BioWare - Interview @ NowGamer

NowGamer has an extensive and rather detailed interview with Greg Zeschuk. Topics include
Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect and Star Wars:The Old Republic as well as some thoughts on where the game industry is heading. The quote is from the beginning of the article where he talks about how Bioware plans their games:

Speaking of worlds, you guys put a lot of effort into creating yours – could you give us a quick overview of the effort required?
The interesting thing is, when we build a game - especially for a new franchise – we spend almost a year exploring the world and creating documentation. Usually anytime you start prototyping your technology, we’ll literally spending months to a year figuring our the world, who the characters are and the setting. If you’ve got a really fleshed-out setting it’s very easy to lay a game on top of it.

Source: GameBanshee