Mass Effect PC: What to Expect
April 9, 2008 - Just yesterday BioWare let everyone know that the PC version of Mass Effect won't see the light of day until May 28 in North America and June 6 in Europe. To get some clarification, we talked with Diarmid Clarke, BioWare's project director for Mass Effect PC, and Matt Atwood, a senior public relations director at BioWare. In addition to talking about recent screens showcasing a new head-us up display (called a "tactical HUD"), the two went into detail about the differences between the PC and Xbox 360 versions, some of the challenges associated with the transition, and what to expect in terms of extra content after this version ships.
We last saw the game at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this past February, where we were given a brief demo that you can read about here. For the latest on Mass Effect, read on.
IGN: As project director, what are you responsible for?
Diarmid Clarke: It's basically taking one of BioWare's properties, delivering it on a new format, and making sure it attains the quality of BioWare's standard. I have producers that work for me and do much more of the important day-to-day work on the game. I sit my fat ass in the chair and shout out commands.
IGN: So to what extent is BioWare working on this and to what extent is Demiurge working on this?
Diarmid Clarke: It's pretty much co-development now. Demiurge has primarily been responsible for the bulk of the work of moving the game onto the PC, dealing with all the PC technicalities, and also putting some of the improvements into the game that we highlighted that we wanted to do.
What we've focused on is being the guardians of quality, pushing little new changes of design and things that we wanted to make work for the PC. Obviously Matt sent out the information on the new tactical HUDs and we developed that with the core Mass Effect team. They're the right guys to do something that's a fundamental change to how you interface with the game.
IGN: Why create a new HUD?
Diarmid Clarke: We started with the wheel system for the Xbox 360 version and it was a nice system and worked very, very well for the 360. We thought we could take it further for the PC. We set our goals which was "this game must absolutely feel like a naturally developed PC experience." We thought that by moving to the new tactical HUD where we can put the three component parts of the wheel all on the screen at the same time, it's just something that the PC can do very well because of the control method with the mouse and keyboard in conjunction with the hotkeys that we have. We were fortunate enough to be able to call upon the actual Mass Effect team to develop it so we knew it was really within our control and what we wanted.
IGN: And [the HUD] basically pops up onscreen and pauses the game when you hit the space bar?
Diarmid Clarke: Yeah.
IGN: Does the reworked HUD have anything to do with the release date getting pushed back?
Diarmid Clarke: Oh yeah. I mean you have to make it quality. It's something we take very seriously. [The HUD] is quite a big change, after putting it into the game, and it's got to absolutely work totally naturally. And so there's a little bit of extra time involved in making that work.
IGN: The release date that's been announced for the end of May for the PC version, that's a solid date? If the quality is just not there do you push it back again?
Diarmid Clarke: It's a solid date. We're done with our work now in the tactical HUD. You always want to draw that line where you stop adding new content and we've done that, and now it's closing out the bugs to the final completion.
IGN: Can you talk about system specifications yet?
Matt Atwood: We're just waiting on one last approval, we'll have them shortly. What we've been saying is that it'll work well on a machine that's two years old or newer, so it's a very broad market. The goal is to appeal to a broad market. We will be giving out specs soon, though.
Diarmid Clarke: Put it this way, Greg Zeschuk [a BioWare cofounder] here is playing on his laptop at the moment.
IGN: Do you know the specs on his laptop?
Diarmid Clarke: Not off the top of my head. It's not the fastest you can get because he was bitching, "It's six months old." I'm pretty sure it's a fairly top-range laptop six months ago.
Matt Atwood: It's a decent laptop but it's not…I don't know the specs.
Diarmid Clarke: He's got one of those XPSes.
IGN: When you say he's playing do you mean he's playing on maximum settings or he's scaled it down?
Diarmid Clarke: He's scaled it down, absolutely. When you look at the extra resolution modes, we can go up to extremely high resolution. It's basically dependent on what monitor you've got [and] how you can display it. We're very happy that you're not going to need a ninja PC to turn everything on. It's not that intensive.
IGN: What about the content that came out with Bring Down the Sky on the Xbox 360? Is that going to be included in the PC version?
Diarmid Clarke: We're not going to have anything in the retail release of the version. Anything beyond that I suspect Matt should answer.
Matt Atwood: Regarding additional content, we'll make an announcement soon.
IGN: You're talking about Bring Down the Sky content on PC?
Matt Atwood: I'm talking about additional content, period. So not specifically Bring Down the Sky.
IGN: So Bring Down the Sky isn't in the retail game then?
Diarmid Clarke: No.
IGN: With future versions of Mass Effect that come out on consoles, are we going to see them on PC simultaneously? Or is there still going to be this staggered release schedule?
