Mass Effect 2

[Altimus]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Love it. Going CE no doubt.

[Jasong7777]

Re: Mass Effect 2

That cover is nice.

[thaima1shu]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Yeah I'm incredibly happy that the cover looks so nice. The standard edition was vomit inducing. I might get both the 360 and PC version just because it's so damn nice

[thaima1shu]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Pre-order is up on Amazon, by the way.

[thaima1shu]

Re: Mass Effect 2

From a BioWare Marketing Manager over at the ME Forums:

Hi guys,

Finally I can talk about this:

The Documentary on the DVD should be around 30-45 mins long and was entirely filmed at the studio. Lots of great interviews with people you don't often hear from and some great insights etc.

The armor and weapon will not be released as separate DLC. It's very unique to this edition.

The comic and art book are "DVD case sized" yes.

The overall pack should be similar to the ME1 CE, although the actual interior is going to be more upscale. I havent been able to release pictures yet of the interior components but they are going to be really, really nice looking and polished. It's all themed around Cerberus and the death of Shepard. Thus the cover. Hope you like the cover I'm really happy about it

If you pre-order this (and you should, I believe they will sell out pre-launch) you will get inferno or terminus gear yes.

Premium themes etc are still a possibilty - the Bonus DVD contents, other than the Documentary, are still in development.

The comic is issue 1 but will have it's own special cover art. For some reason I wasnt allowed to advertise that fact.

The art book can't be full sized and 120 pages for cost reasons. But there will likely be a large-format art book available via...other means.

I can't advertise one of the items you will get in the box for a variety of reasons I can't share just yet It's tricky. There's lots of legal rules we need to follow for certain kinds of content. The lawyers and accountants take the fun out of marketing sometimes. Ok ....frequently.

By the way, I can't give you numbers but I think the actual order quantity of CE's (the amount available for retailers) is on the low side. Basically stores are a bit gun-shy right now due to the economy, so they are being conservative in the quantities they order for special editions etc. So I will repeat this advice: IF you want this edition, you really, really should pre-order it asap.

[jmood88]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Man I don't know where I should preorder it from. I want the Terminus armor but if the collector's edition armor is better then it won't matter.

[thaima1shu]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Man I don't know where I should preorder it from. I want the Terminus armor but if the collector's edition armor is better then it won't matter.

I decided to go with Amazon. The Terminus armor looks cool, but the Inferno armor is just as good. Plus I usually order from Amazon with Prime anyways, so it's all good.

[Flawless]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2: The Return of Garrus

What happened to the old crew? Not to worry. They're all coming back in some form -- assuming you managed to keep them alive in Mass Effect -- to round out a complete cast of 10 total supporting characters. Recently, I got the chance to see this for myself in a new demo that showed off the triumphant return of the turian we know as Garrus.

It also looks fantastic. The visual effects have really been ramped up for the sequel. There's not just more on the screen -- it's flashier and faster. The game runs without a hitch and without any of that nasty texture pop-in that plagued the last game, even after a quick load into a new area.

The second thing I learned is that the battle system feels even more refined than it did when I last played Mass Effect 2 at E3 over the summer. Yes, there's an auto-regeneration system in place now, but that doesn't make it a cake walk. Ammunition levels must be maintained through picking up drops from downed enemies. Medi-gel is still needed, too, as you can't cast the Unity revive power without it. Moving in and out of cover, lining up head-shots, activating powers and commanding the squad mates all feels like second nature. There's a lot less fumbling around now. It's simply better.

That last line pretty much describes all of Mass Effect 2 for me so far. Now that the team has tackled the technical issues, it's just better all around. The only lingering question in my mind is how well BioWare is going to weave the choices you make in the first game into this sequel. There's the potential for a truly special and personal story...or a bit of a letdown. Either way, it's hard not to get excited about late January 2010 when we finally get to continue Shepard's story.

Check back with IGN tomorrow for an exclusive interview with Mass Effect 2's Project Director, Casey Hudson, as well as more videos and some cool news.

New Srceens

[Flawless]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2: Details, Details, Details

IGN: I know there are a lot of people that are upset with certain aspects of their character from Mass Effect 1, maybe how their character looks or they don't want to play as a Renegade anymore. Are you locked into those choices?

Casey Hudson: The choices you made in terms of the story are all locked in. But as a result of the way the game opens, you do have an opportunity to adjust the way you look from the first game. Overall, the systems have all been improved so much that things don't necessarily map over one-to-one, in terms of your levels and actual abilities and Paragon and Renegade and things like that.

