If anyone in the video game industry knows how to tell a story its Bioware. The company is the gold-standard for story based games, so it comes as no surprise that some of its handiwork is drawing attention from Hollywood. THR reports that Legendary Pictures, the studio behind Watchmen, 300, and The Dark Knight, has purchased the rights to a big screen version of Mass Effect.

Obviously, it’s way too early to speculate on this one, but if anyone can do the video game movie right, I’d think Mass Effect gives some great source material. Of course the one guy that comes to mind for Justin Shepard is the guy from Prison Break, but who says it has to be a doppleganger.

The big news from EA’s earnings call yesterday was definitely that the company expected to make millions less this year than it originally though. CEO John Riccitello is already looking forward to 2011, though, when he says the company will release a “major MMO.”

From what we know, that probably means Star Wars: The Old Republic from Bioware. That would be about as major as you can get. It’s definitely at the top of my MMO wish list. There are other options, though. He could be talking about Need for Speed: World Online, which I really hope isn’t the case. There’s also the very slim chance that EA has a hush-hush project in the works, but I doubt that’s going to happen either.

Instead, I think it’s safe to start dreaming up bounty hunter names.

The BioWare forums have been a treasure trove of Mass Effect 2 information over the weekend. This latest tidbit concerns the ubiquitous elevator loading sequence we saw in the original game. That’s going away, replaced by a classic loading screen with extra information and visuals. Oh boy!

Here’s what BioWare’s Thomas Roy said:

The elevators were made in ME1 so we didn’t have to show boring loading screens. However there were a lot of complaints, so we’ve gone back to loading screens and movies. We still have elevators in ME2, but you don’t wait inside them. We’ll cut to a loading screen instead.

We’ve tried to make the loading screen more interesting this time by adding interesting visuals and information.

The elevator conversations had some funny moments, but hopefully people will enjoy this new system better than the old one!

Any way you slice it, loading screens are lame, but I think I prefer games that don’t try to mask the fact that there’s some behind the scenes work going on with occasionally funny moments.

More Mass Effect 2 news today, and who can complain? It’s a game I’ve been looking forward to for a while, even if it’s missing that MMO feature I would really love. I still think it’s going to be awesome, and so does Bioware community coordinator Chris Priestly, who said one the Bioware forums, “You cannot fit this much awesome on one disc.”

Yes, sadly Mass Effect 2 will span discs. That’s a great stat for content hounds, but kind of annoying for everyone. Priestly promises it won’t mess up your mojo, though. He claims the disc swap happens at an appropriate time so as not to ruin your experience.

“Even though there is a disc swap, it occurs at a carefully planned place in the game (that does not interfere with gameplay) and is done once. You do not swap back and forth. 1 swap and then done.”

I’m not sure how they managed to pull that one off, other than duplicating serious amounts of content on each disc. Maybe it’s just that we get the opening credits, cinematics, and the first few quests on a shorter disc, and everything else is packed onto that second one. In any case, I’ll be interested to see if this really doesn’t interfere. I mean, really, who wants to get up from the couch?

Source: Mass Effect forums

Mass Effect 2 producer Adrien Cho thinks games have gotten too easy, requiring less problem solving skills than ability to best a game’s cheap mechanics.

“Just recently, a game like Demon’s Souls is fantastic because when you die, and you fail, it’s not because the game was cheap it’s usually because you didn’t do something properly,” Cho told Video Games Daily.

“It goes back to that learning mechanism of ‘Well, I tried this – it didn’t work. I’m going to try something different.’ And I think that’s going to be something in Mass Effect 2, we don’t want it to be a cakewalk, you want a challenge.”

I like the attitude, and if anyone can pull off a decent challenge it’s Bioware, but I’ll definitely wait to see the game before singing Cho’s praises.

