainly made it a focus for BioWare — but there are other equally valid ways to express story.
You can look at a pure action or sports game, and there’s a narrative there based on the choices you make and the moment to moment responses of the other team, the other player, or whatever. If it’s a boxing game, it could be the narrative of combat or boxing moment to moment in a three minute round, or whatever. You look at the back and forth of the engagement: ducks, you know, punches, and so on. There’s a narrative in that, too.
There’s a narrative of an explorer, too. Like in a game like Dragon Age or Mass Effect or The Old Republic, where you’re going from world to world or area to area and you’re unlocking new events or areas in the game, and you feel like you’re an explorer. So you get that sense of discovery and awe that you’re the first person in the world or the universe to be there representing humanity, or representing your Grey Wardens in Dragon Age, or whichever group.
And there’s a social narrative outside games which is also compelling. You see people playing the Wii — they’re interacting with the game, but they’re also interacting with each other as a social narrative like three to four people playing together. And there’s a narrative in a game like Dragon Age where we have community. People are making content with user generated content tools, sharing content amongst themselves, downloading content from us, interacting on the forums, interacting on other sites, and that’s a form of narrative, too, but it’s sort of a narrative outside the game.
And the whole narrative, moment to moment what you do: do you do exploration or combat, progression, or story? And what order you do them and where you go — there’s a narrative there so it’s almost like your life journey is a narrative, too, as your character or your characters.
GZ: And to add a point to the discussion *unclear* It’s interesting because we chose to make multidimensional games, and what I mean by that is our games support these different types of narratives, flipping between them rapidly so your actual overall player narrative for the whole experience is quite varied. In a lot of games — in a driving game, which is just driving, it’s narrow right? The emotional engagement you’ll receive from a driving game is much less than one where you’re able to do a lot more stuff and experience a lot more things so there’s a complexity that goes up, but there are also benefits. Like you look at GTA and GTA did a lot of stuff.
RM: They’re approaching the problem from a different direction, but it’s the same endpoint, or a similar end point.
GZ: And they wanted you to be emotionally engaged in the character. They do so much stuff that it’s easy to get distracted and drive off the story path, but we try to keep the player focused on that, and very goal oriented, but allowing them to do a lot of stuff, and keeping them engaged and excited about what their next thing is.
JZ: What narrative are you guys most passionate about? Are you most passionate about the main story line or the different quests, trying to direct the narrative? Or are you more passionate about letting the player almost create their own based upon where they go or how they explore?
RM: The last thing you said feels to me like the most–
GZ: Yeah, the non-linear storytelling.
RM: Because the story is certainly part of that, but even that’s not linear. Then of course bigger narrative is moment to moment like Greg said, you can kinda weave your way through the world and do some combat, go back to that area that you couldn’t get past before and keep butting your head against it until you finally break through or go to progress your character for a bit first and then go back and take on that tough enemy. Or explore the world and see if you can find some items to give you more capabilities, or try to drive the story forward a bit more and get some more quests so you can find more stuff to do that’s cool.
We call these things activity chains, going back and forth between different activity types, but that’s the meta-narrative that really is the essence of our game. Even if story and character interaction is one of the parts we’re known best for — it’s the easiest one probably, just to see, “Oh, BioWare makes games with characters that we find compelling, emotionally engaging, who you want to travel the world with,” but our games are more than that. They’re the story of the explorer, the story of combatants, or conflict, and the story of progression and customization of your character, too — making the character that you want to actually have with you on your journey.
JZ: Why do you guys do so many RPGs? What is it about an RPG that’s really compelling for you guys? IS it that progression?
GZ: It’s because you can mix all the ingredients in. It’s not limited. It’s funny because when you get a whole bunch of game developers together, they’ll often naturally fall into — like when they say, “Oh, I’d love to make this game,” they almost always describe an RPG. When it’s sports: “Oh, I’d love to make a football game where you’re a high school football player, where you have to live at the school, interact with people there, progress your career,” well, you just described an RPG. We’re not trying to say, “Well, they’re the absolute best,” but it’s just when you really want to create one of those experiences that just grabs you and never let’s you go, it seems like…
RM: I think they’re the broadest in terms of potentiality or possibility space.
EB: Well, it’s like meeting a goal that’s further than just grabbing the flag at the end of the level in a platformer, or something. You want to have more emotional impact than that.
RM: Yeah, and do more things or have different dimension of growth. It’s almost the journey is more important than the endpoint. And our games are all about the journey; they’re about the heroic journey, or the conflicted journey. There are different journeys you can take as a character, but RPGs are more about the journey, and the narrative is the journey, your personal narrative. You travel through the world, you travel your character progression, you go through different battles, and try different tactics — some succeed some don’t, or social narrative.
