Mass Effect 3 - Interview with Drew Karypshyn

Myrthos

Cave Canem
Administrator
Joined
August 30, 2006
Messages
11,223
Part two of the interview Pure Sophistry had withformer Bioware writer Drew Karypshyn is all about Mass Effect 3, it's endings and why Retakers shouldn't look to him as a voice for their movement.The interview starts at 21:30 of the audio file.
What is the Mass Effect series to you?
Mass Effect is very special to me because I was so closely involved with creating it, I was part of the original team that came up with the themes and outlines of what this universe was going to be- we helped map out how everything was going to fit together. I was there for almost the entirety of the first two games, I left near the end of the second game to work on SWTOR. I was not involved in Mass effect 3, so I don't want to talk to much about it.
For the first two Mass Effect games, we created an amazing universe- then just kept building on it and building on it. I was always amazed at how much depth the game took on, we knew we had some fantastic ideas, but even we didn't realize how big it was going to become or how much detail we were going to add to it. There were things in there that surprised even me.
Like Cerberus...from the first game, we really didn't think Cerberus was that important. They were sort of a generic pro human terrorist group that we could call on when we needed a bad guy, but there was something there that resonated with fans so we expanded their role and obviously they became integral to the story.
For me Mass Effect is something I am very proud of helping to create, and also really excited about how it's grown. The same goes for Commander Shepard's story initially it was a pretty simple story...just the cop in space, fish out of water, trying to find his way. It's a pretty common idea but once it developed into something more I think we took it into a lot interesting directions and it allowed players to explore a lot of deeper issues; of good evil, do the ends justify the means, segregation versus integration.
Looking at the forums, it also fun to see peoples comments and reactions to our hard-work.
More information.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
11,223
It's a shame he left Bioware as he had a strong influence on many projects. Allot of talented people have left over the years.

Just look at Brent Knowles he left after seeing the new direction of the company and then we got DA2.:-/
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,178
Location
Spudlandia
Yes, Drew Karypshyn was definitely one of their better writers. I even liked his books.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
7,583
Location
Bergen
The books were terribly written, but he was not awful as a writer for the games. I felt the loss of Chris L'Etoile — who did Ashley, Legion, Thane, and EDI, as well as the codex — a more significant loss for the series in terms of writers.
 
Joined
Jun 22, 2013
Messages
1
Yeah, I agree none of the writing is at the level it needs to be to get me through an entire book. That said, I don't read many books - and the vast majority of them bore me to tears, so I can't say it's due to the writers just being bad. I think I'm a bad reader ;)

I tried reading one of their Mass Effect books by Drew - and it was just awful and juvenile. The same is true for the 2-3 SWtOR books I tried reading as well. Not sure who wrote them, but they all suffered from the same over-emphasis on action and over-the-top characters.

I'm not sure what BW writers are responsible for which bits in their games - but I probably liked Mass Effect 1 and Dragon Age 1 the best. Both games have a certain level of maturity (for the medium) that's missing in everything they've done since then.

Well, I loved KotOR as well, but it was at a point in time when "cinematic" experiences in games were not the norm - and the closest point of comparison would be Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Not exactly hard to crush those in terms of writing, now is it ;)
 
Back
Top Bottom