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Shepard Lives
Product: Mass Effect 2
Company: Bioware
Date: 06/08/2009
Avaliable On:

One of the big questions leading up to this year's E3 was about the soon-to-be-released Mass Effect 2. Players of the first game who spent countless hours exploring worlds, taking out mechanical demigods and trying to give humanity a place in the galaxy have been wondering one main thing as Mass Effect's sequel loomed over the horizon - what will happen to their character. In the first Mass Effect game, you were able to raise Commander Shepard up 50 exhausting levels of customization to make him/her just the character you wanted to play as. And with the ability to use that character in multiple play throughs, gamers were able to get even more attached to their particular flavor of Shepard, so when EA and Bioware announced this year that you would be able to take your same character from the first game and import him into the second, the crowd simply cheered.

But it doesn't stop there. Not only will you be able to use the same customized character, but whatever choices you made in the game (big or small) will carry over as well. When I asked the demo team at EA's booth about the different choices made during different play throughs, they insured me that when you go to import your old character, you would be presented with a list of completed games and what choices were made in each so that you could choose which universe you wanted to continue. If you want to further the one where the Council didn't survive the onslaught at The Citidal, so be it. If you wanted to further the plot where you scored big with a particular shipmate, that's the one you choose. I was especially happy to hear this piece of news because I was worried the game would simply take the choices you made during your last run through and continue that, and since most of those choices I made were simply to gain achievements, they weren't exactly what I was looking to progress.

But the game doesn't try to alienate players who didn't have any time to put into the first one of the series. If you don't have a save to continue, you will be able to create a new character and you will be caught up on the state of the galaxy and the mythos of Mass Effect. Based on the first game's ability to scale difficulty depending on your character's skill level (as is evident by being able to replay the game with a higher level character), having a stat-packed character from the previous game shouldn't be a totally different experience than having a new one, at least as far as the toughness of enemies is concerned.

Little of the game's plot was revealed at the show or in the demo room. All that was said mentioned a suicide mission that Shepard and The Normandy must go on. The game takes place soon after the events of the first Mass Effect, because while Humans have made themselves known in the galaxy, they still haven't gotten the recognition they want, and before Shepard or the politicians he works for have any real time to breathe, he is sent to investigate a series of missing humans across multiple worlds. In order to do this, he has to recruit new characters. One of the new characters shown in the demo is a snake-like assassin named Thane. The demo covered Shepard's attempts to track down Thane and get to him before he completed his task in order to get him to join the crew. In the demo, Thane's target was taken down, but there seemed to be conversation options that might have allowed the Asari character he was after to live. It is also worth noting that, when asked, the demo team said that any of your teammates that survived the first game (when bringing over a save) will have some role in the new one, though it wasn't mentioned if their stats and levels from the previous save will carry over or if they will even be on your team. It could very well be that all five characters from your squad before will only be NPCs here.

One interesting point about the game's plot is that Shepard is allowed to die. Not the type of death that simply shows a Game Over screen and lets you restart from your last checkpoint, but a death that is a viable end to the game and story. In the demo, The Normandy was under attack (by what, we couldn't really tell). Shepard is seen running through the ship trying to get everyone into the escape pod and one of his last efforts is dragging the ship's pilot, Joker, into a pod. Shepard then ends up floating off into space only to discover a leak in his suit. The demo team said that it is possible to make choices that will lead to this end of a story, but it was also hinted that reading one of the new Mass Effect novels, Ascension, could help players stay away from one of these "bad endings."

Other additions to the core game are heavier weapons like a rocket launcher, precision targeting (to take the legs out from under enemies), and what appears to be multiple landing sites on the planets in the game. This last feature wasn't really shown too well, and it is only an educated guess, but before landing on a planet, there appeared to be a screen where the player chooses what part of the planet to land on. I'm not sure if this means there are several spots on each planet or if the act of determining the spot to land on is less automated than before. Comments by the demo team seemed to imply the former, though.

Suffice it to say, Mass Effect 2 seems to have what fans of the first game are looking for; more Shepard, more aliens, more shoot-outs, more exploration and another great story to further the expansive universe set up in the first game. Mass Effect 2 is supposed to hit the streets early 2010 and a small, 2 hour iPhone game from the Mass Effect universe is slated to show up on the iPhone by or before that time as well. This side-game, Mass Effect: Jacob's Story, focuses on one of the new characters in Mass Effect 2, but, like the novels, isn't required to enjoy the upcoming big title.

J.R. Nip aka Chris Meyer

GameVortex PSIllustrated