Mass effect 2 - Videogamer interview with Jesse Houston PAX09

VideoGamer.com: Miranda [one of Shepard's party members] - she's got a gob on her, hasn't she? What's her story?

Jesse Houston: Um, there's not a lot I can tell you directly about her. Actually... [whispers to BioWare publicist]. Sorry, I'm just making sure I don't kill myself!

BioWare publicist: I'm meaner than I look.

JH: She is, trust me. She'll come and kill me in my sleep! Not a lot I can talk about her, yet. I know there's some stuff coming down the pipe that's out very soon. She's our leading actress this time out.

VideoGamer.com: She seems to have some anger issues.

JH: She's just aggressive! Let's put it that way.

VideoGamer.com: What about Jacob [another party member]? Are you allowed to talk about him?

JH: There's not a lot to talk about yet. He's still being fleshed out anyway in the storyline. A lot of his stuff is done. He's kind of like Kaiden. He's our leading male. I don't want to have a lot of discussion about him because he is our leading male.

VideoGamer.com: There are some new weapons I noticed. Tell me about the new pistols.

JH: What we've done is we've taken the pistol and split it up. There's a heavy pistol and a machine pistol. What we wanted to do is we didn't want everybody to be complete pistol maniacs.

VideoGamer.com: The pistol was pretty powerful in the first game.

JH: Yeah. It's funny that. A little bit of a side story - I came to BioWare as Mass was ending. I, like everybody else, played with the pistol. It kicked ass. You talk to the game designers though, they're like no, no it's totally balanced. Really? So at any rate we basically wanted to split it up. We didn't want the solider to be such a pistol class any more, which kind of makes sense. So we split it up, given it to some of the other classes, and then made one that's more of a... I don't know how to describe it. The machine pistol is basically weaker, something closer to a sub machine gun. And then the heavy pistol definitely has got that punch. It's a little more punchier than the old pistol, but the overheating range is a little less.

VideoGamer.com: So it won't be as overpowered this time, then?

JH: No. But what we also want to do is for the non shoot-ey classes, like the biotic, we want to give them weapons they can use at a pinch but let their powers be the mainstay of the damage. And you're going to find when you play with some of the new powers that they're really heavily power oriented.

VideoGamer.com: I noticed a few of the new powers - pull I think is new. Can you take us through them?

JH: Pull is brand new. Literally every ability that was in Mass 1 that we've carried over into Mass 2 has been completely revamped. For example pull is new. Throw has been revamped though. In pull's case, its reason to have is if you've got a guy behind some cover and you want to pull him out, then you can let the shoot-ey guys take care of him. Or you can start using some combo abilities. For example, one of the things I'm doing all of the time is I'll use Jacob to pull them out and I'll then fire a concussive shot off at an angle that will up and arc around and knock the guy off the bridge, or off of a ledge.

VideoGamer.com: How does concussive shot work exactly?

JH: Basically it's like a fireball type thing. It's there to deliver a physics punch though, so it's not direct damage like, say crush is for example. You have to make a line of sight. But it also does arc a bit. If you've still got the guy selected but you're off him a little it'll arc around. So you can get guys from behind cover. You can get them from the sides to have the physics hit them on the side or more up front. It'll also knock them out of cover a little bit and send them flying. That kind of thing.

VideoGamer.com: The shotgun seems to have changed quite a bit as well. Tell us about that.

JH: It's still a shotgun, but we've basically changed it to be definitely a lot more close up and a lot more damage.

VideoGamer.com: There was one ability I used as Shepard that slowed down time. What was that?

JH: Heavy adrenaline rush.

VideoGamer.com: Yeah. How does that work?

JH: We wanted to give you the ability to get in close and personal with the shotgun, for example. Once you get up there, move up there real quick and then be able to blast them without getting all the fire. Let's say you're going up against a tech or a biotic, which is going to completely kill you from range. The ability to close that gap is massively important, right? We wanted to give you an ability that can let you close that gap, or at least help you to subvert some of the damage that you're going to eventually receive.

VideoGamer.com: There was a moment in the final dialogue-based scene where I saw an icon for the left trigger pop up briefly, but I missed it. What would have happened if I had pressed it?

