Mass Effect - Gone Gold & Q&A @ IGN

According to their website announcement, Bioware's  space themed rpg for the XBox360, Mass Effect has gone gold.

Thanks, zyklop!

There's also an interview coming out of IGN Australia with Chris Priestly, Community Coordinator, that goes into some detail about the soon to be released title:

GN AU: How much of the game do you think has been seen publicly?

Chris Priestly: Five percent! [laughs] At best. You're looking at a game that, depending on how you play, how rapidly you progress through the story, how quickly you pick up combat and skip dialogue and so on, it'll take 20 hours. But then there are those people that play, like me, who want to do a romance plot, do party NPC plots, who get sidetracked with sub quests and such - then you're looking at maybe 60 hours at least. Again, it depends on your individual play style...

...IGN AU: Are there any cool in-jokes or easter eggs we should keep an eye out for?

Chris Priestly: There are definitely some things in there. Without giving away any major plot points, there's a really good one that I laughed out loud at. When you defeat a certain enemy in battle and a holographic AI popped up and it started giving this explanation when you were expecting to continue the mission and Shephard looks at it and goes 'oh great; another pop up!' [laughs]

There are little things like that - little bits of light humour. You know, Mass Effect is a darker, more mature game for us; I think in order to appreciate how occasionally dark and gritty it is, you get these contrasting elements of humour in the game. There are little secret things hidden here and there…