Matt Atwood: I think the team is so focused on getting this out, as far as future iterations it's definitely Xbox 360, which we've said all along for the next installment. As for any other systems, we don't have anything to say.
IGN: Yeah, I figured as much.
Diarmid Clarke: I'm sure people will come to their own conclusions. [laughs]
IGN: A lot of people had complaints with the Xbox 360 version, with long loading times, lengthy elevator rides, and there were some texture loading problems in the game as well. Have those been addressed or fixed in the PC version?
Diarmid Clarke: I think on that you're going to see a wide range of little things that we can do on the PC that answer some concerns…You're going to see improvements to the loading times, we've looked at one or two of the elevators, specifically, that you may use a lot in the game, there's a bit of improvement there. And some of the other things like level of detail stuff you're definitely going to see better on the PC.
Matt Atwood: And Charles you saw some of the load times at GDC, you saw how much quicker they were.
IGN: Yeah I noticed that.
Diarmid Clarke: So that's pretty representative of what we've got. You probably noticed the lack of LoD [level of detail] pop-up in the demo, it was much, much reduced from what you've seen before.
IGN: Yeah it's an ongoing debate, because the console crowd could say "Well, we got it first." And then the PC crowd could say, "Well, we wound up getting the game with the better controls."
Diarmid Clarke: I don't necessarily think there are so many people who have their 360 and their PC set up side-by-side in exactly the same environment so you have this totally black and white kind of view on it. I think it's a lot more complicated than that. And also, fans like to talk about their machines and are very supportive of the machines they bought. It's been an ongoing argument for the last 20 years between formats, and I don't think it's changed a lot.
Matt Atwood: And one of the points that I think Ray [Muzyka, another BioWare cofounder] and Greg have said, and I think I even said at GDC, is that when we have an opportunity to listen to our fans, and BioWare has a ton of core PC fans. We've got a ton of console fans as well now, fortunately, we're blessed to have both. The point is, if BioWare has the opportunity to get fan feedback, we not only will but we'll do our best to implement that feedback, at least the feedback that makes sense.
Diarmid Clarke: One thing we never really talk about, if you reverse the question, and we were talking about it and saying we just ported it over to PC and have done nothing, I would hate to have to defend that position to people who would quite rightly be saying, "Well, why haven't you looked at the PC format and made the game for that."
IGN: The content announcement that's coming up at this point, is there going to be a price tag for that? Because there was a price for the added 360 content.
Matt Atwood: That's why it's an upcoming announcement. [laughs] Shortly we will have some news, we think people will react favorably to it, but beyond that we're not ready to talk about it, so I'm just bailing Diarmid out here…Just keep an eye out, that announcement should be out shortly.
IGN: You can still play through this version multiple times with the same character, right?
Diarmid Clarke: Absolutely, keep the same character or make a new one. However you want to do it.
Matt Atwood: And I did say it at GDC, but there is – and just to be clear it's not through Games for Windows – Live it's through our own server – we still have achievements in the game. That's one of the things that for people who want to experience the whole game, if you complete those achievements it'll go up on our server and it'll register in your game that you've completed them, those achievement act to help push you through the game and discover things you may have not discovered.
IGN: They're basically the same ones from the Xbox 360 version?
Matt Atwood: Yeah.
IGN: And they still work only as badges of honor or do they actually do anything?
Diarmid Clarke: Badge of honor.
IGN: Can the community access them at any point so they can browse who's unlocked what? You say it's on your servers so can you go check users' profiles or something like that?
Diarmid Clarke: Probably not. I wouldn't like to say yes to that because it's a stretch goal at the moment. We need to finish the project off first…We've also made some subtle balancing differences. It's not too radical, but it just kind of goes to that notion of making the difficulty setting appropriate to the PC. It was a little bit easier to play the PC version so we rebalanced it to keep the difficulty levels appropriate to what you choose as a player. And I don't know how much people will pick up on it…but it will improve your second-to-second gaming experience.
IGN: What does that mean, exactly?
Diarmid Clarke: Little bits of playing with the numbers, but not in that horrible kind of we just make everything twice as hard to hit or those kinds of huge sways that sometimes get bolted in. We're just altering some of the damage values, some of the damage you take, and a little bit of balancing like that. We didn't radically change the AI to reflect that, but what you will notice is because you now have the ability to individually give squad commands, and also the fact that you can play run-and-gun as well using Shepard's powers, the AI actually reacts to that as well.
source: http://pc.ign.com/articles/865/865541p2.html
We last saw the game at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this past February, where we were given a brief demo that you can read about here. For the latest on Mass Effect, read on.
IGN: As project director, what are you responsible for?
Diarmid Clarke: It's basically taking one of BioWare's properties, delivering it on a new format, and making sure it attains the quality of BioWare's standard. I have producers that work for me and do much more of the important day-to-day work on the game. I sit my fat ass in the chair and shout out commands.
