GamesRadar: Mass Effect looks, well, massive. How long do you expect it to last for the average player? Will we be able to finish all this before the promised Mass Effect 2?
GZ: (laughs) You could be replaying it all the way to Mass Effect 2.
RM: There's a lot of replayability, depending on which options you choose.
GZ: The actual length we're targeting is about 40 hours. But, really, that's also customizable. You can spend more or you can spend less. The core story is less than that, but there's a lot of stuff you're going to want to do on the side. There are benefits to replaying - certain Achievements you can get and certain things that can happen to your character.
GamesRadar: Speaking of Achievements, how will Mass Effect take advantage of Xbox Live?
RM: We haven't gone into great detail about that, but we are really interested in post-release content. We're actively planning for one. We have the Achievements - Microsoft commented to us that they felt the Achievements we're building into the game are some of the most impressive they'd ever seen. That's what we'll leave it at for right now, but we're big believers in the Live online space. Neverwinter Nights had lots of post-release content and added lots of other interesting things to the community. We're certainly inspired by that and trying to build on it for future games like Mass Effect.
After the demo, we stuck around to quiz the good doctors some more. What inspired Mass Effect and how will it transform the RPG genre as we know it? Findout inpart two of our extensive BioWare interview.