JH: That's the new interrupt system. The icon itself is correct but the timing is a lot quicker than it will be in the final game. Right now it feels a little bit more like a quick time event. We're trying to make it not feel so much like a quick time event. But what it does is, in longer conversations we're putting them in to help the player control the pace so they don't feel they have to just mash the X button to get through the conversation quicker. You can still do that, but if you want to speed up the pace a little bit, take more control over the conversation - at E3 for example we showed Shepard pushing someone out of a window - in this case what would have happened is Shepard would have got a little bit more aggressive and Nassana would have stepped through the conversation a little bit sooner. Thane would have then come down and had at her a lot sooner, so you wouldn't have gone through the dialogue.

VideoGamer.com: Do the interrupts affect your alignment?

JH: Absolutely they do. The ones that we've shown are both Renegade, but there are going to be Paragon versions as well.

VideoGamer.com: How will you know what effect your interrupt will have?

JH: It'll be on different sides of the screen. That's the current design anyway. That's subject to change, obviously. We're doing a big HUD enhancement right now. This HUD that you see here right now [points to television running hands-on demo] is definitely not the final one. In fact this one doesn't exist in any form or fashion right now. We've recently pulled it out and replaced it with something that fits the speed of combat a lot more.

VideoGamer.com: Tell me about some of the changes you've made to the controller layout.

JH: I believe the quote unquote reload, which is actually more of a... it's a heat dump right now... we've changed a lot of the dynamics around heat. We're still changing them quite a bit. Right now when you hit X it dumps your heat instead of waiting for you to hit the overload or whatever they called it before. We've also changed controller mapping, so you have the ability to map more powers and more follower powers. Also you'll notice the d-pad has changed. The buttons say they've remained the same, but actually they're more contextual. For example, in this demo if you hit left Miranda's going to go to wherever you want. Or, if you have a guy selected she's going to engage in the appropriate combat for her class. Miranda's biotic based, so she's going to move up, do whichever mapped biotic you've got, then get into some cover and start hammering away with her selected weapon. It's a lot more context sensitive now. What we're trying to do is allow the player not to need to go into menus any more, or into the wheel if they don't want to.

VideoGamer.com: But I loved the sound when you bring up the power wheel. That was one of the coolest things about Mass Effect.

JH: Like what we're doing with the conversations, where we're putting some pacing ability in there, the same thing we're trying to do with combat. We've sped up combat a lot. We don't want to punish our core RPG players who like a slower paced combat. So we've improved the pause and play, the tactical combat. In Mass 1, pulling up the wheel didn't pause indefinitely. Now it does, so you can actually hit pause, take a look at the battlefield, analyse the decision you want to make, select your powers, cue up the powers you want your guys to use and away you go.

VideoGamer.com: I think there's a bit of confusion online about what will happen to the abilities you've gained when you carry your game saves over from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2. What exactly will happen?

JH: Some will transfer. Some will not. We're still tweaking over which ones are going to transfer, which ones are going to give you bonuses, basically. The big thing to remember is we don't want to punish people who haven't played. And we have a really large gap in between beating Mass 1 once and beating Mass 1 17 times. For the players who are level 60, absolutely max level, the whole nine yards, these guys, we want to give them appropriate bonuses, but not so much that they don't have any fun and don't feel challenged in Mass 2. And the guys that are level 20 will want to do the same thing, but obviously we want to reward players who have played more, with more.

VideoGamer.com: Can you tell me how players will be rewarded depending on the level of their Shepard?

JH: Not specifically because we're still tweaking it. Right now we're in the polishing phase of the game, and this is one of the things we're trying to leave till last so it feels like we've put the right amount of effort into it. All of the other game save features are basically done. This is the last one. We're literally pushing it up, all right, focus testing it, keep pulling it back, pulling it back, pulling it back, till we get that right balance.

VideoGamer.com: For me Wrex pretty much stole the show in the first game. I understand if you didn't kill him in Mass Effect 1 he will turn up?

JH: Absolutely. He is in the game. Well, if you didn't kill him.

VideoGamer.com: Why did you decide not to have him play as big a part in Mass Effect 2 as he did in Mass Effect?

