More Mass Effect Stuff

Jul 21, 2009 13:38

Maybe some of you will (if you aren't already) get sick of me talking about it all the time. |D

Anyway, I came across an article about it online from the official xbox magazine. This isn't all of the article, but I've quoted some passages from it since I've had some comments.

Article you can read here here

New locations in the Mass Effect universe will grab us every time, but we reserved our most intense curiosity for the prospect of importing a save-game from the first Mass Effect - and our characters, stats, and decisions along with it. After all, no videogame series has ever attempted something like this before, but BioWare seems ready to bear the weight of those expectations.

“We’re able to track virtually every choice through save-games,” explains lead writer Drew Karpyshyn. “But we’ve focused on the decisions that matter most to players and to the story so we can craft a narrative that feels personalized and really resonates with the decisions you made.”

Based on this, the people working on the game must have been working on this years before it was ever mentioned... probably even working on it when they were still developing Knights of the Old Republic. There was about a little more than a year between KOTOR I and KOTOR II, and about a two year gap between Mass Effect 1 and 2. The differences in the series would be that you play different characters from KOTOR I and II, but only the canon events in I are in II. In Mass Effect 2, I hear that it takes about five years after the end of the game, and it would be the exact, if not, close to exact Shepard that you played in the previous Mass Effect. It makes it seem more personal this way, because you developed Shepard that way you wanted to.

“Without being specific, if you chose to make a specific type of character and get good at certain things, then it’ll be acknowledged in Mass Effect 2,” Hudson says cryptically.

Some of this I could understand, I guess. I've made alternate Shepards so that I could win achievements, so each one has a different class. What I'm wondering too, is that when you're creating your character for the first game, you get to choose his background ([1]Both your parents are Marines, and once 18, Shepard enlisted too; [2]You were saved by a marine when you were young, so you enlisted to be like them when you were old enough; [3]You lived a life of petty crime, and to get away from that, you enlisted when you were 18), and then you pick what kind of soldier you are ([1]Your squad was wiped out on Akuze and you were the only one left standing, [2]A war hero, whenever things got tough, you and your squad still kept going ; [3]You do what you can, even use brute force, to get the job done.).

Some of these decisions played into the game; like if you were talking to Ashley, Shepard would said “I was a regular navy brat” if you chose that your parents were marines. You could even get extra missions in your galaxy wandering depending on what type of soldier Shepard is as well.

Since you also pick what class you are (Soldier[excels in combat], Engineer[excels in tech], Adept[excels in biotics], Infiltrator[half-soldier, half-engineer] , Sentinel[half-engineer, half adept], and Vanguard[half-soldier, half-adept]), I hope this means that most of these skills that you have achieved, Shepard will still have.

Essentially, they want to make a game where you can’t just reload one key save and see most of the endings. Instead, Mass Effect 2 becomes a different experience depending on which characters you add to your party and what you do with them. To support all these story threads, the writers and audio team are creating 20 percent more dialogue than they did for last time, which is a pretty huge amount.

HOLY SHIT, DUDE. In my thorough run-through of the game, I logged about 23 hours. With so much dialogue now, I’m expecting that it may be as long as Japanese RPGs. Only this time, you actually have a say and your dialogue choices will determine the outcome of the conversation (like whether it ends in peace, a gun fight, or knocking the other person out with your fist). LOL

Not to mention that since this will be for the Xbox 360, I'm curious to know what some of the achievements will be.

“And,” he continues, “the ending is, by far, the hardest level we’ve ever designed. It takes a really large squad of characters and the things that happen to them, and all of that determines the outcome. Who’s going to live? Who’s going to die? What choice affects what and how? All of this stuff just snowballs, and there are so many [endings] that it’ll be really good water-cooler stuff. I think it’ll be almost impossible to actually decode the game logic. It just becomes relationships: I don’t want this person to die, so I’ll keep them with me, and will that actually help?”

hladfkj I wonder if I'll be up to the challenge of seeing how many endings I get. 8| Mass Effect had a lot of replay value to me, wonder if it’s going to be the same with this game. And if this is going on in Mass Effect 2, I seriously wonder how Mass Effect 3 will be.

Hudson also described another interaction made possible by the more cinematic conversations: a firefight early in the game. “Previously, we would’ve had to do it before or after the fight,” he admits. “But now, when you’re fighting and you talk to someone, you’re in cover and the other guy’s in cover while bullets are whizzing over your head. As you’re ducking down, you see tracers coming in, and you’re yelling over the noise of battle.”

Damn, they’re making this game seem more realistic, almost like making your own movie. I wonder if this means you’ll have to multi-task: shooting down the enemies while negotiating/persuading.

The first Mass Effect took place in The Milky Way Galaxy; there were already several star clusters and nebula that your ship could fly to. Some of the nebula I've recognized from Astronomy, and I wonder if they're going to up the number of nebula and star clusters, and/or probably use the ones existing in Mass Effect, but add more planetary systems to each.

-Feels like I should make a Mass Effect userpic-

games, mass effect

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