Mass Effect Evolution: Who Is The Illusive Man?

Who is this man? How did he get such power? Questions that any Mass Effect 2 fan has wondered, and, luckily, Bioware in conjunction with Dark Horse are about to answer that question. The squad behind the Mass Effect redemption comics are teaming up with former Y the Last Man’s cover artist, Massimo Carnevale, to bring you a 4 comic mini-series called ‘Mass Effect Evolution’. “The basic idea was that the Illusive Man is, by nature, one of these guys we don’t know much about,” says Walters, a writer. “Going forward in the games we were thinking we didn’t want to reveal too much about him [in the present], but we could look into his past and see how he become the Illusive Man and, maybe moreso, where Cerebus came from and how it started. We certainly have a lot of material we’ve developed internally about this that’s not out there publicly and we thought this would be a great forum to share that.”

“Evolution is a story from the early days of the Mass Effect universe, not long after the discovery of the Mass Relays connecting our solar system to the galaxy,” says Miller, another writer. “It shows us one of those important moments when humanity realized just how dangerous that galaxy was. Yes, there’s wonderful opportunity out there, but there are also perils; as our story opens, we’re in the middle of the First Contact War with the alien turians. We don’t know much about the enemy, and they don’t know much about us — and, as we’ll find out, there’s a lot more at risk than losing a starship or a colony.”

“How does someone come to have this much power and view this world the way he does? And really there’s no way to explore that in the game otherwise he wouldn’t be illusive! So the opportunity to explore him [made sense to us].”

Sounds like an exciting premise!