JH: Well we've never officially said that he wasn't a large part in Mass Effect 2. I'm not saying he is. I'm not saying he's not. I don't want to put any more spoilers than there already are. I can just tell you straight up that we've never actually said, and if you've heard this it is absolutely not the case, we've never said he's not a large part of Mass Effect 2. If he's there, he's going to be a part of the story. To what degree I can't say, but we haven't said one way.

VideoGamer.com: What can you tell me about Grunt, the new Krogan you announced during EA's gamescom press conference?

JH: Grunt is your up close ass kicker. One of the things that we've been doing in Mass 2 compared to Mass 1 was, you know Mass 1, the henchmen AI was very similar across the board, as was the enemy AI. There was not a lot of variation. There was some, but not a lot. But every henchman has now custom AI built for them. Grunt's role is to be the guy who's literally in your face with the shotgun and the melee and he's there to kick the living crap out of you. Krogan in general cross the board are scary. He's even scarier in combat.

VideoGamer.com: Is he bigger than Wrex?

JH: Well he's a Krogan so physically he's around the same size, but he's one scary mother fucker! When I play Mass I like to play a bit more in range...

VideoGamer.com: I played infiltrator in Mass Effect.

JH: You'll like the new infiltrator. I'm not going to tell you any more, but you'll love the new infiltrator. I'm in the same role. I love the sniper rifle and I love pistols, so infiltrator was great for me. At any rate, having Grunt in my party right now is an awesome experience. I just let him go up front. He takes a lot of fire, he just kicks the living crap out of everybody and I just sit back and have a good time of it. We wanted to give you more choices on how you build your squad, have each of them be unique and fill their own role to match your gameplay and be able to fill out that gameplay more. They're not the basic classes any more. Thane is an assassin, it's not one of the archetypes you can take. It really is its own class. Grunt's the same way.

VideoGamer.com: So you will be able to pick up party members that will be classes you won't be able to be?

JH: Absolutely. Some will be definitely be classes you can't be. Thane and Grunt are both prime examples. There is no Krogan weapon of mass destruction.

VideoGamer.com: Is that the name of his class?

JH: I wish! It should be!

VideoGamer.com: Finally, one of the things I enjoyed most about Mass Effect was messing about on the Citadel doing more role-playing stuff, picking up quests and working on my persuade or intimidate skills. What you've shown so far of the game has been combat focused. What balance will there be between the two in Mass Effect 2? Are we still going to have an area in the game that will allow players to get knee deep in role-playing?

JH: I won't tell you how many, but I can definitely tell you there is going to be more than one area this time around. So Citadel is still there. You can't have Mass Effect without Citadel. We've also talked now about Omega, which is another large hub area, as we call them. There may or may not be more [laughs]. That being said, one of the big changes that we wanted to make is not have you spend so much time running around these areas, but still be involved in them. So you'll find the area layouts are designed to be quicker but still giving you that RPG experience, that role-playing experience. And you're going to find that they feel a lot more like cities, too. They're much more populated. We don't have the same kind of constraints that we had in Mass 1. The population in Mass 1 was so limited. The Citadel felt a lot emptier than we ever wanted it to feel. This time around you're going to find that it feels a lot more populated. Omega especially, when you go into Afterlife, which is the bar in Omega, you're going to see how completely filled it is.

Mass Effect 2 is due out early 2010 for Xbox 360 and PC.

Source.

Interview: Mac Walters, lead writer for Mass Effect 2

At PAX, we had a chance to catch up with Mac Walters, the lead writer for Mass Effect 2 at BioWare. We discussed everything from the difficulties of penning a story for a game tons of choices to where BioWare currently stands on the portrayal of sweet, alien love-making.

Joystiq: All right. So. Biggest question. We sent around email to everyone saying, "What should we ask BioWare?"

Mac Walters: Right.

The big question we had is, "How do you write a story where all the characters from the first game, or a lot of them, could be dead when you start out the second game?"