IGN: So to what extent is BioWare working on this and to what extent is Demiurge working on this?
Diarmid Clarke: It's pretty much co-development now. Demiurge has primarily been responsible for the bulk of the work of moving the game onto the PC, dealing with all the PC technicalities, and also putting some of the improvements into the game that we highlighted that we wanted to do.
What we've focused on is being the guardians of quality, pushing little new changes of design and things that we wanted to make work for the PC. Obviously Matt sent out the information on the new tactical HUDs and we developed that with the core Mass Effect team. They're the right guys to do something that's a fundamental change to how you interface with the game.
The PC version's "tactical HUD."
Diarmid Clarke: We started with the wheel system for the Xbox 360 version and it was a nice system and worked very, very well for the 360. We thought we could take it further for the PC. We set our goals which was "this game must absolutely feel like a naturally developed PC experience." We thought that by moving to the new tactical HUD where we can put the three component parts of the wheel all on the screen at the same time, it's just something that the PC can do very well because of the control method with the mouse and keyboard in conjunction with the hotkeys that we have. We were fortunate enough to be able to call upon the actual Mass Effect team to develop it so we knew it was really within our control and what we wanted.
IGN: And [the HUD] basically pops up onscreen and pauses the game when you hit the space bar?
Diarmid Clarke: Yeah.
IGN: Does the reworked HUD have anything to do with the release date getting pushed back?
Diarmid Clarke: Oh yeah. I mean you have to make it quality. It's something we take very seriously. [The HUD] is quite a big change, after putting it into the game, and it's got to absolutely work totally naturally. And so there's a little bit of extra time involved in making that work.
IGN: The release date that's been announced for the end of May for the PC version, that's a solid date? If the quality is just not there do you push it back again?
Diarmid Clarke: It's a solid date. We're done with our work now in the tactical HUD. You always want to draw that line where you stop adding new content and we've done that, and now it's closing out the bugs to the final completion.
The Xbox 360 version's radial menu, which has been replaced with the "tactical HUD."
Matt Atwood: We're just waiting on one last approval, we'll have them shortly. What we've been saying is that it'll work well on a machine that's two years old or newer, so it's a very broad market. The goal is to appeal to a broad market. We will be giving out specs soon, though.
Diarmid Clarke: Put it this way, Greg Zeschuk [a BioWare cofounder] here is playing on his laptop at the moment.
IGN: Do you know the specs on his laptop?
Diarmid Clarke: Not off the top of my head. It's not the fastest you can get because he was bitching, "It's six months old." I'm pretty sure it's a fairly top-range laptop six months ago.
Matt Atwood: It's a decent laptop but it's not…I don't know the specs.
Diarmid Clarke: He's got one of those XPSes.
IGN: When you say he's playing do you mean he's playing on maximum settings or he's scaled it down?
Diarmid Clarke: He's scaled it down, absolutely. When you look at the extra resolution modes, we can go up to extremely high resolution. It's basically dependent on what monitor you've got [and] how you can display it. We're very happy that you're not going to need a ninja PC to turn everything on. It's not that intensive.
IGN: What about the content that came out with Bring Down the Sky on the Xbox 360? Is that going to be included in the PC version?
Diarmid Clarke: We're not going to have anything in the retail release of the version. Anything beyond that I suspect Matt should answer.
Matt Atwood: Regarding additional content, we'll make an announcement soon.
IGN: You're talking about Bring Down the Sky content on PC?
Matt Atwood: I'm talking about additional content, period. So not specifically Bring Down the Sky.
IGN: So Bring Down the Sky isn't in the retail game then?
Diarmid Clarke: No.
IGN: With future versions of Mass Effect that come out on consoles, are we going to see them on PC simultaneously? Or is there still going to be this staggered release schedule?
Matt Atwood: I think the team is so focused on getting this out, as far as future iterations it's definitely Xbox 360, which we've said all along for the next installment. As for any other systems, we don't have anything to say.
IGN: Yeah, I figured as much.
Diarmid Clarke: I'm sure people will come to their own conclusions. [laughs]
IGN: A lot of people had complaints with the Xbox 360 version, with long loading times, lengthy elevator rides, and there were some texture loading problems in the game as well. Have those been addressed or fixed in the PC version?
Diarmid Clarke: I think on that you're going to see a wide range of little things that we can do on the PC that answer some concerns…You're going to see improvements to the loading times, we've looked at one or two of the elevators, specifically, that you may use a lot in the game, there's a bit of improvement there. And some of the other things like level of detail stuff you're definitely going to see better on the PC.
Matt Atwood: And Charles you saw some of the load times at GDC, you saw how much quicker they were.
IGN: Yeah I noticed that.
