Karissa Barrows, Editor
SO dudes. Being as obsessed with the Mass Effect series as I am, you can imagine how excited I was to get to interview ME writers Sylvia Feketekuty and Chris Hepler at the Dark Horse booth. I had actually run into them, along with several other members of the BioWare team, as I was heading out after picking up my SDCC press badge. Sylvia had an SR-2 hat hanging on her bag, which I absolutely had to compliment, and in turn showed off my Shenko (femShep-Kaidan Alenko pairing) nails, complete with Alliance, Spectre, and N7 logos. (And yes, I did all that by hand.)
They were just a little beat up by this point – Sunday afternoon. It’s fine.
I introduced myself, and they introduced themselves – as Sylvia, Chris, David Gaider (lead writer on Dragon Age), Reid Buckmaster (QA at BioWare), and Robyn Théberge (Project Manager at BioWare). After standing there talking to them for a little while, we parted ways, only for me to bump into Chris again at the Dark Horse booth during David’s signing. We hung out for a bit with David and talked for probably a good hour or so while I waited for John Jackson Miller’s signing. (By the way – if you haven’t hit up Dark Horse, go to their website and peruse away. Shout-out to Aub Driver, the most awesome Dark Horse PR Coordinator. We’ll karaoke before too long!) I also ran into all of them at the BioWare base and loved getting to talk to all of them there as well. I was fortunate to spend time with them every day of Comic-Con, and they were even there when I was part of the first team (in the world!! Hilary!) to clear the brand new Platinum difficulty on Mass Effect 3 multiplayer with full extraction. It was kind of a big deal. 😉
The “Dream Team.” Everybody was taking pictures of us!
Anyway, enough of my rambling. On to the interview with the amazing Sylvia, who wrote Liara and Samara, and Chris, who wrote EDI and Thane, the Galaxy Map, Codex entries, Hackett multiplayer briefings, weapons descriptions….. does that cover it, Chris? 🙂 The following links will take you to the audio of the interview (right-click and open in a new tab – you’ll thank me later). The site hates me and wouldn’t upload my hard work of the two files condensed into a single audio file, but whatev. You will need the newest version of free!Quicktime to play the files, or Windows Media Player. For those that don’t have that, I’ve transcribed the entire interview for you immediately following the links. Enjoy!
SF: Sylvia Feketekuty
CH: Chris Hepler
KB: Karissa Barrows
SF: Mass Effect writers look unkempt and harried in interview. …I keep making up these fake headlines.
CH: This is what the extended cut did to us!
SF: This is for you!
CH: Fluffy hair!
KB: How was the extended cut? How was working on that?
CH: It was, uh, I mostly just looked over EDI’s dialogue for the Synthesis ending. I was not incredibly involved with it. I mean, I play tested the heck out of it in order to make sure that everything got done right, but it was pretty good. Yeah. I’m pretty proud of the work we did.
KB: How was your work on it [to Sylvia]?
SF: Uh, I didn’t work on it directly, it was the Mass team. Although, yeah, the entire writing team had input. I wasn’t on there, I didn’t actually write any dialogue lines, but I did hear about it and I talked with the writers about what was going on with it. I’m working on Dragon Age now, so.
KB: Oh yeah?
SF: Yeah, so I had to like, claw my way back in to talk to them! No, it’s okay. But that was, it was really fun to see it come together, though. That was a pleasure.
KB: Awesome.
SF: [unintelligible]
KB: What’s that?
SF: Is that on?
KB: Oh yeah, I’ve had it on since you guys were combing your hair because I don’t want to, like, ask a question, just talking, you know.
SF: Oh God. Oh no, you’ll know about the, people will know about our terrible hair.
KB: [laughs] I’ll edit it out. With the extended cut, did you guys get to see a lot of the reaction to the original ending? And kind of, what was your reaction to that?
SF: We saw it. I mean, when we finished the game, we were pretty satisfied with the endings, but we are very close to the Mass Effect universe, for years and years, so we saw the fan feedback saying that, you know, we’d really have liked a bit more elaboration on this, we don’t know what happened, especially to our henchmen, to our love interests, to the people, you know, the people whose lives we changed. And we said, oh, all right, well let’s, uh, we looked at what we could do and said, you know what, let’s give it to them. So, yeah like, we thought the fan push was, it was nice to see that enthusiasm, because that sort of gave all of us an excuse to go back and visit the Mass Effect universe, which we really love, and it was really hard to say goodbye to it, so in a way, it was almost a little stay of extension, there.
KB: Yeah, sure! How about your [to Chris] reaction?
