The book is co-written by BioWare’s Mac Walters with John Jackson Miller. The art is by Omar Francia. The story covers events leading up to Mass Effect 2. Also due for release in January is a Dragon Age: Origins, by IDW Publishing. It will be written by science fiction writer Orson Scott Card, noted for Ender’s Game in 1985, among many other published works.

Preview: Mass Effect Redemption #1 [Comic Book Resources via VG247]

In Seattle, last month, I talked to Mac Walters about this. He’s writing next year’s Mass Effect 2 from BioWare. The studio he works for is known for telling long, detailed stories through its video games. The Mass Effect and Jade Empire, to name a pair of recent releases, are crammed with optional, explanatory text. The games’ characters are often ready to provide richer detail about their lives, their tribes or their home planets than the plot requires.

“A lot of the reason that stuff is in there is because we have players who want to know everything and love that,” Walters said. He believes that the details BioWare provide bring some of their players back to “the days they picked up their Dungeons and Dragons [source]books and read about every character in there.”

That deep level of extra narrative detail may be a BioWare signature, but it’s not a BioWare exclusive.

Consider this sampling of late 2009 games: If you find hidden treasures in Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 2, you’ll be prompted to press a button to learn background information about them. Snoop through the spaceship Ishimura in EA’s Dead Space Extraction and you can find text and audio logs that elaborate on the events that preceded your arrival. Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Asylum overflows with dozens of discoverable recordings of its colorful secondary characters revealing their deranged states of mind.

It is so common for games to provide all these extra details that I had begun to look at Fumito Ueda as the most unusual of game creators.

The Sony developer’s games, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, explain almost nothing. Their heroes are ciphers, their side-characters almost mute. They include no scrolls, no tablets and no scannable objects.

They let you wonder. Or, to put it another way, Ueda’s games seldom explain anything.

(A clip from Mass Effect’s Galactic Codex)

In Tokyo last month I asked Ueda if he was intentionally trying to promote a sort of video game storytelling minimalism. “There’s no deliberate idea to do that,” he said through a translator, suggesting it was a less conscious consequence. “My personal preference is that I tend to be more easy-going. I’m not so interested in small text and a detailed background setting.” I talked to Ueda about the propensity of other developers to include a lot of background detail. They do it differently than you, I said. They explain the backgrounds of every character and every sword.

“But I think what it’s trying to achieve is the same goal [as me],” Ueda said. “I think having information about the sword or the character history is trying to add realism to the game as much as possible. And that’s just one method of doing it, to have text and characters speaking. But that’s not the way I chose to go with my games. I’m focusing on realism of the image itself.” His realism, as he put in the context of developing his team’s next game, The Last Guardian, comes from a style of graphics and animation that can convey emotion and a sense of presence in an imaginary world.

Back in Seattle earlier in the month, Walters from BioWare had advocated a sense of mystery but explained the challenges of not explaining things. “It’s always a balancing act between what can be mysterious and what can’t be,” he said. “If it’s something the player has to know, we need to find a way to make sure a player knows it. Sometimes that even involves repetition because, if the player misses it, then they’re just confused and frustrated. But there are things we can sort of leave hanging. That’s something I’m personally a fan of. If I see it in my work or the writer’s work, I’m fine with leaving it in there. As long as we resolve it at some point or there’s a plan to resolve it at some point.”

Explain the key stuff, he said. Leave the rest of it optional.

Not that my friends don’t look amazing right now, with their steampunk outfits and little remote-controlled toys and all that. I just think they’d look much snazzier decked out in full body armour with a helmet. Unfortunately that look will run you 480 Microsoft points, but can you really pay too much for fashion?

Probably.

New Mass Effect Avatar items [Major Nelson]

Her origin doesn’t mention any childbearing, but regardless, Subject Zero is a bad mutha. Her own word choice is a bit more coarse. The tatted-up Zero is a pro Biotic, supplying firepower and sexual tension in Mass Effect 2.

[via GameSpot]

Knights of the Old Republic was a four-star achievement in role playing games, but I do agree with Richard Naik at GameCritics. The choices you faced—even in the dialogue—lacked a lot of subtlety as to what they said about your character. It might have been a lot to ask of a game at the time, but you were still presented with a binary good/evil character, and games still have not evolved much more into shades of grey since then.