You mean other than pulling out my hair and weeping at night, sort of, "Oh my god, how am I going to do this?" It takes a lot of planning, obviously, but essentially what we did is we looked at it and said, "Yeah we know that some of these guys are going to be dead. How do we account for that?" And the big thing was -- let's take Wrex for example -- we had to limit to some degree the roles that those characters are going to play because we have to say, "OK well they're coming back or they're not." And then we had to say, "Well what are their alternates?" So a lot of times there's characters that will fill their spot. But they don't just come in and go, you know, "I'm Wrex alternate," or something like that. It's a new character who has his own back story, who has his own role in the game and whatnot.

That's where the hair-pulling-out comes out, because now I've got to, I've basically got to account for two characters in one situation. And that second character is, for the cinematic designers who have to create the conversation you need, who are saying, "You mean I've got to have a scene with two possible different characters in it?" And then the VO [Voice Over] people have to come in and they've got, "You mean I've got to VO this scene twice, in different ways?" So yeah.

Did it ever feel like it was wasted effort having to write dialogue and scenarios for characters that some players may never see?

Oh it's definitely not, I mean that's what, you know playing a game, you want to -- even if it was just the first game -- you want to feel like your choices matter within that game. And to then just say, "Well we're going to ignore all that for Mass Effect 2," we wouldn't do that. So I don't think it's wasted effort. I think what you're saying is you're looking at Mass Effect 2 as part of a greater experience sort of thing. So we knew going in to account for that. Yeah, it's going to be more work and it's a trilogy. Three is even going to be more, you know, like we're looking back at two games at that point and saying, "Wow. Okay, so what do we do now?"

Well speaking of that, you know the second game and third game are being written together, whereas the first game was sort of written off by itself. Do you ...

Ah, not quite. That's not really true with the way we handle that sort of thing. Like, I mean we had, essentially, with the first one we said, "Here's the art for the three games." Now obviously what's in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 wasn't really fleshed out. We said, "We know basically where we want to go with it." But we wrote Mass Effect 1 with that in mind. You know, we said, "Here's where we want it to go." If you ask Casey Hudson, the producer, he knew where he wanted Mass Effect 3 to eventually end up. Obviously we had [Mass Effect 1] behind us. We still don't know where [Mass Effect 3's] going to go, and maybe it's shifting and changing a little bit based on where you want to be flexible too. But we still wrote it within that framework.

Were you tempted to, or did you have to, retcon some of the characters into the second game?

No not necessarily. I think actually one of the things that we said was -- for some of the big ones, you know the people are going to expect to see them back -- but who are some of the smaller characters? We had people that were just in small quests and we realized, "Wow, the fans just latched onto that character. They love them. Why don't we bring them back?" So let's bring some of those guys back and then the only tricky ones were if it was a character that people loved and they could be dead.

Right. So there's no experience like Alien 5, like someone just gets magically resurrected or cloned or something like that?

Yeah. Yeah. If they're dead in your game, then they're dead.

Obviously can import your saved game from the first game. Import your character. What happens if you don't do that? Does the beginning , does it change at all?

We figured it out, we're not commenting on how that happens but we do have a plan for it. If you don't have a saved game, we had to account for it. Some people might just pick up Mass Effect 2 and play it as their first experience. So we do have a plan for that and how that'll all play out. I think people will be happy with it.

And if you do import your character, you said that he's going to get sort of get zapped back down to level 1.

Again that's another thing that we're not really commenting on. Also there is a plan for it.

Is Shepard going to come into the second game and get "Samused?" Is he going to have all these badass abilities and then get zapped by some energy field and then loses all his powers?

I don't think we would ever do anything exactly like that but, again, we do have a plan for it.

You've written a lot of dialogue. Do you have like a ballpark figure? Like how much dialogue you've done? Like hours, pages?

I can tell you line count. So Mass Effect 1 was about 26,000 lines but that includes things like sound sets, that includes all the lines of dialogue that we have, everything that's VO'd. We're close to about 30,000 on Mass Effect 2. Yeah. So we've actually gone up. It wasn't our intention, but what we've talked about already was the choices, right? We had to account for multiple variations of things. And the game is a bit wider. There is a bit more options. So I think that's partly why it bloated a little bit. It's funny though because we actually, I think the take back is one of the things we tried to do was reduce the overall words per line; trying to make it a quicker dialogue experience. So I think the word count is similar but the actual line count is higher.