CH: Uh, pretty much the same. I mean, we were really close to the work at the time.
KB: Sure.
CH: We were like, well, with writers, like whenever I write my stuff, I’m always like – is anybody actually gonna like it?
KB: Haha, yeah!
CH: You know, no matter what it is.
KB: Yeah, yeah. Any writer, I think.
CH: Even if it’s EDI, or Thane, or you know, anything that’s, that has been well received and at various levels.
KB: Love Thane. I’m a mom, but ahh! I never romanced him, but it’s fine.
CH: [Laughs] Yeah.
KB: So you guys both play the game, I’m assuming. I want to know what your kind of favorite way to go with the story is. Who you would romance, who your crew members are, do you Paragon or Renegade, do you-?
CH: I usually play a femShep engineer.
KB: Yeah!!
CH: Which is like, the rarest combo.
KB: That is the rarest combo!
CH: It was like, well, I like to be able to have, you know, if I run out of thermal clips, I like to be able to fire off incinerate. But, uh, and I tend to go Paragon. Just because I tend not to want to, you know, piss off all of my companions because I’m recruiting them for my suicide mission!
KB: Right, sure.
CH: You know, keep morale up! But I make some pragmatic decisions every now and then, if like, you know, I don’t like the character, and it’s like, argh, go Renegade. So I’m not 100% Paragon or Renegade consistently.
KB: Paragade!
CH: Yeah, Paragade! And, who I romance – I did Jacob and Thane in Mass 2, I did Liara in Mass 1, and in Mass 3, mostly I was testing. So I was like, must make sure EDI and Joker hook up together!
KB: Yes!
CH: So I was doing most of that and, yeah. I had to sleep, and spent hours doing testing too. So yeah! [To Sylvia] You care to take a crack at it ?
SF: Yeah. All Vanguard, baby! Oh, it’s so fun.
KB/CH: Yeah!
KB: That’s my class, too! Sentinel and Vanguard.
SF: I used to play as a soldier, but in 3, the vanguard just felt so much better.
KB: It really did.
SF: I haven’t gone back. It’s fun. Female Shepard, mostly Paragon, although in 3, because of the way we, we used to have it set, unless you were all Paragon or all Renegade in Mass 1 and 2, Mass 2 really, you would start losing out on persuades.
KB: Right.
SF: Or intimidate options. And then 3, we finally like, we cut that. We said, all right, no, you just become more charismatic and persuasive in general. So I tend to throw in a few more Renegade options when it felt right for Shepard. I actually haven’t touched my at-home Shepard. I actually did two or three playthroughs of Mass 3 at work during the work cycle. And I tested out romances. I tested out Liara’s, I tested out Kaidan’s with femShep.
KB: YES! That’s my romance, man!
CH: Oh yeah, that’s the other thing I had to test, was all the permutations [Great word, Chris!!] of Ashley and Kaidan in the Cerberus Coup, because you could either have it as, you know, “Hi, darling I love you, put down the gun, it’ll be fine!” or it’s, you could actually shoot them.
KB: I shot him the first time and I was heartbroken! I was like, NOOO! WHY did I do that!?
CH: Haha, yeah! Reload that!!
KB: Yeah!
SF: There’s like, six, five or six different variables on that. I looked at each branch. I think I looked behind, uh. Chris and I were sitting across from each other and I’d turn around and there would be this spaghetti mess on your screen-
CH: Yeah.
SF: -of branching. I was like, it was all very much the, uh, there for the grace of God.
CH: Yeah.
KB: Gosh!
SF: Yeah. It was uh, yeah. So I just tried to finish the Suicide Mission on my at-home ME2 character to get my ME3 one ready, and Mordin died!! He was loyal!
KB: No!!
SF: You glass cannon!!
KB: [Laughs]
SF: I love Mordin.
KB: I do, too.
SF: He’s a fabulous character, and I wanted to, I was trying to do the maximum, everyone’s alive, run. But sadly, Mordin did not – I’m gonna have to replay it. I’m gonna have to keep him close in my squad so he doesn’t die!
KB: Oh my gosh.
SF: Yeah. So I’m gonna go on to ME3 with everyone alive, everyone hopefully. We’ll see how long that lasts.
KB: Yeah.
SF: We’ll see how that goes.
KB: [Laughs] That’s awesome. Um, what else was I gonna ask? What else did I tell you yesterday [to Chris]?
SF: [Laughs]
KB: Um…. Oh! What are you guys working on now?
SF: Well, I’m on the Dragon Age team, so what I’m working on, I cannot talk to you about.
KB: Okay.
