Mass Effect 2

[jmood88]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Good thing I still have my save file...Oh wait, I don't.

Why not?

[Altimus]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Why not?

Exactly.

Since I'm playing on a new account I'm going to replay it for the save.

Wonder how many people will be carrying Ashley over Kaidan in their game save? lol

[jmood88]

Re: Mass Effect 2

I hated Kaidan so each time I went through he was the one who died.

[luv_mist]

Re: Mass Effect 2

DARN IT!! I freaking lost my saves because I bought the new 360 and freaked up everything. I guess I have to play through it all over again. Wasn't a bad play but I want to get to some of these other games I still haven't cracked open. Anyone else feeling their blood rushing when they think about the possibilities of this game still? Oh, they are really hyping up the game, but it sure did live up to the original hype.......

[Flawless]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Another Interview

Ve3tro & TAG: So what were some of those things?

Casey Hudson: What we did is, when we looked at the feedback, there were… basically in every aspect of the game, we wanted to make improvements, even just for ourselves, but also looking at the way people played it. One of the big ones was space exploration. We knew that people really loved the idea that even in the context of an intimate, very emotionally engaging story, that you’d still be able to go off and explore the galaxy and find interesting things, and people liked that aspect but they wanted more richness and more variety. So that’s an example where we’ve taken that whole portion of gameplay and added a level of interactivity to how you take your ship out and find a new star system. You go to a planet and figure out where’s a good place to land there, what’s going to be interesting to do.

And then, when you’re there on foot, much more interesting missions and really cool things that you find…. things always being different as you go from one place to another, and all of that stuff in the context of something that’s extraneous to the main story but the other thing we wanted to do with the subplots and what not is to actually tie them in. Whereas in Mass Effect 1, you go off and it’s a … it’s a really cool little side plot maybe, but then it terminates. In Mass Effect 2, we want to really bring these things back to the core thrust of what the story’s about.

Ve3tro & TAG: One question about the dialog tree. In the early E3 demos we saw before (Mass Effect 1’s) release, there were options where if you chose selections prior to a person completing a conversation, it would affect their interaction with you. That didn’t quite make it into the final build. Are we going to see that this time?

Casey Hudson: Sorry, which aspect of the conversation?

Ve3tro and TAG: As far as stopping the conversation midway, by making a selection, would affect (the NPC’s) decisions and replies?

Casey Hudson: Oh, yeah yeah yeah. It’s funny, because when you look at Mass Effect 1 and the course of developing it, we literally had to go from not even knowing what the Xbox 360 was going to be in terms of hardware and not even being able to see what we could do with this technology, to something that’s there and you can say “Wow.”. Specifically, with the interrupt stuff, we would have liked to have done better, and in between that is the fact that we developed a new dialog system. It was something that required a lot of faith for our writers to believe that you could actually have something that has digital actors that are compelling enough that they can give you a look, and that’s the line, and you go “Oh, I’ve hurt her feelings with what I said”, You know, moments like that.

They had to go on faith that we could even do that. But one of the things that we did learn obviously is that we weren’t able to get the interrupt aspect of simulating a conversation to the level that we wanted to. That’s one of the things we’ve improved for Mass Effect 2. We’ll be showing that at E3, like how really high impact those are now, because it’s an actual system, we actually built that in there. Just as a player, you’re starting to think “Well, I’ve had enough of this guy”, that’s where you can actually say as a character in the game “All right, grab control of this situation” and then you do something physical or something sudden and visceral. And then the conversation takes a completely different turn.

Ve3tro and TAG: Kind of going back to the technical aspects for a second: On my own personal level, playing Mass Effect 1, it originally came out and I stopped after a few weeks because of the texture pop in and also the serious load times in the elevators. It really took me out of the experience. So what are you going to do for Mass Effect 2 to improve that?

Casey Hudson: Well, I think that both of those things are examples of things that we listed in the category of “things that have to be fixed outright”. Basically, those are not issues in Mass Effect 2. I think specifically, in terms of the transitions and what not, that’s actually become of the really cool parts of Mass Effect 2. When we do have to do a transition… we have a challenge I guess, first of all, that you don’t see in a lot of games because with most games, you know that the player is going to be moving a certain way to a level, and through the levels in a certain way. And of course, in Mass Effect 1 and 2, you can go halfway, turn around, go back, jump into your ship, you’re across the galaxy, and it’s completely non-linear. So because of that, this is a unique challenge, as far as how we get from one place to another. Part of what we didn’t do as well as we wanted was to actually show you what was happening so that you know what’s going on in the world.