Naik brings inFamous, KOTOR, BioShock Mass Effect and Fallout 3, all of them acclaimed games, in for some criticism. The choices in inFamous were simply about power acquisition, he argues. Mass Effect let you be either a paragon of virtue or a belligerent jerk. And he even says the choice outcomes in BioShock “barely change the game at all,” although I disagree with that. Fallout 3 is the most open ended, but it leaves Naik wondering when, or if, a game will allow true open-ended decision making, and then react to that. Or has one already?

Decisions, Decisions [GameCritics, Sept. 16, 2009.]

The original Knights of the Old Republic is, as of the time of this writing, my favourite product of the Star Wars franchise. And its choice system generally serves the game well, but even a well-done implementation of choices such as this still leaves a somewhat odd aftertaste. To go down the evil path I have to make many choices throughout the game that lead me to the dark side, eventually leading to me becoming a cold, cruel, and calculating Sith Lord. But here’s the thing-would such an intelligent Sith Lord (as dictated by the game) really waste his/her time with senseless acts of brutality such as common mugging? I would imagine that an up-and-coming Sith Lord would try to use his victims to their fullest extent, then dispose of them when they no longer had value. Instead I found myself being a run-of-the-mill asshole, and that somehow led to me conquering the galaxy. The moral extremes of sainthood and belligerent sadism were extremely stark and awkward despite the quality of the story, leaving me to wonder how the ideal choice system would actually work.

Mass Effect (which has been getting lots of discussion time on this site lately) does a better job here, but the problem of moral extremes is still evident. Most of the time the evil choice is represented by a simple act of aggression instead of a more subtle cruelty or self-serving action. Now to be fair, such acts are more believably associated with the character of Commander Shepard rather than my character in Knights of the Old Republic. However, the basic problem still exists-I can’t be the scoundrel with a golden heart, only a universally loved hero. I can’t be the insidious mastermind, only an arrogant bully. While Mass Effect does present a better moral middle ground than many of its ilk, that path is largely dull and uninteresting. In order to access more conversation options I have to go towards one extreme or the other, meaning I have no real reason to toe the line in the middle. So now that we have an area between the two extremes, what next?

[...]Where does the evolution of player choices go from here? Someday I’d like to see a game where I can make virtually any choice in any situation within the bounds of the game world’s reason, and be rewarded or punished appropriately for it. Am I being too greedy? Is this impossible with currently existing technology?
- Richard Naik

Weekend Reader is Kotaku’s look at the critical thinking in, and of video games. It appears every Saturday. Please take the time to read the full article cited before getting involved in the debate here.

There comes a time in the week to reflect on what got into my reporter’s notebook but didn’t turn into Kotaku blog posts. Shall we?

I wound down my coverage this week in preparation for going to Tokyo tomorrow. On Thursday I had my first day of not posting any original stories on Kotaku since I started. Today, I’m only doing two posts…well, plus my Halo 3: ODST review, which will run while I’m away. There’s not been as much from me on the site as there usually is, to say nothing of there being less in my notebook.

But there is some stuff I didn’t get to and didn’t think merited a post. Not surprisingly, it mostly comes from the two interviews that I pulled a number of stories from this week: My PAX chats with BioWare’s Greg Zeshuk and Ubisoft’s Patrice Desilets. You can learn a lot from 20-minute interviews with game developers, but too much info can clog a story. Because of that I didn’t think either of the following needed to run anywhere but here:

Future Mass Effect 1 Expansions Unlikely: Some things just seem too obvious, like BioWare co-founder Zeschuk telling me the following when I asked if we’d get any more downloadable content for the original Mass Effect: “We’re getting close to Mass Effect 2, so I would say it’s highly unlikely.” I had to ask, and had he said yes, that’d be a post. But this answer’s not that surprising.

AC2’s Short Scenes: Assassin’s Creed II creative director Desilets and I spoke about a lot of things, including his series’ cut-scenes. In the first game, the real-time cut-scenes permitted the player to move their hero Altair through the scene as they played. In the new game, however, there will also be non-interactive cut-scenes. Desilets didn’t want them to be long. So the longest one, he told me, runs just two minutes.

