In my conversation with Mass Effect 2 project director Casey Hudson, he talks about digging deeper, going darker, and seeing the scarier parts of the universe in the sequel to Bioware's sci-fi RPG. He also speaks frankly about what worked and what didn't work in the first game.

Q: ...tell me what you're doing about complaints about exploring with the Mako. I know that was another common complaint and it's something you guys have said you want to address. What's your approach there?

A: We stepped back and thought about what we were trying to achieve with the expanded parts of the world. One aspect of it is that when we look at feedback like that, one potential solution is to wonder if we really need that part of the experience. If people had issues with it, should we cut it? Maybe it actually doesn't need to be there.

Does planetary exploration with that annoying space dune buggy survive the cut? What's so different about combat this time around? What inspiration does the game draw from Alien? And should you play on the PC or the Xbox 360?

Read the interview after the jump and find out.

Tom Chick: What would you say is the single biggest difference since Mass Effect 1?

Casey Hudson: Combat. The moment-to-moment feel of gameplay in combat is radically improved. The overall idea of combat and exploration and character progression and customization and amazing immersive non-linear story are all there, and they're all there in pretty much the same proportion. But once you pick up the controller or the keyboard, whatever your platform is, you'll immediately feel it's much more precise and satisfying.

TC: Let's talk a bit about the combat. Mass Effect itself was already pretty action-oriented. It had a very shooter feel to it. However, it seems like part of what you guys are trying to do in Mass Effect 2 is take out some of the RPG staples like med-kits, ammo types, the armor restrictions. It sounds like this streamlining means you really want to appeal to fans of shooters. Do you feel that's a fair characterization?

CH: I think it's not entirely accurate. In terms of how Mass Effect 2 has been promoted, we're showing a lot of the improvements and again a lot the focus has been improving the combat. But it's not so much a shift in focus. You're right that we have changed or removed some of the tropes of role-playing games.

For example, one thing people will find is they'll jump in the game and they'll go, "Okay, where's my inventory screen?" And there actually isn't an inventory screen. But all the things our inventory screen did are actually still there, but in a way that allows you to do those things better and with more customization.

For example, previously, one of thing things the inventory screen did is let you pick which armor you want. But now we have an entirely separate interface where you build your armor, piece by piece, out of the armor pieces that you found or purchased in stores. You actually piece together your armor, and you get the look that you want. You get the bonuses in combat that you want from each different piece. It's much deeper. But because it's a system all on its own and it's not part of the inventory screen, you might say, "Oh, well, where did it go?" But when you find it, you actually end up customizing to a much greater degree.

You mentioned ammo types. Again, one of the things you could do on the inventory screen was modify each weapon to shoot a certain kind of ammo. But now, in terms of an improvement, you don't want to stop and go into an inventory screen, go through a few layers of it, and set your ammo to incendiary rounds. You actually want to be able to do that live, in a combat situation. You'll switch your ammo right then for an enemy that's susceptible to incendiary ammo. We've made the ammo types a power that you can fire from the real-time gameplay area using the power screen. But not only that, the power screen allows you to map the powers to the controller. Now you can map incendiary ammo, for example, to one of the shoulder buttons.

TC: It does sound like you guys took to heart some of the complaints about the interface.

CH: Absolutely. We listened to every bit of feedback we could find. That was the starting point. We accumulated about forty different categories of improvements. We didn't do them in a piece by piece way. We look at it in terms of holistic game design. How do you improve wide swathes of gameplay? So take the principle that you don't need an inventory screen. Our approach to many of these things was activities that do what the inventory screen did. Even though one of the complaints was that the inventory screen was difficult to use, we didn't just improve it. We stepped back and said, "Why was it difficult to use? What are you actually doing there? What's a better way to have a place to customize your armor, modify your weapons, choose your team's loadout?"

TC: With that in mind, Casey, tell me what you're doing about complaints about exploring with the Mako. I know that was another common complaint and it's something you guys have said you want to address. What's your approach there?

CH: We stepped back and thought about what we were trying to achieve with the expanded parts of the world. One aspect of it is that when we look at feedback like that, one potential solution is to wonder if we really need that part of the experience. If people had issues with it, should we cut it? Maybe it actually doesn't need to be there. But when you really look closely and interpret it, I think part of the passion behind the feedback was that people wanted to explore planets. We wanted to make sure to better fulfill that fantasy, so we took the opposite approach on this game. Instead of building those expanded universe pieces out of lighter content, we took the opposite approach. Everything you discover up there really needs to be a unique stretch of gameplay, or a unique storyline. Something different. Something exotic that you couldn't otherwise do in the main game.

