Mass Effect - Interview @ Team Xbox

BioWare's Dr. Ray Muzyka has been interviewed at Team Xbox about Mass Effect.  Here's a snip on what the 130-strong development team have come up with for exploration:

You mentioned the exploration elements of the game, and how you can go and find all of these uncharted worlds. What’s the breakdown going to be between the core storyline and just exploring the universe?

Ray Muzyka: Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, it really depends on just how much you want to do on the uncharted worlds. I think it’s going to be about 40 hours or so for the main story, so it’s going to be a good-sized BioWare RPG just for the core part. Off the beaten path, there’s probably another 20 or 30 hours or so of stuff, or more, depending on how much you do and what order you do it in and all of that. It’s this non-linear exploration of uncharted worlds. You’re flying around this vast universe with hundreds of locations, where one’s a derelict spacecraft from which you get this distress call. Another might be an uncharted world with a full backstory, multi-hour storyline that you’ve got to explore and go on the surface and sub-surface and explore and find some new locations that send you off to a new location. You might be flying through space on your primary quest when you get this distress call or you hear some message. The planet’s on sensors, so do you want to explore this now or do you go back later? It’s all non-linear. The gameplay’s there for people who just want to have some fun for a couple hours and go off the beaten path. You know, upgrade the character, get in the rover, explore the world, get out of the rover, go find some quests or some combat, get some new items. Then you can go back to the main game and find a rich, compelling, deep storyline with amazing characters and incredible, beautiful graphics.