Now talking about the different choices you could make, there was a little bit of a controversy in the first game when the whole sex scene came out. And some people blew that out of proportion, but did that affect how you approached Mass Effect 2 at all?

I mean we always take critical feedback and player feedback into account. We know that some people are always going to take certain things out of proportion. I mean if you go to certain regions, they're going to be opposed to the violence. If you go to other regions they're going to be opposed to the sexual content. So it is a fine line, but I mean we also want to make the gaming experience that people are used to and go that way.

Along those same lines, if you made that choice in the first game, any alien babies in the second one? Something like that?

I think the level artists, or the model artists would kill us if we decided to start having babies, so unless they're a baby that comes out at six feet tall. No.

Have you found any difference in the relationship when you want to touch material like that moving to Electronic Arts?

I haven't encountered anything like that as far as writing. The process that we go through it feels very similar to me; just because it's the same concerns. It's like I said, certain regions are going to be leery about things that are extremely violent, other ones are going to be ... so I mean I think overall the tone is going to feel very similar to Mass Effect 1.

Now you've joined up with Mythic. Is there any potential for crossover there? Are you going to start writing things for them?

[The PR representative informs me that BioWare won't be answering this question.]

Well outside of, obviously, sci-fi, what are some of the inspirations that you look to when you're writing for a game like Mass Effect?

Anything in experience that, you know, it doesn't have to be Sci Fi. If I saw a really interesting scene in any movie anywhere, I think we can draw that into our universe. I think one of the things is that we have a setting, which is sci-fi, and obviously there are certain restrictions to that, but I think people are looking for making choices and looking for these interactions with people. And that's common through all the themes. 2,000, 5,000, as long as there's been people around, there's always been these interesting interactions with people. I think that's where the real medium comes from, in getting these emotional scenes. It's just the interaction between characters. And I think yes, they may be wearing a space suit when they say it, or something like that, they may have a blue alien head, but it's still the same emotional contact that we're trying to make.

Well what is the actual process when you set about writing a game like this. Do you just sit down in your room at a typewriter and bang out the overall story for Mass Effect? You have a lot of planning meetings? How does it work?

So, generally what happens is that early in the projects -- so early Mass Effect 1 or early Mass Effect 2 -- myself, Lead Designer, Preston Watamaniuk and then Casey Hudson, the producer, we'll sit down and we'll work on the big picture stuff. What's the art? Where do we want Shepard to start? Where do we want him to go? What are the obstacles that he's going to face? And we'll bash that around for a bit and then I'll take that back to the writing team and get feedback, and they get to contribute to it as well. But once that gets hammered down, then we start looking at "What are the different levels? What are the smaller areas?" And a lot of times that's when each individual writer starts. You've got control over that level, make it work. And then overall I'm just making sure that it all fits a theme.

Yeah.

And what we're trying to do.

That's got to be a lot of work to make sure that all the individual sections fit together properly.

It is. It is one of the biggest challenges really just to make sure that, you want every writer to feel like they are putting their influence into it, but at the same time it also has to fit the same tone.

Right.

Same themes.

Well, Mass Effect kind of made a name for itself with the dialogue system and then the way that the story branches.

Right.

What, what are some examples in the industry that you've seen that you think are just really good examples of writing in a video game?

You know, I actually, I actually really enjoyed, I'll say BioShock, you know, was one that, that I enjoyed. But you asked me specifically about writing. I guess I always look for something that's engaging in the story, and one of the things I actually try to press home is that we are writers, but sometimes we can tell a story in ways that don't necessarily involve writing. So that's actually something I'm more interested in. It's like, "How do we tell a story?"

Right.

And there's been some great games out there that have.

So would you say that's an example of something that the industry could be doing a little bit better than they're doing right now?

Yeah, yeah and I think we're trying to do better, you know. Obviously, if you harken back, way back, story was, or dialogue was the way to tell a story because it was easy. It was words. It was cheap. There wasn't any sort of attachment to it. You could write a character in a day and, if you had to rewrite him, whatever. It's just another day from the writer's time. But now, you know, I have cinematic designers. I've got VO people. I've got actors coming in to do all the work. Even changing one line is a significant change.

Right.

