Mass Effect 2 - A Few Articles

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Shir'le E. Illios
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Mass Effect 2 - A Few Articles

Post by Shir'le E. Illios »

Kind of a tricky thing with posting several links together in one post is that it can be tricky to make up descriptive topic titles. Like in this case we have a preview, a lengthy interview, a conference call description and a bit of news, none of which seems to be related directly beyond being about Mass Effect 2. But then the content is more important than the title anyway, so let’s not dwell on it.

First up is 1UP (that almost sounded like an echo) with a [url=http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3177113:3ona863u]hands-on preview[/url:3ona863u]. It details some gameplay related to picking up the squadmate Samara, and as such contains a few spoilers. Here’s an excerpt:

[quote:3ona863u]One time, I asked Mass Effect 2 project director Casey Hudson if, when we play Mass Effect 3, Commander Shepard will be powerful enough to crack a planet in half. Hudson chuckled at the suggestion before giving an elusive answer about the kinds of epic motions that will come in the third installment. Well, after playing a quick hands-on demo of ME2, it seems like we're on the right track in terms of crazy big battles/moments in Mass Effect; in this demo, I try to take on, and lose several times, against a freakin' gunship.[/quote:3ona863u]
VideoGamer, on the other hand, has a [url=http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/mass_ ... l:3ona863u]very lengthy interview[/url:3ona863u] with project director Casey Hudson (spanning eight pages). There’s a lot of details in there; I particularly like the improvements to the Normandy he’s talking about on page six. Here’s an excerpt from earlier in the interview:

[quote:3ona863u][b:3ona863u]VideoGamer.com: When you started to think about Mass Effect 2, what were the main goals you wanted to achieve?[/b:3ona863u]

[b:3ona863u]Casey Hudson:[/b:3ona863u] We started with two objectives. One of them was all of the things we wanted to do as developers of the first game. We knew that we wanted to take the story somewhere for part two and three of the trilogy. Mass Effect is a trilogy and really the idea there is that we, in creating the new science fiction IP, we wanted to be able to set our goals as high as we possibly could. That was the idea that you would be able to create a character as a player for the first game, and you would be able to play that same character throughout three huge science fiction stories, of the biggest possible scale and the deepest emotional intensity. That was really our goal - telling the story on the biggest canvas possible.

We knew what we wanted to do in terms of where the story would go. We think of the trilogy as one story but we also think of each instalment of it as needing to stand alone as its own story. So, with Mass Effect 1, you play that story, you get to the end and then you feel a satisfying ending. Likewise with Mass Effect 2, you don't have to have played the first one, but we know how it all fits together as a trilogy. We know how the story leads from the first one into the second one, and then where it will go in the future.[/quote:3ona863u]
Over at GameShark is an [url=http://www.gameshark.com/features/646/M ... m:3ona863u]article detailing a conference call[/url:3ona863u]. In this apparently a bunch of journalists listened in on one person asking BioWare co-founder Dr. Ray Muzyka a number of questions about the game. Here’s a brief excerpt:

[quote:3ona863u]So, on Tuesday, December 1, I dialed in and listened to a rather cryptic presentation, slathered in talking points and power words like “intensity” and “integration.” But beneath all of the fluff, Muzyka described how Mass Effect has taken two very popular genres, the shooter and the RPG, and fused them together, creating an experience like none other.[/quote:3ona863u]
A bit of news that has been released today, and available on several sites such as [url=http://kotaku.com/5418534/mass-effect-2 ... 3:3ona863u]Kotaku[/url:3ona863u] is that Mass Effect 2 will come on two DVDs. For PC gamers this shouldn’t make a difference (particularly not for those like myself opting for digital download), but for Xbox360 gamers it means that they’ll have to swap once during their gameplay. As Kotaku puts it:

[quote:3ona863u]The sheer number of foxy blue alien women in Mass Effect 2 has pushed the limits of the DVD format's storage capabilities. As a result, BioWare is spreading the Xbox 360 and PC game across two discs.

While that won't mean that much to owners of the PC version—it's a two-disc install—poor Xbox 360 owners will suffer the galactic inconvenience of a disc swap at some point. Chris Priestly, community coordinator of BioWare, says it's not so bad.

"Even though there is a disc swap, it occurs at a carefully planned place in the game (that does not interfere with gameplay) and is done once," Priestly wrote on the Mass Effect 2 forums. "You do not swap back and forth. 1 swap and then done."

As for that third disc mentioned in the headline of this post? That's only included in the Collector's Edition version of Mass Effect 2, offering "making of" content on a dedicated DVD. Whew![/quote:3ona863u]
Finally VideoGamesDaily is [url=http://videogamesdaily.com/news/200912/ ... /:3ona863u]gearing up to publish an interview[/url:3ona863u] with ME2 producer Adrien Cho, and they’ve posted a little snippet so far. Because it’s already an excerpt I won’t post an excerpt, but he talks about how he feels that games/developers are too easy sometimes and that gamers want more of a challenge. Of course with that he completely ignores all those gamers who just want to be entertained (and most games that try to be challenging tend to just be frustrating), but I digress.


[[url=http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3177113:3ona863u]link[/url:3ona863u]] to hands on preview at 1UP.
[[url=http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/mass_ ... l:3ona863u]link[/url:3ona863u]] to interview with Casey Hudson at VideoGamer.
[[url=http://www.gameshark.com/features/646/M ... m:3ona863u]link[/url:3ona863u]] to conference call report at GameShark.
[[url=http://kotaku.com/5418534/mass-effect-2 ... 3:3ona863u]link[/url:3ona863u]] to 2 DVD news at Kotaku.
[[url=http://videogamesdaily.com/news/200912/ ... /:3ona863u]link[/url:3ona863u]] to interview teaser at VideoGamesDaily.


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Shir'le
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-= Shir'le E. Illios =-
Chosen of Eilistraee
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