After watching a twenty-minute demo for BioWare’s Mass Effect 2, I left the poorly ventilated booth with a better understanding of that whole “Shepard is dead” tease. Mass Effect 2’s entire story-arc encompasses a suicide mission -- one that no one, perhaps even Shepard himself, expects Shepard to survive. That message from the teaser is one you’ll probably hear quite often. The shape-shifting protagonist isn’t supposed to live through the mission. Literally.
I saw two things at the Mass Effect 2 demo: combat and dialogue. Both elements, completely essential to the Mass Effect experience, have been tweaked and refined.
The combat (radial menu confirmed) is more precise. If you aim and fire at an enemy, you won’t arbitrarily miss. Nice touch. Hit detection seems to be the new focus. Like in Fallout 3, you’ll be able to blow off limbs and specifically target areas of baddies. I watched the demonstrator take out a few legs from some robotic enemies, but was promised arms could fall off as well.
The dialogue is much more robust. Some conversations happen in real time, forcing you to make snappy decisions (think Alpha Protocol). But the truly interesting addition is the interrupt option. During some conversations, you’ll get he opportunity to pull the trigger to stop dialogue in its tracks and interject -- sometimes forcefully. I watched a pissed off Shepard boot a mercenary guard through a window after not getting the response he wanted.
By the way, Mass Effect 2 looks absolutely gorgeous. I didn’t notice any texture pop in -- Mass Effect 2 can stand up to the likes of God of War III and Modern Warfare 2. In other words, it certainly won’t disappoint.
My time with the demo was too short and something ridiculous was revealed to me that I won’t talk about for the sake of your enjoyment of the game’s story. But I’ll leave it at this: your decisions have some real weight that will impact Mass Effect 2’s conclusion and transfer to Mass Effect 3. Make friends and keep them close.
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Contest:
11:57 AM on 06.03.2009
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That interruption feature was planned for the first one. Very happy to see that make it into this one!
I see that it's alot smoother and that's a plus. It's a good thing I kept my save.
Hey BioWare, can I has demo plz?
I hope Bioware works on Jade Empire 2 now :P.
Just like assasins creed, I've heard people absolutely trash this game because of its repetitiveness in areas. In both the story really pulled me through, but personally I believe that Assassins Creed's repetition was not that; it was more like building upon core concepts, and getting more challenging. Is it safe to say Ass. Creed is not unlike some better retro games in that aspect? I digress.
Mass Effect 2 will definitely be one of those rare yearly preorders I make.
Friendly AI
Mako Controls (as fun as having drive and reverse randomly switch is)
Mission/planet variety
Fix that and ill be happy, its cool thats its refineing its strengths but I hope Bioware doesnt forget the fist games short comings as well
What's the issue with the elevators btw? Didn't anyone else just take the 10 second walk to the teleporter and just teleported to the different area? That took like half the time the elevator took... I know they sucked but you could work around them if you wanted to.
Unlike the inventory being full with shitty weapons, and having to discard all new shiny weapons you just picked up.
Not at all, I loved it, faults and all and to be honest I didn't even notice that much of them on my first play through.
Anyways I can't wait for this but if you did really really hate the first one I have no clue why you care what this will be like
I'm interested in almost every big time title, that's just what I'm like.
And this sounds awesome, especially the interrupting part, like a tell your own story book :D
AWESOME!!