GZ: The journey of becoming a professional football player. It’s funny because it still is a journey.
In “Football RPG” Troy Palomalu appears as a Level 70 Warrior.
RM: Yeah, that could be an RPG. And it probably would have to have playing football as part of that, and that’s the combat analog, right? But then you have to progress your character or level them up, whatever way you want to describe that that makes sense contextually.
EB: Prom king!
GZ: There you go.
RM: And you’d have to have cheerleaders, and prom –sure you’d have to have all that there too.
JZ: The rival…
EB: Are you guys making a football RPG? ;D
RM: No no, but it would be cool.
EB: It would be cool. You could do it!
RM: But I would argue almost any lifetstyle, any journey you can imagine, or any heroic attribute you’d want to aspire to — it’s aspirational fantasy. Any role you can aspire to, basically, you could make into an RPG. That might actually be kind of a fun panel to be on, where you have a bunch of people who make games to kinda like–
GZ: Make this into an RPG.
RM: Yeah.
GZ: The Dance Dance Revolution RPG.
RM: Yeah, Blizzard, Bethesda, BioWare, Square — get some guys that make RPGs together and kinda…
GZ: Theorize.
EB: So you just mentioned Bethesda. I saw a guy from Bethesda today talking, and he was saying that even though they make RPGs that are really text heavy, he’s really interested in the possibilities of expressing really emotionally engaging narrative without so much text, and I’m wondering — everyone loves your writing and stuff– but I’m wondering if you think about that, too, and how to do that.
RM: Well, you look at a game like BioShock as an example of another group I respect a lot, and we were talking earlier how their narrative is as much how the world interacts with you or reflects your actions.
GZ: The world itself, how you perceive it.
RM: And that’s a form of narrative too, sort of an explorer’s journey, but really showing your actions reflected in the world. And not as much dialogue in that game. There’s some you know, because you’re interacting with people, and it’s how you communicate with other people.
EB: Yeah, you need some dialogue.
RM: To the extent it feels natural and appropriate, it’s good, but you don’t want to have too much.
GZ: It’s hard…To create that emotional engagement, you have to communicate some way, whether it’s some sort of picture or pictographs.
EB: Well, and then you have some of the indie developers who are talking about creating really engaging emotional experiences with barely any narrative at all, and almost using mechanics themselves as the feeling.
GZ: And are they succeeding, though, really?
EB: There…are some examples.
GZ: I know what you mean.
EB: You know, the art games. It’s an interesting space. It’s not the same thing at all, but–
GZ: No, I totally agree. I think that’s the thing, is that’s actually a neat place to aspire to. When you pull it back, though, the interesting thing is, I think Portal (this is last year’s story winning game [Ed. note: Actually, Portal won Best Game in 2008, among other things. BioShock won for Writing.]) when you think about it there are actually like…the computer’s talking to you, there’s writing and information, so communication has to happen for story to occur. Whether the communication is physical, structural, auditory — it has to have some level of communication. And that’s the interesting thing, because I guess that’s where the mechanics might never really accomplish it, because if the mechanics can’t in some way communicate something like purpose or goals, then it’s hard to achieve it.
RM: You have to substantiate the feelings in some way and then ultimately you have to convey them.
GZ: But it’s theoretically possible. And we look at it, we look at it from the perspective of–the Half Life stuff is another example. They did certain things that sort of create story in a very limited way. And then Portal was interesting because clearly there was something going on. The way they told it made you suspicious and then you started watching for story. It’s kind of funny because you can kind of tune the user to to certain behaviors and once you do that, they then react. That’s part of the fun of making games.
EB: It’s interesting to see how just much you can strip out and still have the narrative.
RM: It’s a good exercise, isn’t it? I mean, when you can always, before you implement it, consider alternative forms of narrative. Almost like, what’s your other option? And then you get a nice balanced experience that will never feel overweighed in one category of communication.
JZ: What about relationships? Mass Effect had a big relationship part of it. Where do you guys feel like you’re going with that?
RM: That’s a good way to characterize it, because it’s not about having a sex scene or, you know, like Fox and some of the groups characterized it –actually that was taken out of context. It was more about– again, that’s a journey as well, where you have characters that you start to care about, and you want to invest the time to actually try and–just like in real life — you want to have a friend, and maybe that blossoms into a romance or something.
But you know we tried to do it in a way that was appropriate, and we’ve never shied away from it. It’s been in every Bioware game to date– people may not realize that. We’ve had romances in every BioWare game pretty much since Baldur’s Gate.
GZ: Except for Shattered Steel and MDK2.
