Mass Effect 2

[Altimus]

Re: Mass Effect 2

This is going to be a long year of waiting.

I can't wait for E3 already.

[jmood88]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Hopefully they release more than that fight club DLC so that the wait will be easier.

[jfsolo]

Re: Mass Effect 2

This is Bioware's first sequel since Baldur's Gate II. With BG II they didn't have to spent a large portion of their development time laying the foundation for the game, so they could focus mostly on creating content. The result is probably the greatest RPG ever when it comes to the total package-Story, characters, combat, and gameplay hours.

So with this being the same sort of scenario with the the foundation already being in place, I expect ME 2 to absolutely blow ME 1 away in every category, with the exception of possibly game length.

[thaima1shu]

Re: Mass Effect 2

So with this being the same sort of scenario with the the foundation already being in place, I expect ME 2 to absolutely blow ME 1 away in every category, with the exception of possibly game length.

Agreed. Even with stuff like Killzone 2, Gears of War 2, and all these great games, Mass Effect still stands as my favorite game ever. I can't wait for ME 2 and have extremely high expectations for it. It's going to be a long wait for sure, but hopefully other games will keep my mind off the wait.

[luv_mist]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Success - or failure - depends heavily on the crew you assemble and their loyalty to you and the mission.

That's what I'm talking about right there. I'm eager to see what options we have in the squad formation.

In all honesty, I originally thought that Mass Effect was overrated the first play through. I didn't see the desire or need to really play it again until I got the urge to play the next difficulty. Honestly, that game is amazing. There were minor nuances that irritated the heck out of me, but that game is a keeper for years to come. Very well executed. I can't even imagine how much more ME2 will be in comparison. I'm so looking forward to killing a good week or so with this game. Might be a day one buy for me if the funds are there.......

[DaveDQ]

Re: Mass Effect 2

I read the Prequel, Revelations and loved the story. The first time I put in the game I got the RROD and I have never messed with it since.

I need to play the first before I get any interest started in the next.

[Altimus]

Re: Mass Effect 2

I read the Prequel, Revelations and loved the story. The first time I put in the game I got the RROD and I have never messed with it since.

I need to play the first before I get any interest started in the next.

Yep the books are great and are highly recommend as a read if you like the game.

[jmood88]

Re: Mass Effect 2

I don't know if this was posted or not but gametrailers tv is going to be interviewing Casey Hudson and some other guys from the Mass Effect and Dragon Age teams tonight at 10 on Spike. It's going to be on the gametrailers site after it comes on TV.

[Flawless]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Gametrailers

Until the show airs tonight at 1am EST we won't know the details, but the info is being teased as "shocking details that will be the talk of the internet".

Full interview up later.

BioWare Talks Mass Effect 2

What about the technology behind the Mass Effect franchise? How does that develop and improve with the sequel? "What's interesting about making a game especially like Mass Effect one is just getting the galaxy on one disk is a lot of work. So you've worked on it for over three years and two and three-quarters of those years were just figuring out how to make it all work and then the last quarter is like ok, let's finish it all off. The great thing about a sequel is you start from the point where you know everything works, you know what the good and the bad things were. One of the big objectives we have for Mass 2 is we go through your reviews and everyone else's and…"

"We made a list of the features," picked up Muzyka, "that reviewers and fans and internal people, all whose opinions we respect, thought were really important to make the game better. Then we added a bunch of cool **** on top of that."

"The key thing is," said Zeschuk, "when you're working on a sequel like Mass you start from day one knowing most of the answers. And then you know what your faults were and you can address those specifically. First and foremost are things like performance and textures and everything like that. We maximized that to make sure it's hot. In some ways the problem we've had we haven't had the chance to do a sequel for like seven or eight years, we've always been doing one-offs…We've learned a lot about the technology after the first one and there's already stuff that's like wow."

Unfortunately the two weren't willing to go into any specifics, not that it was really expected at this point, but Muzyka broke down a few basic categories where he asserted changes and improvements were being made for the sequel. "There's a few bigger buckets of things we're working on. One of them is the intensity of the action, amping that up so people will see this as a shooter RPG…It's going to feel like shooter fans are going to have a great experience…Another category we're working on are the moment to moment interactions, kind of grabbing control of them more, and we'll show that later as well." By later, he means later in the year.