So, it's easier if we can find other ways to carry the story, and so one of the things we did on Mass Effect 2, which was a big change for us, was we said writers work specifically into teams with level designers and also the cinematic team. And we always worked closely but we actually had small groups of teams work together so they would say, "Okay, in this level this is the story we want to tell. How can all of you [do that], not just the writer?"

Right. This is probably my last question, but if Mass Effect is the Empire Strikes Back, how pissed off are we going to be at the cliffhanger? That's what I want to know.

I don't know about pissed off, but people are going to be blown away -- and they are going to be blown away -- and it's going to leave you wanting more for sure.

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Orbus, by Neal asher - My Review

Title: Orbus
Author: Neal Asher
Publisher: Tor UK
Format: Hardback
Pages: 448
Release Date: September 4th 2009

The first thing i will say is that i read this book in one sitting. Over the course of those 6 1/2 hours or so i went through an amazing journey encompassing two alien civilisations - including the worst and best characters and behaviours in both, as well as a pretty unsympathetic lead and a particularly resourceful AI from our (postulated) future society acting as our lens into this universe.

For anyone that doesn't know, this is the "Polity" universe - created by the author in his original Cormac series - a far future of humanity ruled by Artificial Intelligences, with wondrous technologies, massive weaponry, no let up in conflict from now (only we do it with other races, too) and some pretty nasty people, to boot.

The title takes it's name for the titular hero - who isn't much of one, really. having recently regained a great deal of his sanity after the fallout from recent prador actions on his adopted homeworld of Spatterjay (after losing it completely during the first Prador war because of what he did to survive then), and being many centuries old and an "old captain" (basically unkillable as his body has been mutated by the Spatterjay virus who's sole purpose seem to be to make the host survive almost anything, but not always intact), Orbus swapped his erstwhile sailing vessel for a starship in order to fully regain his humanity. the other, perhaps more standard "hero" character, would be the Polity war drone, sniper whom initially stows away on Orbus' ship before he can be "examined" by more senior polity AIs after his own involvement in the latest actions on Spatterjay. They head into the "graveyard" - the area of space decimated by the Prador/Polity war years before, unaware they have been manipulated by the Polity AIs to undermine recent Prador activity there.

Whilst this forms the crux of the book, perhaps the majority of the events and focus is on the Prador themselves - especially the "king" of their kingdom, and the newly-mutated Vrell. in some ways this is disappointing because it destroys some of their mystique as alien reatures, but given the changes wrought by the ubiquitous virus upon the King himself and Vrell perhaps not so after all (the prador kingdoms before the introduction of the virus were quite... different). Another Prador character becomes quite prominent amongst the Kings hunt to exterminate the apparent threat Vrell represents - that of the golgoloth, an ancient Prador legend, but one well-realised, though given their nature, personally i would have doubted the character's survival and power, even given it's apparent intelligence.

The last factor in the book are the Jain. The jain were a race that actually went extinct 5 million years ago, but the true nature of the Spatterjay virus reveals a rather surprising return, with disastrous consequences for some of those involved.

Needless to say, the book quickly builds to a massive climax with those who have a penchant for massive space-battles, exotic weaponry and aliens very well-catered for, as always. and the whole thing is written so wonderfully everything springs vividly to life in your mind as you read it. I loved this book - the only downside to me was the actual lack of Polity-side action (i love their AIs - especially their warships and Jerusalem), although the focus on the prador and their respective hardware was cool, and the insight to their society an excellent one.

Orbus as a hero doesn't quite work for me - it is easy to see why physically, at least, he was an excellent choice (as nobody else would survive what he went through) but the very nature of the character made him a bit impersonal, to me. One of his companions for most of the book, also seems a complete waste and didn't really add anything, either.

Very clever was the subtle hand of the Polity in all of the machinations - you were aware that they knew far more about most things that were happening than anyone else, especially regarding the Spatterjay virus, the Prador and the Jain (though given the way the eventual threat emerges, their direct inaction becomes even more puzzling), and perhaps were capable of stepping in at any moment. this also throws up an interesting question - is the Polity so benevolent after all?

The answer to that question may become a very good book in the future.