RM: Well, Shattered Steel was before and MDK2, yeah, there aren’t enough characters…but Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, KotOR, Jade, Mass Effect…
GZ: And I think the interesting thing is that other characters make your existence worthwhile in games, on some level. It’s actually those interactions which are really rewarding and interesting. You guys saw the demo, yet?
JZ: Yeah.
GZ: So you’ve seen the approval system. We’ve tried to personalize [it]–we’ve always sort of measured the characters’ behavior, and instead of creating a general metaphysical scale, it’s now, what does everyone think of you?
RM: Individually, because that’s the way it works in real life, where people have opinions and you can influence those opinions. And sometimes changing one character’s opinion might change another character’s opinion, so, you know, it isn’t always as simple as it might seem. But that’s the way real life works, too.
JZ: As opposed to dark side/light side.
RM: Yeah. It’s a more nuanced form of approval.
The progression of character alignment in BioWare games from KOTOR to Mass Effect.
GZ: And we’re always trying to play around in different ways in the space. It’s always fun to try these different things. We haven’t quite done this approval system so overtly — this is the most overt we’ve done it. But again, back in Baldur’s Gate we used to do that.
But I was going to add another point about the relationships and the romances and all those things. It’s funny because in a lot of ways that’s become a very dominant part of what people are concerned about when they play our games. They’re always making sure that, “Ok, what am I doing? Am I covering my romance bases?” or whatever and we actually always ask gamers, “Is this important?” and they, “No no no,” but if you would track their behavior, you would see that actually, no, they’re spending considerable effort and time to support that, just because it’s a meta-game, right?
RM: We make it feel like its appropriate — it’s never gratuitous. It’s there to actually recognize the time you’ve invested in developing relationships. There’s an endpoint. It’s worthwhile. You’ve made something that endures.
JZ: Very cool. Now, you guys have gone to space a couple times, and you’re doing Dragon Age, but is there a place or something that you guys really like? Where are we going next? What’s the next setting? Just generally speaking, what really turns you guys on?
GZ: I think a celebrity dance show. Apparently those are very popular now. The kids just love those.
JZ: You can make a narrative from anything!
RM: Actually it sounds like a football RPG is where we should go…
JZ: Or boxing, I like what you said about boxing.
GZ: Again, they all work, right? It’s a little scary. I hate to say it, but that dancing thing could easily be done. Like you know, a Dance Dance Revolution mechanic with, you know, “Are you going to make it to ‘Dancing with the Stars?’”
RM: We’re NOT doing those.
GZ: For the record…
RM: But some of the things we haven’t announced yet are different settings, totally different than Dragon Age or Mass Effect.
GZ: And it’s not the circus either.
JZ: That’s cool, as well. And after this conversation I feel like we could do it anywhere.
RM: We could.
GZ: The beard, the progression of the bearded lady.
JZ: Where does your love for narrative come from? What did you guys grow up with? What books did you read? What shows did you watch? What games did you play?
RM: I read everything. I would go to the library as a little kid (6, 7, 8, 9, 10, probably) and I would go home with a stack of books from down here all the way to the top of my head, twenty books kinda thing. I would go home carrying these books, and the librarians never believed I would read them all, but I was like, “Yeah, I read every one.” I don’t know, I just liked reading a lot. So for me, it came from science fiction., fantasy, sort of the classics. I still have a weakness for the classics of science fiction/fantasy, so now I’m collecting them all kinda one by one, trying to get first editions or signed copies. Got a lot of my favorites, so…
GZ: Well it’s funny because on the games side–well, I did the same thing, tons and tons of books…
RM: And then after that came the games.
GZ: Yeah, I’ll flip it to the game side. The the game side’s funny because we go back all the way to the early 80s, even the late 70s, which is scary, but games like Wizardry — and Ray’ll know exactly when I say this phrase, “The wizard is in.”
RM: Beep beep beep!
GZ: Yeah it’s very exciting like *gasp*
RM: I have that game on my PDA, by the way.
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981)
GZ: [Unclear] So what was interesting is that these were games that were RPGs that were so story-light, like there were like 3-4 written lines in the entire–so one of them was a “Monster allocation center” just written on a sign.
RM: Or there was that line of text–your warning to the dark area as well. You have this text and the smoke and the fire and it teleports you away, remember?
GZ: So there’s literally like 5-8 lines of text in this entire game and you would hang on them. Like, “What does that mean? Who’s that guy? Why did he teleport me? What’s gong on?”
RM: And I got so frustrated about that. They never did explain that.
GZ: No, it’s just random probably…but you don’t realize how much of a grip these things can have on you. So you don’t have to have a really in your face kind of experience.
RM: That game actually was a great example of something — like you believed you were in this dungeon that had very little story in it, and you actually believed the mad wizard of the proving grounds of Trebor was your nemesis and you had to go down all these levels of dungeons to defeat him.