What we do instead is we look at what you developed in the first game, and we want to make sure that there is something that mirrors that when you bring in your character. So if you have a level 40, 50, or 60 character you get different kinds of starting bonuses, so you feel like you start off with a character with more experience depending on how experienced you were in the first one. You can immediately start with a kind of a skill advantage.

Similarly with Paragon and Renegade, depending upon how strong you were biased in the first game, you start off with an advantage along that axis. But let's say you were fully Renegade in the first game and you wanted try a different play through with that particular character and you want to try Paragon. So you start off with a Renegade bias, but that doesn't actually stop you from swinging it to the other end of the spectrum.

IGN: Have there been any changes to the Paragon and Renegade system in addition to the interactive cutscenes?

Casey Hudson: I guess there is a little bit. Probably the main difference is that in the first game you could spend points into Charm and Intimidate. They basically did the same thing but they were different skills. And you could make a mistake by trying to have both of them and then you end up splitting your ability to persuade people across two powers, when really you should pick one…In Mass Effect 2 you have a Persuasion ability -- the more points you put into it the better your ability to persuade people. But then the bias as to whether it ends up being really strong Paragon or Renegade is determined by your Paragon/Renegade status.

In terms of the choices you have, you can start really building up your bias towards one or the other (Paragon or Renegade) based on the way you play. Then the fact that we have interrupts [during cutscenes] which are pretty strong hits on Paragon or Renegade status. That's one example of how it has been extended. The other is that we're always in the pursuit of agonizing choices. Not good or evil for the sake of saying, "This is my good play through or this is my evil play through." But rather, every instance you come across you really have to think about the sacrifice that is being made on one side or the other.

Subject Zero and Grunt are the ones that people have thought are very two-dimensional. But, they're actually the favorite characters so far, them and a character that is going to be discussed pretty soon. And it's because you learn something like Grunt is this young, kind of crazy almost child-like huge tank guy. But then when you learn what's behind them, then there's so much more of interest. Subject Zero is this tough girl which seems cliché, but when she opens up a little bit of vulnerability it just pulls on your heartstrings and you just go, "Oh she seems so much more real than I expected her to be." And then it totally changes everything because you start to think that you know people like that, you know how she feels. And now you're interacting with these characters as real people.

That's the difference. I think people are really attached to characters like Wrex from the first game because of those things. But once you start unlocking those things about these new characters, they all have their own back story and actually that's one of the biggest part of Mass Effect 2 in terms of characters. Since loyalty figures into the story so much, the fact that you have to learn about them and then do something to earn their loyalty -- it's in those missions that you get to learn about who they really are and you get to bond with these characters even more than those in the first game.

That's what we've changed for Mass Effect 2. All of the different things that we want to extend are actually extendable. So we can do little things, medium size things, a mission, an armor, a gun, all of the way up to a big expansion. I guess the other thing is that we've actually set aside people to work on these things. That was another challenge we had. You know we've been trying to develop two huge games here at once, so there just weren't the people to work on these things. But in the time between Mass Effect 1 and 2 we've actually built up a team that is going to be able to provide ongoing content. So we'll have the people to do it.

I guess the last thing is just a lot of what we've done with Mass Effect 2 is to develop the technology that makes everything happen. So the pipeline we have for building content is just a lot easier. And then when you combine that with the fact that it supports different sizes of things and we have people to work on it, those are some really big differences for why we'll be able to support it much better this time.

IGN: Why a late January release?

Casey Hudson: That was the initial date we chose mainly based on the fact that we were targeting about a two year project, which would put us at about where we were last time for a end of the year/beginning of the year holiday timeline. It seemed right in terms of where different games were lining up and the time we wanted to take. It just seemed like the best opportunity to make sure the game was as good as it could be and also the best opportunity to be successful.

IGN: A lot of PS3 owners are still hopeful that someday they'll get to play Mass Effect without buying a 360. Is that ever going to happen or is it still just Xbox 360 and PC?

Casey Hudson: Yeah, it's just 360 and PC.

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[Wet Bandit]

Re: Mass Effect 2

I decided to go with Amazon. The Terminus armor looks cool, but the Inferno armor is just as good. Plus I usually order from Amazon with Prime anyways, so it's all good.

I'm going with GameStop, because that Blackstorm weapon looks insane and my soldier sorely needs something like that.

