Interview: BioWare CEO & EA VP Ray Muzyka

The BioWare boss and EA VP discusses Dragon Age: Origins, Star Wars: The Old Republic, the Mass Effect trilogy, and whether EA's serious focus on quality is actually paying off.

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Kikizo: Is that something you think you'll be doing more of, working on other people's properties?

Muzyka: I would say maybe less so, but of course, we'll still continue to be working with LucasArts. We're mainly working on a lot of new IP that BioWare created, like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. And I would argue that a new IP, when you work on it and iterate it, eventually becomes an established IP or licensable IP as well, so it's just where on the spectrum it is.

Kikizo: Mass Effect I think is going to be a trilogy - are the follow up titles something you're actively working on at the moment?

Muzyka: We haven't confirmed or announced anything on that, but I mean, it makes sense to say that it's a trilogy, there are going to be sequels, the team is obviously working on something, and yeah, there's some cool stuff in the pipeline!

Mass Effect will be a trilogy, but the details are still to come

Kikizo: It's a while since you've done Dungeons and Dragon related stuff - do you ever think about going back to that IP?

Muzyka: Yeah we do, but I think with Dragon Age, we wanted to do something a little different. Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights are more sort of high fantasy, whereas Dragon Age is definitely a conscious effort to make something that's dark, heroic fantasy. So it's not low fantasy or high fantasy, but it's got some of the best-of-breed features from both types of fantasy. Really it's mature, it's gritty, it's choices with consequence, it's making decisions that have an impact on the world and feeling like you're actually leading to different outcomes. You're a hero, but you so some things that are kind of dark, too. And I think that's exciting - I think players are going to be excited to see something different than the normal, traditional fantasy experience.

Kikizo: This concept of how player decisions affect the world or the story is something a lot of games are exploring - things like Fable come to mind - how would you say it works here? Some people say the decisions don't affect things much at all - some players said that about GTA for example.

Muzyka: It maybe comes down to: are you making the decisions sort of personal, or are you making the 'world' decisions impactful? And I think players want to be able to have decisions which have large consequences. So we're not talking about mundane decisions - I mean you get to make smaller decisions too - but the ones that count are the ones that have a big impact, and the ones you expect to have an impact on the world around you. You're a Grey Warden in Dragon Age, and you're there to save the world from the Blight. It's a pretty big role to take on, and you're going to have to do some hard things in that role. But in a mature world you're going to do difficult things that have consequences, too.

Dragon Age: Origins - armored skeletons confirmed

Kikizo: Obviously you've already got a lot going on, but do you even think about revisiting some of your earlier successes like MDK?

Muzyka: Well, not owning it makes it difficult to go back to sometimes! It was licensed from Interplay. But we liked working on it - it was a lot fun, but currently there are no active plans to do that. I don't know who owns MDK but it's kind of complicated, I think.

Kikizo: The Internet also says you have another major project, an untitled next-gen project.

Muzyka: That's right, there is, there is. But it's not announced!

Kikizo: Of course not. Well Ray, it was good talking to you again - thanks!

Dragon Age: Origins is set for release on PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 in Q4 of this year.

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