'Mass Effect Galaxy' Executive Producer Interview, Screenshots

Describing Mass Effect Galaxy for iPhone and iPod touch as “a very cool leap into expanding the Mass Effect universe onto a new and innovative platform,” Jay Watamaniuk, writing over at the BioWare Blog, has exchanged a few thoughts on the topic with the game's producer, Kevin Barrett.

With no release date yet scheduled for what promises to be quite the adventure title for iPhone and iPod touch, Watamaniuk asked Kevin Barrett to shed some light on the connection between Mass Effect Galaxy and Mass Effect 2. Barrett's answer...:

“Mass Effect Galaxy tells the background stories of two characters that will be encountered by the player in Mass Effect 2,” he said. “The events of Mass Effect Galaxy take place between the time of Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2, providing the player with more continuity for the ongoing story of the ME universe.” he further revealed.

As for the focus on Jacob Taylor’s story, Barrett stressed that “Jacob is a Biotic-powered soldier in Mass Effect 2.” Since the plan was to develop “a combat-oriented game” for Apple's portables, “Jacob was a strong candidate player character for us,” Barrett explained. “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,” BioWare's man said.

“Our challenge was very much like trying to distill a full season mini-series down to a half-hour tv episode,” he continued to tell Watamaniuk. “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,” he explained to the interviewer.

Not surprisingly, Barrett also mentioned that Apple's iTouch had its particular limitations. While not putting his finger on these bumps in the road, so to speak, Barrett did note that BioWare was forced to choose the focus of the gameplay experience - “to pick and choose how strongly we were going to pursue cinematics, voice over, special effects and so on,” were his exact words. “We figured that an animated 2D graphic novel-style presentation was the best way to tell our story on this device,” Barrett concluded.

According to a BioWare reply to one of the commenters on the respective blog, the release date of the iPhone / iPod touch game is not at all far.