Diarmid Clarke: So that's pretty representative of what we've got. You probably noticed the lack of LoD [level of detail] pop-up in the demo, it was much, much reduced from what you've seen before.
IGN: What was the most challenging thing about bringing this game to the PC?
Diarmid Clarke: I think the most challenging thing is not just making it look like a PC game, I think that's easy. I think it's making it feel and play like it really is a PC game and we're developing it with that in mind. When we made changes to the tactical HUD or allowed people to have individual squad controls, we did it because we actually genuinely believe this will give the best playing experience on the PC. I think that's the biggest challenge. You basically have to give people the same great Mass Effect experience but with the best interface.
IGN: Then what do you say to the Xbox 360 players who may want individual squad controls?
Diarmid Clarke: I think there was a really good comment made by one of our fans on one of the forums. You notice there's a lot of debate between fans asking, "Is the 360 version better?" Or, "Is the PC version better?" And I thought the best comment that I saw on there was about how you want to play your video games to some extent. So it's a very different experience going back home, for me. I've been playing the Xbox 360 version and I've sat on the couch...and I just kind of kick back and play it. Whereas when I'm playing PC games, it's in a computer room, it's away from everybody, it's kind of isolated. And to me that makes a huge difference in which platform I want to play on.
I don't actually think the 360 users are losing out. They've got a great game for the console that's pushing the genre beyond where other people have gone. And now we're bringing that experience to the PC owners who are getting it several months after the 360 guys.
You could probably debate this argument forever, depending on what you're standpoint is.
Individual squad commands.
Diarmid Clarke: I don't necessarily think there are so many people who have their 360 and their PC set up side-by-side in exactly the same environment so you have this totally black and white kind of view on it. I think it's a lot more complicated than that. And also, fans like to talk about their machines and are very supportive of the machines they bought. It's been an ongoing argument for the last 20 years between formats, and I don't think it's changed a lot.
Matt Atwood: And one of the points that I think Ray [Muzyka, another BioWare cofounder] and Greg have said, and I think I even said at GDC, is that when we have an opportunity to listen to our fans, and BioWare has a ton of core PC fans. We've got a ton of console fans as well now, fortunately, we're blessed to have both. The point is, if BioWare has the opportunity to get fan feedback, we not only will but we'll do our best to implement that feedback, at least the feedback that makes sense.
Diarmid Clarke: One thing we never really talk about, if you reverse the question, and we were talking about it and saying we just ported it over to PC and have done nothing, I would hate to have to defend that position to people who would quite rightly be saying, "Well, why haven't you looked at the PC format and made the game for that."
IGN: The content announcement that's coming up at this point, is there going to be a price tag for that? Because there was a price for the added 360 content.
Matt Atwood: That's why it's an upcoming announcement. [laughs] Shortly we will have some news, we think people will react favorably to it, but beyond that we're not ready to talk about it, so I'm just bailing Diarmid out here…Just keep an eye out, that announcement should be out shortly.
IGN: You can still play through this version multiple times with the same character, right?
Diarmid Clarke: Absolutely, keep the same character or make a new one. However you want to do it.
Matt Atwood: And I did say it at GDC, but there is – and just to be clear it's not through Games for Windows – Live it's through our own server – we still have achievements in the game. That's one of the things that for people who want to experience the whole game, if you complete those achievements it'll go up on our server and it'll register in your game that you've completed them, those achievement act to help push you through the game and discover things you may have not discovered.
The reworked character profile screen on PC.
Matt Atwood: Yeah.
IGN: And they still work only as badges of honor or do they actually do anything?
Diarmid Clarke: Badge of honor.
IGN: Can the community access them at any point so they can browse who's unlocked what? You say it's on your servers so can you go check users' profiles or something like that?
Diarmid Clarke: Probably not. I wouldn't like to say yes to that because it's a stretch goal at the moment. We need to finish the project off first…We've also made some subtle balancing differences. It's not too radical, but it just kind of goes to that notion of making the difficulty setting appropriate to the PC. It was a little bit easier to play the PC version so we rebalanced it to keep the difficulty levels appropriate to what you choose as a player. And I don't know how much people will pick up on it…but it will improve your second-to-second gaming experience.
IGN: What does that mean, exactly?
Diarmid Clarke: Little bits of playing with the numbers, but not in that horrible kind of we just make everything twice as hard to hit or those kinds of huge sways that sometimes get bolted in. We're just altering some of the damage values, some of the damage you take, and a little bit of balancing like that. We didn't radically change the AI to reflect that, but what you will notice is because you now have the ability to individually give squad commands, and also the fact that you can play run-and-gun as well using Shepard's powers, the AI actually reacts to that as well.
source: http://pc.ign.com/articles/865/865541p2.html
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