It’s been a long weary road for Mass Effect fans. Mass Effect 1 did such a good job of setting up the universe and pumping us up over its sci-fi story that the last thing we wanted to do was wait two years for the sequel. Somehow we made it through that terrible ordeal. Now that the second game is almost upon us, we decided to talk with Mass Effect director Casey Hudson about what it was like building a sequel off of such a successful first launch, how they went about referencing players' old saves from the first game, and the company’s plan for DLC.

Here we are for the second time. You released a Mass Effect game once already, so how to you feel going into this release as compared to the first time?

I think with the first one we were happy with what we had produced, but it's a lot harder to tell what the reception is going to be like when you create a new science fiction IP and a new package of gameplay features. It's all completely brand-new and we were about to unleash it on the world. There was a lot of uncertainty about how people were going to receive the first one. Now, I think we have a touchstone, and we can look at how the first one was received, what we've done differently, and I think we have a much better idea of what reactions are going to be like. We're really excited. We think players who’ve played through the first one and also players who are new to the Mass effect universe are going to have fun with it as well.

It’s the point of a sequel to change and grow, so do you find it hard to take a series and have it continue to evolve while still staying true to the original thesis?

Yeah, I think it is definitely a challenge. The biggest difference people are going to notice in Mass Effect 2 is the quality of gameplay, and the moment to moment experiences, because the overall breakdown is very much the same and the concept behind the combat is very much the same. You still have a squad of three characters and you can still position them around the action and issue orders, but at the same time we decided to be very unapologetic in making the game as good as it could possibly be, even if that meant we had to be surprising or controversial at times. I think people who get a few hours into Mass Effect 2 will see the changes we’ve made as a significant and much appreciated evolution to the overall quality of the game.

How do you guys approach fan feedback? Do you feel it’s dangerous to change a game too much based on feedback, or that you could lose your original audience if you cater too much to those who didn’t like the first game to begin with?

Ultimately, we value feedback more than anything else, because ultimately we make games for people to play. We have our goals that we want to achieve, but ultimately we are trying to create a really magical experience for players, and want to listen to the criticism of those who bought the first game. That's also different from letting people design our game for us. So there is an interpretive stage that has to happen. People might say they really didn't like this part of the game, and they wish it wasn't there, that might be what the feedback is, but that doesn't express exactly what people are asking. We will interpret what people are saying and ask, “Why are people saying this? What do they really want?” Our solution might be a little different than what other people think the solution should be.

BioWare has always taken a mature approach to sex in games, but the press reaction to the sex scene in the first game seemed a little unfair. What was your reaction to that, and did it affect anything you were planning for the sequel?

Well, I wouldn't say that was the press reaction. I would say it was one guy's reaction that was picked up by one TV news site. Typically people will report on things that they have actually seen for themselves and have knowledge about, and that wasn’t true in this case, because the people who were reporting on it actually hadn't seen the game. So of course we can't participate in that kind of discussion. But the people who have played the game and who have responded to us thought it was a really tasteful way to carry through on the concept of a love interest. We thought the love interest was a good was to add a touch of humanity to the story. Why do you want to save the universe? It brings in other emotions that you might not otherwise get, and I think we did a very good job of that in Mass Effect 1, and so we're doing something very similar in Mass Effect 2.