[goh]

Re: Mass Effect 2

I have nowhere to pre-order from but want that just for the cover. Hopefully you'll actually be able to equip the stuff right away. Need 38 strength rating in Dragon Age for the Blood Armor. Speaking of such I hope the new character creator in this can produce similar results as the one in that. I was never a big fan of either character I made in ME,especially the hair but the one in DA is near perfect. (No body adjustments I guess and I hadn't noticed the nose was a bit big from the side)

[jmood88]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2: Details, Details, Details











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"We do not experience fear but we know how it affects you"

I would be ****ing terrified as soon as he said that.

[Flawless]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2 Omega' Gameplay

We get the feeling someone at BioWare has proclaimed this "Epic Week," what with the release of its fantasy RPG stunner Dragon Age: Origins and now an epic new video from its next big game, Mass Effect 2. This isn't a trailer or developer diary -- you're in for nine minutes of unedited, uninterrupted gameplay footage from the most recent build of ME2. In fact, it's the same mission -- set inside Omega's "Inferno" nightclub -- that we ourselves got to play earlier this week. (And yes, we can confirm it looks that good.)

You'll get a sense of the sequel's leap in environmental detail, character modeling and dialog scene camerawork in this clip, along with loads of intense combat. There's even an appearance by returning character (and total badass) Garrus from the first Mass Effect, plus a joke that manages to poke fun at rumors of Commander Shepard's death and the fact players can make him/her look like anyone they choose. Again -- nine minutes.

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...

Eurogamer Preview

Dr Ray's in town to suffer from jetlag and drink endless plastic tumblers of Coke, while telling us a bit more about the game he's happy to suggest is "perhaps the best title BioWare has ever made". Here's what he has to tell us in particular: The first Mass Effect was just the beginning, an introduction to BioWare's massive universe, which barely had time to introduce the main players and set out the battle lines for what was to come before you were fighting your way through that last boss encounter and sleeping with charming blue ladies.

Mass Effect 2 is where things get a little more serious, and a lot more moody. Humans are disappearing in droves throughout the galaxy, and it's up to Shepard to find out why, by pulling together a team of suicidal glory-hunters and heading off on his most dangerous mission yet.

It's also a chance to foreground the improvements in character modelling, as a stubbly Shepard keels over at the bar and gets a very convincing case of the sweats. The results are pretty astonishing actually, with brilliant texturing and only the slightly awkward mouths continuing to give the game away: most importantly, the creepy dead eyes of the original Mass Effect are long gone, and Shepard looks canny, devious, hunted, and rather ill, given the circumstances.

The second section is there to prove that BioWare is taking guns seriously this time around - and it is, by the looks of it. It's hard to point out a single specific improvement given the speed with which events unfold, but the whole business of blowing people away simply seems a lot more refined, and a lot more immediate. Shepard and his squad-mates move about with more elegance, the targeting is a lot twitchier, and snapping in and out of cover - and subsequently vaulting over it - now seems entirely natural.

"We literally did a post-mortem of Mass Effect 1, and reduced it down to a category of things the fans really wanted us to look at," says Dr Ray. "One of the big items for us was the shooter experience: we really wanted to improve the combat intensity. So, moment-to-moment, when you play it, you can see it's far more intense in terms at how fast things are coming at you, the controls are now really precise, and the whole thing's locked and loaded at 30fps. We took a long look at squad AI, and how the Biotics and weapons work together for them, and we've really stepped up the range of enemies. The shooter experience is now really good, we think."

Dr Ray refuses to be drawn on details of the Cerberus Network - although there it was on the screen when we logged into the demo - which allegedly handles the game's DLC, but he does promise that BioWare is taking post-release support far more seriously this time around, with regular and sustained updates providing players with a reason to come back to the Mass Effect universe for months ahead. He also suggests that the team is paying a lot more attention to the extra-curricular planetary exploration of the game, bolstering side-quests, and making the worlds themselves more interesting and varied.

All of which suggests that Mass Effect 2 is shaping up to be a real treat for those people who are always complaining that no good games ever get released on 29th January. The first Mass Effect was a surprisingly good match for the makers of Baldur's Gate: it was seeped in rich alien lore, riddled with interesting species and ideas, and, if truth be told, the developer's slight tendency towards wooden dialogue only enhanced the Kubrickian chic of the whole thing. With fresh worlds to explore, new nebulae to criss-cross, and some really ghastly bugs to splat, next year can't come around quickly enough, frankly.

[jmood88]

Re: Mass Effect 2

I really like how they don't have people just staring at each other while they talk anymore. It's like watching real people have a conversation.

Man the graphics are ridiculous. This is easily one of the best looking games this generation.

[Cyros]

Re: Mass Effect 2

"Organics do not choose to fear us. It is a function of their hardware."