SF: I know that’s-
KB: Fair enough! No, I talked to David [Gaider] yesterday and he was like, “I can’t tell you anything!”
SF: A mystery game!
CH: Uh, what I’m working on is the single-player DLC, uh, as well as-
KB: Oh!!
CH: Yeah. We are going to have some!
KB: Can, can we, can we talk about that?
CH: No, not really.
SF: [Laughs]
KB: Dangit!!
CH: [Laughs] Yeah, uh, we, other than the fact that we’re going to have some.
KB: Okay.
CH: So, uh, and I’m also working on a lot of the multiplayer stuff because I’m the guy who writes the daily briefings by Hackett.
KB: Oh okay, awesome.
CH: And stuff like that for the, you know. And this weekend, we’re going to go kill a thousand Banshees! Or, a billion Banshees, or.
KB: Yeah, the… what is it, broad… Broadside.
CH: Yeah, Operation Broadside is this weekend.
KB: Yeah!
CH: So every Monday, they drag me out and say, “Chris! We need this by the end of the day!”
KB/SF: [Laughs]
KB: Oh my God, gotta type it really fast…
CH: And, so I’m involved in the multiplayer. I do things like weapon descriptions, and other stuff. Uh, can you tell I came from Virginia?
All: [Laughs]
CH: Yeah, so it was like, “Get the American in it to write all the weapons descriptions!
KB: Yes!
CH: So yeah.
KB: I used to live in Virginia. I was stationed there.
CH: Oh yeah?
SF: Really!
KB: Mmhm. I was stationed at Langley.
SF: Were you in the Army?
KB: Air Force.
SF: Wow, sweet.
CH: Yeah. So I’m the token gun nerd.
SF: Did you ever drive by that, you know, really creepy-looking CIA base? Like you’d be driving towards DC-
KB: Yeah.
SF: Thick woods, thick woods, and then suddenly, Quantico’s, like, tower spike would stick out. You’re like, what the hell?
KB: And like, you’re just passing the Air Force Memorial and you’re like, crap! Like you’re looking over.
SF: Yep. It’s very, it’s a very strange neck of the woods there.
KB: Yeah.
SF: It’s a cool drive.
KB: Yeah. Bad traffic, though.
SF: Oh yeah.
KB: What’s the… I know you can’t tell us any details about the single-player…
CH: Mmhm.
KB: So I’m not gonna press you for them, but… can you tell me if there is any specialized interaction with your love interest in the single-player coming up?
CH: Um, no, I don’t think I can talk about that.
KB: You can’t talk about that?
CH: No.
KB: Dangit. I tried. People would hurt me if I didn’t ask.
CH: Yeah.
KB: Cool. Uh, do you guys have anything that you want to get out there? Any websites that you guys run, anything that you want people to check out?
SF: Um, I can’t really think of anything other than the BioWare blog. That’s where we post. We post news obviously, we also post text interviews with people, I did one on there and there’s a bunch of other people from BioWare. I think it’s worth checking out. Like, people from different disciplines. Q&A, programming, art. So I like interviews, so if you enjoy knowing about the game-making process, check it out.
KB: Okay! Awesome.
CH: Yeah. Um, nothing for me. I’m fairly asocial when it comes to the web. I do want to say to all of the Thane fans and stuff like that – it’s not that, uh, it’s not that I hate you!
KB/SF: [Laughs]
CH: It’s because I just don’t comment on the forums.
KB: Okay. And you don’t have a twitter or anything?
CH: No, I don’t have Twitter.
KB: Okay.
CH: Um, I – yeah. Unless we want to review the old solcomms hashtag and do, you know, the Emily Wong tweets over again. Uh, no.
KB: Well, I will be sure to tell Thane fans that. I’m sure they will be happy to hear that.
CH: Yeah.
KB: All right, you guys, I’m gonna get out of your hair because I have somewhere to be, and I’m sure you guys have lots of things to do, but I will see you around this week because I keep bumping into you.
SF: [Laughs] Probably!
KB: It’s amazing to keep bumping into you!
CH: Yeah.
SF: It’s a small con.
KB: It is a small con! But I’ll see you guys at the BioWare Base and things.
CH: It’s a small con!?
SF: Well, you know what I mean.
CH: What are you talking about!?
KB: It’s like a small world and there’s like, billions of people.
SF: You keep on bumping into people! You know what I mean.
KB: Yeah, yeah. But I’ll see you guys around I’m sure! Thank you so much for-
SF: It was a pleasure!
KB: -for letting me talk to you, again, outside of, you know, just chatting.
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