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Press release about Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect Galaxy

By Heath | January 3, 2010 at 5:55 am

Below is a press release from Bioware about Mass Effect Galaxy (for iPhone) and some connections to Mass Effect 2.
What is the connection of Mass Effect Galaxy to Mass Effect 2?
Mass Effect Galaxy tells the background stories of two characters that will be encountered by the player in Mass Effect 2. The events of Mass Effect Galaxy take place between the time of Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, providing the player with more continuity for the ongoing story of the ME universe.

Why focus on Jacob Taylor’s story?

Jacob is a Biotic-powered soldier in Mass Effect 2. We wanted to do a combat-oriented game on the iPod touch, so Jacob was a strong candidate player character for us. He’s also a survivor of the geth attack on Eden Prime, so he’s an even more appropriate bridging character to link the events of ME1 with ME2.

What challenges did you encounter bringing a notoriously complicated BioWare game to this format?

Our challenge was very much like trying to distill a full season mini-series down to a half-hour TV episode. Our response was to focus, focus, focus. Dialog had to be tight, the pace of conversations had to be quickened and our traditional “investigation dialog hubs” (where the player can ask questions about his current situation) were trimmed significantly. The resulting game has a very defined beginning, a middle with three branches, and an end sequence that takes the player to the final showdown with the game’s antagonist. We also had to take into account the limitations of the platform. Now, the iPod touch and iPhone are pretty powerful game devices, but even so, we had to pick and choose how strongly we were going to pursue cinematics, voice over, special effects and so on. We figured that an animated 2D graphic novel-style presentation was the best way to tell our story on this device.

Partial Source: IGN

Topics: Bioware, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect Galaxy