Bioware co-founder and CEO Ray Muzyka talked with Videogamer.com about Dragon Age: Origins today and made some interesting statements regarding multiplayer in RPGs. Two of Bioware’s most recent releases have been single player RPGs, something I found a little distressing. As I get older I’m finding I want games to be more social, and Bioware is one of my favorite developers, so naturally I’m most excited for the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic. But I don’t want to miss titles like Mass Effect or DA:O because I really love the storyline, which is something that dissolves the deeper you get into an MMO. Lucky for me, Muzyka wants to help.

He sees the same sort of paradox in multiplayer/RPG gaming. It’s hard to keep control of a good story when you open the world to millions of player interactions, but those single player experiences leave something to be desired. As Muzyka puts it, “It’s hard to weave a great single-player storyline into a multiplayer experience. It’s not impossible. We’ve done it, and we’re doing it again now in Star Wars: The Old Republic. But it is challenging.”

As for the other way around, he’s not totally thrilled with the idea of a co-op mode for something like Mass Effect 2. “They could make a great gameplay experience,” he said. “Whether we’ll do them or not remains to be decided.” I think “could” is key because I’ve yet to see a co-op experience that I would choose over the single player, at least in an RPG.

For more on DA:O you can read the full interview at Videogamer.com.

Bioware’s always been great about supporting the creative communities that develop around its games. The Neverwinter Nights editor was great, and led to all kinds of spinoffs and community created story lines. Hell, Bioware even uses the editor as a tool in their own job applications. They’ve just released the toolset for their latest creation, Dragon Age: Origins, which includes a cinematics editor with lip-sync tools and full camera controls.

The thing looks pretty awesome, and once again should lead to some extremely cool user-generated content. When I first heard about Origins I was sad it wasn’t an MMO. More and more I find myself attracted to games with a significant multiplayer facet, and turned off by single player games. This is the kind of feature that builds a great community around a game that could otherwise have a limited shelf-life for most players, regardless of how cool it is.

You have to have a registered copy of the game (obviously only on PC) to get the download. You can find out more about it over at Bioware’s site.

For every game announcement from Bioware, I like to keep my fingers crossed that it will be the sequel to Jade Empire. So far, no luck, but lead designer Mike Laidlaw has given me enough cause to keep crossing.

“We will certainly announce it if it’s going to be coming out,” Laidlaw told Strategy Informer. “At this point, Jade Empire is a staff favorite and a lot of us love it, so we’d love to revisit it at some point. But right now, we are very focused on Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2.” Sure it’s not much, but I’ll take what I can get when it comes to Dawn Star. Imagine that in HD boys. Yeah.

The rest of the interview is focused on the upcoming Dragon Age: Origins, so still worth a read.

So sayeth Bioware, so let it be. The developer has called the sequel to my favorite space marine RPG the dark cousin to the original. Okay, it actually said Mass Effect 2 is like the second Star Wars film in that it tells a much darker tale.

“If you recall, Empire Strikes Back was the darker chapter and that is how we designed the ME2 story and experience: to try and make the player reflect on the challenges of the character,” co-founder Greg Zeschuk told IGN. “If you put ME2 next to the original it is definitely a darker, harder game.”

Mass Effect 2 picks up at the end of the original with another threat to the human race. My guess is the game focuses on Sheppard’s struggle with race/species and the obvious allegories to our own society. I’ll be interested to see how fleshed out it gets. For me, a lot of that emotional stress in a game is lost in the effort to complete quests and move the story along.

Bioware has announced the release of a PC character creator for the upcoming Dragon Age: Origins. The software will be available starting October 13th. The tool is meant to give you a little prep time before the game launches on November 3rd.

I think it’s a great move. I love games with custom characters, but I usually don’t spend any time with the feature until my second toon. My first character starts off to be the epic beast I plan to use to rule the planet. About three minutes in, though, my desire to actually play the game takes over and I end up with a crooked beard and bad teeth.

Alongside the character creator, Bioware is opening the game’s community site. There you’ll be able to upload your custom characters and participate in the game specific forums.