We call those N7 missions. And the way you find N7 missions is by doing a new orbital minigame that allows you to scan and find locations where these N7 missions are hidden. And when you find them, you drop down and experience something weird and wonderful and very different from any other missions you've come across.

TC: Are there any unique challenges you face making a sci-fi RPG, as opposed to the sorts of challenges faced by the team making a fantasy RPG like Dragon Age?

CH: Well, they are very different games, right from the core gameplay, where we have a real-time first person shooter vs. a pause-and-play turn-based medieval fantasy that involves some ranged attacks and some melee attacks. Building up right through the lore of how you get around the universe. Even though they're quite different, there are some similarities. In general, there's a philosophy we build our games with. The way we write our storylines. Providing many pillars of gameplay. Those things are shared. There's a Bioware approach we share.

TC: From the information is available about the plot, it sounds like Mass Effect 2 is taking place in a different part of the galaxy with a different feel. The main players in the storyline, at least in the beginning, are different. Is this just the opening, or do you intend for all of Mass Effect 2 to have a different feel or tone from the first game?

CH: Mass Effect as a universe is really about an idyllic and beautiful but naïve futuristic civilization. The races who live in this galaxy are unwilling and unprepared to deal with its greatest threats. But humanity is still young and rough-and-tumble. They're more willing to face the darker threats in the galaxy. Commander Shepherd leads that charge and forces the galaxy to understand there is this larger threat from the reapers who are going to come back and harvest all organic civilization. And yet, through Mass Effect 1, you're seeing the idyllic surface of this reality. But Mass Effect 2 exposes the darker underbelly, the harsher realities. But it's still the same universe. You spend time on The Citadel, which exemplifies the idyllic but naïve part of the fiction. You return to other places from Mass Effect 1, but you dig deeper, you go to darker places, you see the scarier side of the universe.

TC: The first game evoked Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series or some of the themes from Battlestar Galactica. What are the main influences for tone and themes? What have you guys been reading and watching for inspiration?

CH: Well, I wouldn't say those two references are behind Mass Effect 1. I actually haven't watched Battlestar Galactica.

TC: I don't mean to say you're drawing directly from them. You just have in common some important science fiction themes.

CH: Sure. I think we were yearning for that type of science fiction from the late 70s and early 80s. Alien. Blade Runner. Star Trek: Wrath of Khan. They all have an ominous atmosphere. They have a serious and grown-up approach to dialogue. That feeling was what we were looking for. The benefit in Mass Effect 2 is that we're building on a substantial fiction from the first game. That's our reference. We think of the storyline as structured almost like The Dirty Dozen. You recruit a team to get ready for what you think is probably a suicide mission.

TC: When you mention dialogue, it makes me think of what you guys are doing to break out of the traditional dialogue tree structure that so many RPGs seem to resign themselves to. You're pushing that even further in Mass Effect 2, right?

CH: There are some technical improvements, one of which we really wanted to do in Mass Effect 1, which is being able to interrupt someone. At certain times, you can be opportunistic about taking the conversation in a completely different direction in a physical way. A guy who's giving you trouble walks past a glass balcony and you can kick him to his death. You can have that moment. It's an opportunity for a different direction that makes the conversations feel a lot more alive.

But some of the bigger changes people are going to notice come from us already doing an entire game with this technology. So the entire team is that much better and that much more comfortable. If you think about it, we started Mass Effect when Jade Empire or Knights of the Old Republic were cutting edge, where the player didn't speak. It was kind of cinematic camera angles, but not particularly sophisticated. We had to imagine how far we could go. So the writers had to really trust that we would be able to create digital actors, because we had no proof. We had no way to show it. But Mass Effect 1 proves what we can do. So when you say something to a character that hurts her feelings, and she looks at you but doesn't say anything, you can tell in her eyes that you hurt her feelings. That's a huge technological achievement. And now that the writers know that's possible, it allows them to write dialogue like you would write for a really good movie or a TV series, where you don't need to explain everything. You don't need exposition. We can rely on actors, even though they're digital performers to a large degree.

TC: That's great to hear, Casey. It's been one of the shortcomings in videogame storytelling for a long time and voice actors can only take up so much slack. Once again, you guys have got a fantastic cast of voice actors. But for me personally, as a fan of smaller movies and art house movies, I have to say the name in your cast that caught my eye was Shohreh Aghdashloo. She's not exactly a fixture in videogame or sci-fi or popular culture. What was behind the casting of her?

