Mass Effect 2 Preview

VideoGamer.com: After the huge success of Dragon Age: Origins, what do you expect from Mass Effect 2? What do you think is the key to it reaching its objective?

CH: We're really excited because Mass Effect 2 has an incredible amount of anticipation. What we're feeling right now is a huge pull, a tremendous pull from the fans and press to get this game out and see more of it. We're feeling that strongly, the excitement for it and we're really excited to be able to get it out there. With Dragon Age we saw, we're with a new publisher now and EA has given us incredible support. They do a fantastic job of getting the name out there and making sure people know the game's coming and know it's going to be a fantastic game. That's a good part of Dragon Age's success, aside from being a great game. At BioWare we won't release a game unless it's really good. But now we also have that solid backing from EA and the promotion they're able to do. You combine that with the excitement about Mass Effect 2, and the fact that it's an even better game than the first one; I'm looking forward to the launch and seeing how people give us feedback when they start playing it.

Another thing we haven't talked much about, and we can't announce anything just yet, is the ongoing DLC plan, which is going to be exciting for people. We weren't able to do a lot of things for DLC on Mass Effect, largely due to technical constraints with how the first game was built. It wasn't extendable to DLC. But the second one is. So even once we launch, then that just begins the ongoing story of how people are able to play Mass Effect 2 content. We're excited about that too.

VideoGamer.com: Did you ever think you would be part of one of the most important development teams in the world when you started your adventure into the video game industry? How do you imagine the future?

CH: I joined BioWare 11 years ago now. I remember my friend telling me that, oh, BioWare, they're working on Baldur's Gate and that's the most anticipated game in the world right now. Things were different back then and the industry was different but even at that time BioWare had a reputation for working on and then releasing games that are highly anticipated by the fan community and then turn out to be high quality games. That was the environment when I joined, even when there were less than 50 people in the company. Now things have grown. We're a much bigger company. We're part of a huge publisher that gives us a lot of support. And yet so much is the same. We're working on another fantastic role-playing game with great characters, great combat, and exploration and very much similar to the principles that we had back then when I first started. We're just able to do things on a bigger and bigger scale all the time. That's been great.

As for the future, we just plan on continuing to learn from what our fans and players are telling us, listen carefully. We set our sights high. We're ambitious. We want to do the biggest and best stuff in the world. But then once we release something, that's the time to listen and hear how people are playing our games, understand what they want next from us and do our very best to try and deliver that.

Mass Effect 2 is due out on Xbox 360 and PC on January 29, 2010.