First, we'd like to thank you, Mr. Chadwick, for taking the time to participate in this interview. We know with The Matrix Online launching soon you must be very busy behind the scenes.

MxOS: How did you get started in the comic book industry? Was it a goal or dream growing up? Did you go to school with the intention of becoming a comic book writer/artist?

PC: The comics business was in deep trouble in the mid-seventies, so although I was quite a fan, I instead set my sights on “mainstream” illustration during art school. But things turned around in the early eighties. My roommate Ron Harris sold a series to Epic, Crash Ryan. It seemed possible to revive my youthful dream. I started working on Concrete, and after some dues-paying work (Salimba, Dazzler) sold it to Dark Horse in 1986.

MxOS: How did your participation with The Matrix Comics come about?

PC: I’d done some comics for the Matrix website, run by Spencer Lamm for the Wachowskis. They liked them, and thought I might be able to bring some of my feeling for the Matrix universe to The Matrix Online MMO game.

MxOS: Obviously, you have a major part in the creation and on-going story of The Matrix Online. You are taking the Wachowski Brothers’ story, which they are notoriously very parental about, and continuing it on. Tell us a little about the relationship you have with the Wachowskis and how it lead to them entrusting you with this project and their story.

PC: It started with a long discussion. They had a theme for the first year – “peace, and the things people do to wreck it,” some specific ideas for tone, gameplay and characters. One particularly surreal new character stands out – someone concerned with disposal. But they were also ready to release a little control. It’s a Massively Multiplayer game, after all. Chaos, or at least emergent behavior of a system, is the order of the day.

I was struck with their notion that the Exiles, like the Oracle and the Merovingian, were like Greek Gods. They are prone to human passions, powerful, but not strictly regimented into a Christian duality of good and evil. Still, big trouble for humans caught in their machinations.

MxOS: How much will the Wachowski Brothers be involved with the story on a month-to-month basis? Will the story mainly be written by you, the Wachowskis, or a writing team we have yet to hear much about?

PC: They let me go, after their initial direction, but they have either approved (or occasionally nixed) every line I’ve written.

They will also, incidentally, be playing the game. You may meet them during your gameplay, though they’ll be incognito, of course. Beware imposters.

I’m writing the “macro-story,” if you will, but there’s a team writing the missions, which are small stories in themselves. I just give the thrust for the week (Zion assigns missions trying to identify who is sabotaging hardlines; incidentally, players come across “rot” of the Matrix code, the world fraying). They introduce obstacles, characters and incidents to make it interesting.

Lead designer Toby Ragaini does this with more recent team members Brad Lansford and Ben Chamberlin. This writing involves a system of branching paths of choices and dialogue that’s mysterious alchemy to me. Mike Pondsmith wrote a great deal of missions, too, in earlier development.

MxOS: So far, our readers have seen an enormous amount of content based around the combat system, the stylish clothes and the amazing graphics in the game. Yet, according to a recent MxO Stratics poll, the continuing storyline is by far the most important aspect to potential players. Is it frustrating or fun for the plot and story to be so much of a mystery thus far? When the game launches, will players been as blown away by the story as the graphics?

PC: Well, they’ll certainly be shocked by the “initiating incident” the Wachowskis instructed me to write. I’d never have had the nerve to do such a thing on my own.

What they’ll be, I hope, is hooked. As the trilogy gradually explained the world and the characters, a little of the mystery and paranoia of the first film faded. We have the opportunity to revive it, since we’re introducing new characters in a time of uncertainty.

As players solve one mystery, two more will be developing. There are betrayals and reversals in store. Characters lie. Enemies become allies.

And our goal is to make everything feel significant: observed damage to the environment, rumors, hidden messages in the “Matrix channel” of the chat field in the corner of the screen; foreshadowing in the city newspaper, The Sentinel, available in vending machines around the city; even the advertising signs and graphitti and pamphlets on the street.

Story will be unfolding in many ways, everywhere, not just the short films (“cinematics”) posted every couple of weeks.

MxOS: We have seen many Exiles introduced through the Tyndall's City Guides. Can we expect these Exiles to be participating in a big way in the overall story, or are they going to be more locally important to their neighborhoods?

PC: The Exiles who reliably hang out in neighborhoods won’t, for the first months anyway, be big players in the global story. They’ll be very plugged in to the rumor mill, though, and worth cultivating for that purpose.

We decided to make “celebrity” characters – Redpills from the films, and major Exiles, rather hard to meet. You must be a dedicated player to earn your way to intersect with them and the major developments of the story. But it’s possible.

MxOS: Brian "Ashes" Sloan, in a recent Guest Editorial for our site, remarked that for this game to be successful "MxO has to feed my need for my character to be more than just a bit of pixels in a game I play". What is being done in terms of the story to make people really care about their character? What level of importance can players look forward to in the overall plot of The Matrix franchise?

PC: The old saw that one’s most valuable possession is their reputation holds true here. A MMORPG is a subculture where players get reputations and status. We intend to reinforce that however we can.

Creating a record of gameplay is of great importance. We’ll have some big problems that require group effort to solve. We have the software to keep track of everybody who plays a part, and will create cultural artifacts giving people their due.

We fully intend to write about players in The Sentinel. And push gossip about players. And weave their names into the story wherever we can.

Can one player wrenchingly change the course of the story? Not exactly. We do have a plan. But they can be present at the pivotal events, and be the character that makes them happen.

By analogy, there’s no suspense about whether there will be a valedictorian at graduation, but who it will be is an interesting question.

MxOS: Given your background in writing and comics, and the recent publication of novels based on the Star Wars: Galaxies game, is there a possibility of seeing comic books or other outside media based around The Matrix Online story or era, written by yourself or others?

PC: The Wachowskis have already published the first collection of Matrix Comics, under their Burly Man imprint. A second one’s coming. They’re also bringing out some amazing non-Matrix comics drawn by Geof Darrow and Steve Skroce (Shaolin Cowboy and Doc Frankenstein). These writer-directors, you know, they all want to do comics, really.

Personally, I feel I have all I can handle, laying track in front of this onrushing MxO express train.

Lucasfilm has a full-time person overseeing publishing licensing; they milk the cow with many busy hands (I’ve done Star Wars comics myself). The Wachowskis get pretty involved, shooting all that footage for Enter the Matrix themselves, for example.

But I’m just speculating. I don’t really know what they have up their sleeves.

MxOS: Is there going to be an effort to include characters, locations, or story elements from Animatrix or The Matrix Comics in the storyline of The Matrix Online?

PC: I’m trying to work in backstory about the human-01 war depicted in The Second Renaissance, and The Kid, the skateboarder who self-transmigrated in Kid’s Story (and took over fallen Mifune’s APU in Matrix Revolutions) plays a large role in the latter half of the first year.

MxOS: Thanks very much, Paul!

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