Mass Effect - Interview @ Team Xbox

BioWare's Dr. Ray Muzyka has been interviewed at Team Xbox about Mass Effect. Here's a snip on what the 130-strong development team have come up with for exploration:

You mentioned the exploration elements of the game, and how you can go and find all of these uncharted worlds. What’s the breakdown going to be between the core storyline and just exploring the universe?

Ray Muzyka: Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, it really depends on just how much you want to do on the uncharted worlds. I think it’s going to be about 40 hours or so for the main story, so it’s going to be a good-sized BioWare RPG just for the core part. Off the beaten path, there’s probably another 20 or 30 hours or so of stuff, or more, depending on how much you do and what order you do it in and all of that. It’s this non-linear exploration of uncharted worlds. You’re flying around this vast universe with hundreds of locations, where one’s a derelict spacecraft from which you get this distress call. Another might be an uncharted world with a full backstory, multi-hour storyline that you’ve got to explore and go on the surface and sub-surface and explore and find some new locations that send you off to a new location. You might be flying through space on your primary quest when you get this distress call or you hear some message. The planet’s on sensors, so do you want to explore this now or do you go back later? It’s all non-linear. The gameplay’s there for people who just want to have some fun for a couple hours and go off the beaten path. You know, upgrade the character, get in the rover, explore the world, get out of the rover, go find some quests or some combat, get some new items. Then you can go back to the main game and find a rich, compelling, deep storyline with amazing characters and incredible, beautiful graphics.

More information.

so "hundreds of locations" and only 40-80 hours of game play? smells like a lot of fluff filler for the back of the box.

Well let's take the 30 hours of sidequesting which gives us 1800 minutes.
Hundreds of planets is too much for my math skills so let's go with a round 100.
1800 / 100 = 18 minutes per planet. Let's add loading times so it gives us about half a hour per planet.

Also note that they said locations, not worlds. A derelict spacecraft might have all of two rooms in it -- say, the explorable size of a home interior in NWN2. An area on an uncharted world might well be larger, and more of a vehicle level, or just an area with a lot more content.

NWN2 homes had interiors?

Originally Posted by araczynski
so "hundreds of locations" and only 40-80 hours of game play? smells like a lot of fluff filler for the back of the box.

And, not to be cruel, but it's dollars to doughnuts that at least one of those 'hundreds of locations' will generate a quest to send you traipsing off to locate the four pieces of a shattered object/artefact/cosmic thingy for someone--only now you get to search an entire galaxy for them.

Another one will ask you to decipher a strange alien message left by a vanished civilization using a strange item that you strangely can't throw away or sell.

The distress call will lead you to a ship whose crew has mysteriously disappeared; ('Uh, did you hear something below, lieutenant?? ' ) etc

I don't think there's any surprizes here.

Well, hopefully it will be good fun for someone, nonetheless.

It has side quests, and there are only so many patterns you can slap on side quests. Those are easy donuts to bet, Mags.

Hopefully they're GOOD side quests.

I can see the advertising hype now; BUY ME for the BEST donuts in town!! (or should that be space)

Yes that was some easy sniping, and Patrick, I would never bet donuts with an officer of the law -i.e., lawful good paladin