Mass Effect 2 Is More Than What Meets Our Eyes

The build-up for BioWare's Mass Effect 2, still not planned for release until next year, has been one of gaming's more mysterious. Hints of Commander Shepard's possible death in trailers and demos confuse ever more. What's going on? Kotaku asked.

"We have been saying it's the dark middle act, so the tone is definitely darker," the game's lead writer, Mac Walters, told Kotaku at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. "To draw comparisons: Much the same way you would say Empire Strikes Back is the dark middle act of Star Wars, it still felt like Star Wars. ... So you're still going to find a lot of very familiar themes, elements, and characters. It's all going to feel very Mass Effect."

We've written about Mass Effect 2's combat — and about the possible deaths of protagonist Commander Shepard. And it all seems ominous, foreboding and a little bit confusing.

"It's fair to say there's more than meets the eye to what you've seen," BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk told Kotaku during the show. "I'm not going to get too much into specifics." He remarked that this is the first sequel his company has been able to work on since Baldur's Gate 2 in 2000. "It's nice to be able to change and modify. We think it's going to be a much better game than the first one."

The publicity machine isn't kicking into gear for this one yet, Zeschuk explained. That's why so little is known. They developers will answer process questions, but are skipping content answers.

So, Walters will talk about how BioWare is writing the new game differently: On the first game, Walters was a senior writer focusing on the characters Wrex and Garrus as well as several quests. He said the writing team for the second game has been working to make dialogue more conversational and, with the benefit of a larger cinematics team involved in this project, they are attempting to craft more of the conversations as scenes rather than just moments of characters saying what they need the player to know.

But Walters won't talk about who is in the game, besides Shepard: "A lot of the main characters you're going to see them — if they're alive," he said. "You can expect to see cameos, return appearances by some people. Your decisions from the first game will matter. If, for some reason, they're dead, they're not going to come back. We listened to our fans and realized some of the characters in the sidequests are really popular. Well, we're bringing them back so you'll sometimes see the return of some of the fan favorites." That says something. But it doesn't exactly name names.

Even the spin-off Mass Effect 2 comic is shrouded in secrecy. Walters is overseeing the writing of the Dark Horse Comics mini-series, which is set to launch alongside the game. The series will be scripted by Dark Horse's writer of the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic comic, John Jackson Miller. Walters said the Mass Effect comic's story occurs during the timeframe of the second game, involving new locations and characters in the sequel's universe. While Mass Effect gamers have been able to play the series' lead character, Shepard, in divergent ways — renegade female soldier, paragon male biotics specialist, etc — Walters said the comic will be able to deal with that and not violate people's impressions of who Shepard is to them. How? "You're going to have to wait and see." More mysteries.

In a void of firm answers about what is likely to be a popular 2010 sequel, we'll just have to keep guessing as to what Mass Effect 2 has in store.

"A lot of people ask about, 'What are the big changes?'" Walters said. "It's actually a lot of small changes. Even just as a person who's played it a million times, I'm just like, 'Wow.' It's Mass Effect but it's such a better experience now."

I told him that solving the elevator problem — the complaint about slow, dull glorified loading screens from the first Mass Effect — is no "small change."

"Everybody I talk to is like… 'Elevators?'" Walters recalled. "I say: 'Don't worry about it.'"

Source.

PAX 09 Mass Effect 2 Control Impressions: That's a better shooter

Maybe they did it for me. If not for last month's surprise release of the Pinnacle Station expansion to Mass Effect, I may not have been able to appreciate what I just played in Mass Effect 2 this morning.

At the Penny Arcade Expo today, I played a demo sequence of Mass Effect 2 that had series hero Commander Shepard and two squadmates, biotics specialist Jacob and soldier Miranda, shooting their way down a long, narrow outdoor walkway.

Our mission was to storm a building and, ultimately we would be attempting to recruit Thane, a member of the game's new Drell race. Imagine this all happening on a city of clean, congested high-tech skyscrapers, all bathed in the dark blues and purples as flying cars filled the skyways all around.

I didn't come to a noisy BioWare booth to judge the the story or scenery this time. I came to feel the combat.