No Cakes: Last Sunday I went to the Nintendo World Store in Rockefeller centre where Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment was hosting a Scribblenauts launch event. There was a cake there, and I took pictures. Then I remembered, we don’t do cakes at Kotaku like we used to. So I skipped it. But you can see the cake (and me) in this thread. That’s the cake in message #997.

The video at the top of this post is self-explanatory, but in case you’re wondering why that’s here now, well… I ran a lot of other stuff from my visit to Microsoft. This thing wasn’t very video gamey. So I thought it’d be best to put in a Dump. So here you go.

I’m off to Japan tomorrow. I’m packing a bunch of portable games for the long NYC-Tokyo flight: Scribblenauts as well as the new Drawn to Life and Mario and Luigi games for the DS. If my bags aren’t getting too heavy, NBA 09 and who knows what else for my PSP.

Thanks for reading this week, and please be extra nice to the weekend crew!

Massachusetts Governor Deval L. Patrick has proclaimed today, 9 September 2009, to be Video Game Innovation Day, celebrating the state’s long history of gaming innovation. The official proclamation cites both Spacewar! and Harmonix, as well as companies and universities currently working on technology that will support the growth of the industry.

Now, Therefore, I, Deval L. Patrick, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, do hereby proclaim September 9th, 2009 to be, Video Game Innovation Day And urge all the citizens of the Commonwealth to take cognizance of this event and participate fittingly in its observance.

How does one fittingly observe Video Game Innovation Day? Perhaps the answer to that explains why the governor didn’t proclaim this yesterday.

Governor Declares 09.09.09 Video Game Innovation Day in Massachusetts [Mass.gov]

Yes, that’s right, we’re now publishing reader reviews here on Kotaku. This is your chance to deliver sensible game purchasing advice to the rest of the Kotaku community.

And thanks to the very kind chaps at Madman Entertainment, purveyor of all kinds of cool, indie and esoteric film, the best reader review we publish each month will win a prize pack containing ten of the latest Madman DVD releases.

This review was submitted by Matt Gosper. If you’ve played Mass Effect’s Pinnacle Station DLC, or just want to ask Matt more about it, leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Mass Effect: Pinnacle Station (360, PC)

Mass Effect’s new Pinnacle Station DLC is essentially a combat challenge arena, with four modes: Time Trial, Survival, Capture and Hunt. Time Trial and Survival are fairly obvious – fight for the shortest and longest time possible respectively. In Capture you find and hold capture points in the arena, moving from one to the next as quickly as possible. Lastly, Hunt mode is essentially ‘kill until you get killed’.

Loved
* Rewarding – The bonus reward for beating the final ’super combat’ mission if you ask for a harder challenge is a nice touch from Bioware.
* Visuals Augur Well – The extra work done for the backgrounds of Pinnacle Station – the bridge of the station faces onto an awesomely rendered space scene, hopefully a sample of the high-quality work in Mass Effect 2.

Hated
* Too Easy – Lack of challenge in the missions themselves. At the end of the DLC you can ask if there’s any more missions, and you’re told “you can always replay them”. Why bother when they’re so easy?
* All Combat, All The Time – There is almost no story for the DLC. Yes, Bioware said this was a combat-oriented expansion, but! You arrive, fight a bit and then bang! The end. Surely a little plot couldn’t hurt? Maybe the Council wants to test Shepard’s combat skills. Not an epic story, but something more would’ve been nice.

In the end, Pinnacle Station is a nice chance to revisit Mass Effect before the sequel arrives, but doesn’t offer that much content. For 400 MS Points it’s a decent deal, but with early descriptions of the DLC as “… kind of a casino, gaming, fight club space station” I had hoped for more. But let’s face it – if you like Mass Effect, you’ll play it no matter what. Any reason to play again is a good reason.

Reviewed by: Matt Gosper

You can have your Reader Review published on Kotaku. Send your review to us at the usual address. Make sure it’s written in the same format as above and in under 300 words – yes, we’ve upped the word limit. We’ll publish the best ones we get and the best of the month will win a Madman DVD prize pack.