EB: And it’s really all just in your head.
GZ: Yeah, it actually was all in your head.
RM: It was player fiction. And an example of that player fiction outside of games, is what we’ve done recently with Mass Effect 2. We released that trailer, right, where we created a lot of interesting buzz and controversy. “But what does this mean? Is Shepard dead?” Well, I mean, everything we showed in the trailer there was absolutely true; everything we said before was true as well, in terms of you have to keep your save games, and we have plans for a trilogy, continuity — everything we said in both of those is true. So what’s in the middle? It’s a surprise, it’s a tease for the fans. But that’s an example of player fiction, too.
JZ: One more question? I wanted to know what you guys thought about a game breaking the fourth wall — between the game and the player? Much like some of the Metal Gear Solid games did where they tell you to turn off the controller–
Literally everyone in the room: Psycho mantis!
JZ: Is there any value in that for you, where you connect the actual player sitting in his room with his controller to another type of narrative?
GZ: Hmm, that almost breaks it, though.
RM: Works better in contemporary science fiction types of things.
GZ: Another one is kind of Eternal Darkness.
JZ: The bugs and the blood, yeah.
RM: I remember that I was really low on ammo one time and I got one of those, what do you call them?
GZ: Events? Crazy events?
RM: No, but they had a name for it in Eternal Darkness. Anyway, there was a room full of bullets, like bullets everywhere. I was kinda running around like in the Simpsons, “Bullets! Ahhh! Bullets!” picking up bullets. Then you run out of the room and it’s like, “Haha!”
GZ: See I don’t know if we would do that. Because I don’t think we want to create this incredibly intricate world and all this stuff, and then just destroy that linkage.
EB: But it’s almost sometimes, like with Psycho Mantis — it’s the example…
[Unclear]: It’s the classic example.
EB: But when you realize what’s going on you feel this crazy like–you’re REALLY connected.
RM: Well, you feel emotion. LIke, you messed with me.
JZ: You feel violated almost–
EB: Well no, it’s exciting. Wow, a game, I didn’t expect that.
JZ: But not necessarily negatively. It KNOWS I’m sitting here.
RM: Well if a movie character turned to the screen and said, you know, “What do you think of that?” and the audience realized he’s talking to them– It’s a technique.
EB: LIke Groucho Marx. He’ll talk to the screen at you.
GZ: It’s a tough one. I don’t know if we would do it. I mean, it’s…
RM: Well you’d have to do it carefully.
GZ: In the right game, at the right time.
RM: Like, I don’t think there are many other examples in Metal Gear Solid where that occurred — I think that was one of the few — but it was really cool when they did it because it was so unique and different.
GZ: I almost wonder, like — it’s more philosophical, but isn’t stuff like Guitar Hero doing that on a continuous basis?
JZ: Yeah kind of.
GZ: LIke it’s continually feeding you information. I was thinking first back to Parappa, “Ok everyone: Chop chop kick!” It’s telling you what to do, and you’re doing it, right? And it’s sort of almost like the wall is completely broken, but in that case you really feel like you’re playing a game.
EB: Or like have you ever played Seaman? Where you’re talking?
GZ: That’s the craziest game ever.
RM: That game’s not even a game.
GZ: Sure it is!
RM: It’s more of a simulator…
EB: A therapist for some people, I’ve heard…
RM: …of a virtual creature who insulted you at every turn.
GZ: Yoot Saito was trying to do another game on iPhone, but they wouldn’t let him, where you have this monkey.
EB: Really? Wow.
GZ: Oh, it’s hilarious. If you search– it’s like this primate guy that you would kinda… [Unclear] sent those links around? It’s on Kotaku. Search Yoo Saito on Kotaku.
RM: It’s like a real monkey that you can make do all kinds of…
GZ: Yeah, it’s odd.
RM: Very strange things…
GZ: There’s also a Seaman for the iPhone, but Apple said, “No way in hell.”
RM: Did they?
GZ: Apparently they did.
RM: That’d be a pretty cool iPhone game.
TIME
JZ: All right, guys. Thanks a lot! :D
EB: Thanks!
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4 Comments » |
on April 8, 2009 8:19 am
First!
Don't know why I did that, but I've seen people do it before…
This interview is full of win – what an excellent exclusive. Congrats Emily and Zungre!
on April 8, 2009 8:27 am
Greg looks like a pirate.
on April 8, 2009 8:50 am
With that 'stache, I'd go for the word "Buccaneer".
on May 29, 2009 10:16 am
I really liked part one. I am so anxious for part two and I am so sure part three will be great as well. I hope to see more details on part 2 and 3 soon.