BioWare has a team working on next Mass Effect

At GDC earlier this month Joystiq caught up with BioWare co-founders Dr. Greg Zeschuk and Dr. Ray Muzyka and quizzed the pair on all manner of topics including Mass Effect 3.

Asked if the turnaround for Mass Effect 3 will be quicker than the second game in the trilogy, Dr. Greg Zeschuk said: “We’ll see, fan feedback, a lot of other elements will, in our impressions, guide what Mass 3 does. I don’t imagine it will be quite as dramatic as Mass 1 to Mass 2, because I think by and large people liked a lot of the features we put in.”

He added: “There’s an incredible opportunity for refinement and I think one thing we talked about is, if you look at the evolution of the shooter experience from 1 to 2, that’s a huge step. I think, realistically, we can have yet another step, maybe refine it another level.”

Dr. Ray Muzyka also offered his thoughts, stating that as with all BioWare games, it’s all about quality and innovation.

“Each one we’re striving to make better than the last and the way we do that is to listen to fan feedback and, yeah, we’re gonna do some innovative things in future instalments of Mass Effect. And we’ll take the amount of time we need to deliver a really high-quality game for our fans that meets what they’re asking us to deliver,” he said. “And we’re still working on what that is, to be honest. We have a plan, we have a team working on the next instalment now. We haven’t even formally announced it so to say a date would be way premature.”

Muzyka concluded: “But it’s all going to be about quality, you know, so that’s the governor on everything we do. It’s striving for quality. Mass Effect 2 set a really high quality bar for us as a studio group, and, hey, we want Mass Effect 3 to exceed that.”

Earlier this year EA chief operating officer John Schappert said the publisher will release “something far reaching from Mass Effect” in the January through March 2011 quarter.