CH: For me, it started with her appearance on 24. At that time we were developing Mass Effect 1. Every time I saw her on that show, I thought, "What a fantastic voice. I wish we had a character we could use her for". At the time, it didn't work out. But as we were developing Mass Effect 2, we found a character that was great for her. We're very fortunate to be able to have her in the cast. She has one of those voices like Keith David or Martin Sheen where you can write a line that you want to carry a lot of weight, and she's able to speak it in a way that makes the line legendary. You hear it and you'll remember that line forever.

TC: I can imagine the recording sessions must have been thrilling.

CH: She was wonderful to work with. She was very excited about what games are able to do now. Martin Sheen as well. A lot of the actors we work with aren't gamers and they haven't seen yet how far things have come. That's one of the things we start with. We take them through some video of the scenes they're going to be in so they get a sense of it. They can get more of an idea if, say, they're in a close shot with another character and they can have that conversational interaction, as opposed to when they're doing broader CG animation style.

TC: That makes me think of the success of Avatar. You guys have been making games forever now, but it's a whole different scene now than it must have been even five years ago, in terms of convincing actors that this is a legitimate way to tell a story, and letting them know they're not just going to be doing one-liners. These days, it must be much easier to convey to actors that you have a script, and a story, and that you need performances. You think of something like Avatar where you never see Zoe Saldana, but her performance is such a part of the movie. That must help you guys in videogames in terms of approaching people like Martin Sheen and Shohreh Aghdashloo and saying, "Here's what we're doing and we need people of your caliber to do it".

CH: Yeah, Avatar helps that. And the Pixar movies have been doing that as well in terms of major major movie releases featuring voice actors in something they're proud to be a part of. I think that's what we offer as well. We offer interesting roles and we want actors to be proud of being in a Bioware game.

TC: Now a couple of nuts-and-bolts questions. You mentioned the N7 missions, which are optional. How does Mass Effect 2 deal with the power curve? For instance, when games are nonlinear and you can't be certain how powerful a character is going to be at a given point, there are different ways to handle that. What is your approach this time?

CH: We have challenge scaling, so if you come across something in the beginning of the game or the end of the game, it will continue to offer you a challenge. It's not one-to-one in the sense that if you're tremendously powerful, you'll have exactly the same difficulty in an encounter as you had at the beginning of the game. But it does reflect the fact that you get stronger. So if you find a mission is difficult, you can still come back later with a more powerful character and have an easier time with it. But the challenge scale won't let you completely blow away certain levels with a more powerful character.

But the other aspect is that Mass Effect 2 is much more of a balance-able game for us. The improvements that we made in combat are a little bit more about you being smart and tactical as a player, as well as being skillful as a player. It's not just strictly the rules that determine whether it's possible to win a certain fight. It also comes down to how you play it. How you move your squad during battles, the powers you decide to employ, your precision. You might find that you get your butt kicked by a level. One way to approach it is to come back later. But another way to approach it is to say, "Okay, how do I absolutely maximize what I'm doing here? Have everyone in cover, headshots, incendiary ammo. I'm going to do all these things." And then you might find that you can succeed.

TC: In Dragon Age, there were some marked differences in the challenge level and how some of the battles played out on different platforms. Are there also differences like that in Mass Effect 2? Did you guys have to change the design or the combat system for any of the platforms?

CH: I don't think there's a difference between the two platforms. One of the differences between a PC and a console for a shooter is that the mouse ends up being a more immediate and a more precise device. But the way the Mass Effect works as a shooter where you fight from cover and you're able to aim, and you can pause the combat to set up orders and powers and stuff like that, I think it mitigates that slight difference. And then you get back to the fact that it's a very real-time third-person shooter type of experience, which works on the Xbox and the PC pretty much the same.

TC: Finally, I want to ask you about a standard thing in space opera that you guys haven't done. Was there any temptation to put a colon and a subtitle after the name of the game? If so, what kind of subtitles did you think it might have?

CH: That actually was a big issue. Part of the challenge is that as soon as you create a subtitle, to me it seems to narrow the experience down to whatever the subtitle is about. It's hard to come up with a subtitle that would be all you want the experience to be. That was one reason we didn't do it. Another reason is that I've always had a problem with subtitle build up. Modern Warfare, for instance. Even moreso with Jedi Knight.

TC: Yeah, what a colon soup that was.

CH: So it was Star Wars: Jedi Knight. And then it was...no, wait, Star Wars: Dark Forces, right?

TC: Right, you gotta get the Dark Forces in there.

CH: And then it was Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2. And then it was Star Wars: Outcast, which was Jedi Knight 2: Dark Forces 3. So to circumvent the whole issue, we decided to just call it Mass Effect 2.

TC: What were some of the subtitles you considered? Or can you reveal that?

CH: Oh, I would tell you if we had any candidates. But we didn't even try to come up with names for it, because the idea of subtitles was shot down early.