"Exploration, we're still trying to tighten up that experience," Muzyka continued. "It's still optional and there's still uncharted world that'll be optional, but we want every single one of them to feel like they're adding something important to the main storyline. So you feel yeah they're optional, but I feel like I really want to do that. So that's a philosophy change too."

Was there ever a definitive word on whether you could use the same character from Mass Effect in the sequel? "We've said two things. Everything we've said in the past about keeping your saves, that's all true. Everything you've seen in the teaser is all true. What does that mean?"

What does that mean?

"We look forward to sharing with you guys soon what that all means."

[burnwood]

Re: Mass Effect 2

I don't know if this was posted or not but gametrailers tv is going to be interviewing Casey Hudson and some other guys from the Mass Effect and Dragon Age teams tonight at 10 on Spike. It's going to be on the gametrailers site after it comes on TV.

Thanks. I finally found it in my DVR schedule. It's 10PM PST/1AM EST.

[jmood88]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Sorry I didn't even noticed that it said 10 pacific.

[Flawless]

Re: Mass Effect 2

Early alpha footage of Mass Effect 2's combat system.

<div style="width:500px; text-align:center"><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="319" src="http://gamevideos.1up.com/swf/gamevideos12.swf?embedded=1&amp;fullscreen=1&amp;a utoplay=0&amp;src=http://gamevideos.1up.com/do/videoListXML%3Fid%3D24194%26adPlay%3Dtrue" align="middle"></embed><a href="http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/24194" target="_blank">Mass Effect 2 'GDC 2009 Combat' gameplay clip</a></div>

Early alpha footage of one of the cut-scenes in Mass Effect 2.

<div style="width:500px; text-align:center"><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="319" src="http://gamevideos.1up.com/swf/gamevideos12.swf?embedded=1&amp;fullscreen=1&amp;a utoplay=0&amp;src=http://gamevideos.1up.com/do/videoListXML%3Fid%3D24193%26adPlay%3Dtrue" align="middle"></embed><a href="http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/24193" target="_blank">Mass Effect 2 'GDC 2009 Cut-Scene' clip</a></div>

[burnwood]

Re: Mass Effect 2

They've got a lot of guts incorporating text-to-speech in cutscenes. It'll be interesting how this plays out.

[jmood88]

Re: Mass Effect 2

That was a placeholder, did you watch the whole video? It was going through the steps that the level went through in development.

[Flawless]

Re: Mass Effect 2

IGN

BioWare knows there were a few technical issues with Mass Effect. Rather than putting the blinders on and forging ahead, the team took a step back and looked at what in the development process caused those problems to exist and then came up with a new process for the sequel. As Corey Andruko, project manager for Mass Effect 2 summed it up at the close of BioWare's talk on its iterative level design process at the Game Developers Conference, "We had a little bit of a hitching on the Citadel…maybe the loading on the elevators was a little long…We definitely feel we would have been able to resolve these problems."

Now you may be wondering what these work-in-progress videos were used to showcase. To get there, we'll have to take a step back to the beginning. Mass Effect was created with a work-flow that began with the writer who would create both the plot and basic 2D level design. From there, production would extend to blocked out levels and then on to full production. At the end, each level would be optimized for performance.

You can probably see where the issues cropped up.

With everyone working in closed vacuums, or silos as BioWare described them, it forced people to focus on disciplines rather than the levels as a whole. This meant that iterations in one "silo" could produce extra work in others. This forced unplanned work to crop up, late reviews of content and sometimes caused content to be cut entirely. And as Everman explained, "...you would have intractable performance issues. It wasn't because we didn't try to fix those framerate drops... the way to do it would have been recreating entire swaths of content." As an example, Everman mentioned that the Caleston level of Mass Effect was originally supposed to be much bigger. Unfortunately, the production process caused level layout and story problems which forced major sections to be cut.

With Mass Effect 2, each level moves through phases of creation. The basic premises the team is working under include having every level always be playable, always built on a foundation and always be at performance. This means technical hitches cannot persist. "When the framerate starts dipping," said Everman, you must "fix them then and there.