So in the Citadel for example, people talked about long elevators, but the problem was that it really shouldn’t have been an elevator, because it’s like going from one end of Manhattan to the other. Lots of stuff happens. Now we’ll be able to show you things like “Here’s the amazing place that you’re in, here’s how you’re moving through it”, and at the same time, the loads are shorter, but they’re more interesting and entertaining, and they’re actually a part of the narrative. So now, it actually becomes a cool thing to look forward to as part of getting to the next thing. That’s just an example of something that… we hear the feedback like that, we absolutely will have to fix it.

Ve3tro and TAG: That brings me to a follow up. Speaking of level design… exploration in the planets.. because I did go back and I have finished Mass Effect and it’s a great game… but when you’re exploring out there in the vast galaxy, certain planets… they tend to start looking like the same planet over and over. Is that variety going to be mixed up?

Casey Hudson: Yeah, absolutely. So there’s a new level of interactivity for how you get there, and how you actually explore space, but then, once you’re there, we really have a complet ely different approach to how we create. Because we still want it to be light content. We put a tremendous amount of work into a really polished main storyline, but we want this stuff to be light content, but also equally polished and really rich and varied. We have a very different approach where basically, when you go off into these things that you’re exploring at the edge of the galaxy, there has to be some really exciting hook that’s different about that area than anything else you’ve seen. I guess one way to say that is in Mass Effect 1, after seeing one (planet), and then seeing the next one, you say “Oh, there’s a similarity here. I wonder if they’re going to start looking the same.” Whereas in Mass Effect 2, you see one and you go “Wow, that was cool!” and then it’s completely different in the next thing that you see, and you start saying “Wow, I wonder how different the next one is going to be”, and you start looking forward. It’s kind of the opposite effect.

[thaima1shu]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Hearing about:

- Ability to interrupt conversations
- How they're supposedly varying the side quest planets
- The darker aspect of the game
- The continuity carrying over from ME1 game saves

gets me so ridiculously excited for this game. I don't know how I'm going to handle the wait for this ...

[trobinson97]

Re: Mass Effect 2

I hated Kaidan so each time I went through he was the one who died.

Same, Kaiden was the sacrificial lamb in every playthrough.

[Candyman5]

Re: Mass Effect 2

The only downside about the Mass Effect continueing games is that there are so many factors that go into the ending of 1. I love ME1 but I dont see myself going through different times for different endings. Kind of sucks.

[goh]

Re: Mass Effect 2

It's not just the overall ending it's worth going through multiple times for. It's all the little stories you change along the way too.

[Pappy Knuckles]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Gamefly is shipping Mass Effect and Halo 3 to me. I've never played either, but I don't really know anything about Mass Effect. Hopefully it's cool.

[jfsolo]

Re: Mass Effect 2

As I've said before, this is Bioware's first full-fledged sequel in 10 years. Finally being able to make another game where most of the core mechanics are already in place should enable them to really go all out with the main story, side quests, and character development.

[Altimus]

Re: Mass Effect 2

I can see myself playing this game a ridiculous number of times.

[CaptainZombie]

Re: Mass Effect 2

I am working through the first game and the story so far has been great. I can only imagine how much better it gets.

[jmood88]

Re: Mass Effect 2

As I've said before, this is Bioware's first full-fledged sequel in 10 years. Finally being able to make another game where most of the core mechanics are already in place should enable them to really go all out with the main story, side quests, and character development.

Yeah this game is going to be ridiculous just because for once they're sticking to the game instead of making one and moving to the next.

[Flawless]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Gamespot video interview

• Can now send squad members to specific points.
• Same kind of power system, but much more realtime. Can map powers better. Even controlling the special abilities of the squad, very rarely do you ever have to go into the pause screen.
• Similar class system, but character progression is handled differently. Something more interesting than just experience points. Building in something that's more mission-based in terms of how you progress your character.
• Trashed the inventory from the first game and started fresh.
• Much more interesting options in the armor you can wear and the way you can personalize it. Weapon system expanded greatly too.
• Spring 2010