The demo I played presented the same mission McWhertor tackled last month at Gamescom, but he's a self-confessed Mass Effect neophyte. With the combat system of Mass Effect fresh in my mind thanks to Pinnacle station I noticed the following differences:

-The game plays more like the shooter it resembles. I took aim and hit what I thought I should hit. As I shot my way through the demo sequence I didn't feel like calculations under the game's hood were determining that I didn't have the right stats to score those direct hits I knew I was making. I agreed with the BioWare rep standing beside me. Targeting an enemy accurately and firing in this demo was more likely to result in accurate damage.

-Combat is still strategic, but swifter. The basic mechanics of strategic combat are unchanged. You still have to hold down your Xbox 360 controller's right button or left button to pull up menu wheels that display all of your and your squad's weapons and powers — while the combat freezes behind them. The speed of the transitions into and out of those views, however, was improved. I didn't feel the action stutter as I activated the wheel or chose a command. The flow of combat didn't feel gummed down by my need to click, open menu, select power, close menu, and see the result of my choices commence. The mechanics of what occurred appeared to be the same, just smoother. In the first game I didn't enjoy using the combat wheels. The streamlining in this demo changed that. I wound up using the menus more. It also seemed that my squadmates more swiftly executed my orders. No sooner did I leave the menu, having commanded one of them to use the "Pull" option, then the targeted enemy was flying past me, a victim of my strategic decisions and choice of powers for three characters to wield in concert.

-The reticle is more useful. You couldn't have a much simpler targeting reticle than the first Mass Effect's light blue circle. The new game's reticle, which is scrubbed out of released screenshots for the game, unfortunately, is a superior green crosshairs that contrasts more clearly against enemy bodies. Just below the green crosshairs is an arc of bullets that represents your ammo count. The prominence of that arc frees of you of the need to check the periphery of the screen to deduce when you need to reload. In a frantic battle that involves you managing two squadmates as well, that little efficiency helps.

-Squadmates are improved followers, improved doers. I felt as if I had more control of my squad in the Mass Effect 2 demo, thanks to left-and-right d-pad options that allowed me to command one or the other ally to move to specific positions in the area. I could also order them to advance or fall back as a group, which I could in the first game as well. A subtle interface adjustment now presents small portraits of your two active ally characters in the lower left part of your screen, right next to their health meters and the button icons that remind you about those movement commands. This all makes commanding the squad a more efficient and clearly represented process. These allies might be smarter too. When I left them to fight on their own, they seemed more capable than the allies of the first game.

I left my Mass Effect 2 demo feeling like the shooting had improved and that the strategic combat was less of a pace-killer than before. Does that make it more a shooter and less an RPG? I'm not sure, but it looks like it'll make for better gameplay.

The interactive dialogue sequences that bookended the battle I fought may have been more the hallmark of a Mass Effect. The quality of the combat in between suggested that the game's action may be rising to the level of the series' storytelling.

That's the progress of a sequel.

Mass Effect 2 is slated for release in 2010.

UPDATE: Given the feedback regarding two parts of this post, I reached out to BioWare for some clarification.

1) Some commenters took issue with my description of the sequel demo's increased emphasis on accurate aiming, particularly how I compared that to a more stats-based system of the first game. The word back from the same BioWare rep who showed me the game today is that the Mass Effect 2 demo does indeed offer a more accuracy-based targeting system. The new game's system allows for location-based damage on enemies and that therefore deals appropriate damage to an enemy depending on where you land your sots on them. The rep contrasted that with the first game's system, which used character levels to determine part of the accuracy of a shot.

2) Some readers were confused by my description of what appeared to be an ammunition counter under the targeting reticle, something they felt was inconsistent with the unlimited ammunition and overheating mechanics of the first game. The BioWare rep told me that I did not miss an overheating mechanic today; it's not in the demo. That doesn't mean it won't be in the full game, but for this demo the reticle does indeed show a depleting amount of ammunition that then refreshes — a replenishment which I described as reloading.

I hope that clears things up and proves that my eyes weren't playing tricks on me. It sounds like we still all have plenty to learn about how combat will work and the extent to which it will work differently in Mass Effect 2.

Source.

Mass Effect 2 PAX 09 4 New Screens

Mass Effect 2 GC 09: Ray Muzyka Interview HD