Recently we saw the much awaited release of BioWare’s epic sequel, Mass Effect 2. This is the follow up to 2007′s original Mass Effect title, which one rave reviews from both the gaming public, and gaming publications. BioWare is, and has been, one of the top developers in the industry. The approach they take to their games is fulfilling, compelling, and just brilliant over all.
The original Mass Effect followed the tradition of BioWare’s quality in all their games. After developing some games based on other pre-existing franchises, BioWare has branched out to create their own new intellectual properties. Mass Effect was an amazing title with a fantastic sci-fi story / background, solid RPG mechanics, and equally as solid tactical third person action gameplay. It easily went down as one of the best games in recent history within the RPG genre, however, despite BioWare’s pedigree not all was perfect.
Mass Effect suffered from a weak inventory system, which had a cap of 150 items. While carrying around 150 pieces of armor, weapons, and upgrades normally wouldn’t pose an issue in some games, the issue was that most of it was crap, and you picked up a lot of crap frequently. You’d go back to a safe ‘hub’ in the game to sell off all your wares, winding up with a large amount of money. But then there wasn’t anything to purchase with it, since you found the ‘must have’ items for your squad in the field anyway (about 2% – 5% of the junk you find). Then the process repeats over again where you quickly filled up to 150 items, sold most of them off — keeping the actual decent 2% of them — and then back off to the field to repeat. Needless to say, there wasn’t a lot of depth there, and by the end of the game you were a millionaire without anything to show for it. Equally as bad were the ‘side quests’ and exploration that were aside from the main quest. There was a fair amount of planets and locations you could explore from your ship, but in most cases those planets were just empty placeholders that had a brief description. Some planets you could ‘scan’ to survey them for trinkets that had relevance to another side quest, or minerals you wouldn’t do anything with. In some additional instances you could in fact land on the planet to explore, or perform a side quest, but every planet was exactly the same; barren, with maybe one mine or outpost, and every single mine and outpost looked exactly the same as the last. Exploration was done with the M35 Mako infantry vehicle that had it’s own clunky, and at times frustrating, controls. The main quests were the stand out in the original game, by far.
That said, despite these and some other more minor issues, Mass Effect was an absolutely fantastic game. With a sequel to such a strong game — one with issues — you would expect the developers would listen to the gaming community’s complaints about the first game and address it in the second game. Some developers do seem work in a bubble, and technically we — the consumers — aren’t owed anything per se, but did BioWare listen to the gamers, and come back with an even better title in Mass Effect 2? The answer is a resounding: YES! If they weren’t listening to the gamers, then they sure as hell saw the same flaws we did in the first game. They’ve absolutely come back and blown away all expectations with a more focused title that improves on nearly all aspects of the original game.
Presentation
As with Mass Effect, and BioWare’s other titles, their presentation only gets stronger with Mass Effect 2. The menus, HUD, and the rest of the interface in the game are top notch. Also improved (read: gone) are the annoying elevator rides, and sluggish transitions from the original in-between scenes. There are still load screens of course, but I’d prefer them to some of the other transitions of the original game (not to mention elevator rides in the first game glitching out with a frozen squad stuck in them).
One great new feature the developers added into the game is the ability to import save games from Mass Effect into Mass Effect 2. This brings along your character’s appearance, Paragon / Renegade status, resources (higher level and money result in larger starting bonus for Shepard in ME2), and most importantly: decisions made in the first game. This results in a highly personalized experience unlike a lot of other games out there.
No real complaints or additional detailed observations here beyond the obvious, when you’re playing you get a feel of not only playing an A+ premium title, and an improved game overall.
Story
One of the main things the original Mass Effect is known for is establishing a great sci-fi feel, and mythos that served as the background to the events in the game. Mass Effect 2 picks up directly where Mass Effect left off, and within the first 10 minutes of the game completely blows you away with it’s setup of the story in this chapter of the Mass Effect trilogy.
Unfortunately, it’s a bit difficult to talk about specifics without spoiling a fantastic story, but let’s say that it is even better than the first game. This is especially commendable given that this is the middle chapter in a trilogy, and middle chapters always have a tougher time standing out in a lot of situations (sans Empire Strikes Back).
Outside of the excellent main storyline itself, some of the standouts here with the story telling approach BioWare took this time is that there is a sense of urgency throughout the whole game. It’s widely known throughout the game that you are putting together a team for a suicide mission, and you must prepare yourself as well as possible before proceeding to the end of the game. If you don’t, you and your squad will die. Even more urgent, is that deaths during the final portions of the game are permanent, and will directly affect Mass Effect 3 with these characters not being available for play. This sense of personalization and urgency is absolutely amazing, and few games have been able to pull this off, if ever. Knowing that your Shepard can permanently die drives you to do as much as you can throughout the game to prepare yourself, so this is a great example of a great story supporting great gameplay.
Also fantastic this time is the side quests, and their related stories; especially as it relates to your team mates. Side quests are still not incredibly important to the main story, but they do give you some background and have more relevance / impact than in the first game by far. Mass Effect also did go into the personal lives of your team mates, but this game takes it even further with the loyalty side quest missions, in depth character stories, scripting, and more. Needless to say, this level of polish is rare in gaming.
My only minor complaint here is while your decisions in the game have a large effect on how the events in the game take place, the Paragon / Renegade system (covered in gameplay) — as in the first Mass Effect — do not exactly have a large part changing the core events of the game. They simply serve as a means to open up dialog options which ultimately lead you to the same goal, albeit with a different in-game character performance presentation. Hard to complain about this level of greatness, especially given that there are such solid vocal performances to back up the story, but it would have been nice to have the Paragon / Renegade system impact the story a bit more.
Graphics
The graphics in Mass Effect 2 are stunning. Continuing the great aesthetic look brought to us in Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 is also powered by a better version of the amazing Unreal Engine 3. Largely, the same design elements are here from the first game, but they are just better in this game. Environments are gorgeous, graphics effects are top notch, and the textures / artwork are very impressive throughout.
Perhaps the largest area you will notice an improvement in is the character models. Yes, Mass Effect had GREAT looking models, but this game will blow you away. All of the characters (sans a customized or female Shepard) are absolutely mind blowingly detailed, and all characters (including the customized and female Shepards) have many more facial animations than in the first game. This results in a deeper level of immersion during the conversation pieces, especially when combined with the dynamic camera angles during conversations. One of the best character models I have ever seen in any video game belongs to Mass Effect 2′s Miranda Lawson. Modeled after real life actress Yvonne Strahovski, it’s an incredible technological achievement to see her brought to life with real-time graphics.
With the Unreal Engine 3.5 — arguably one of the best engines available right now — you’re talking about a game that looks incredible, but more importantly, runs incredible on a lot of systems, even without bleeding edge hardware. It’s really fantastic that the level of detail you’re seeing in this game is possible, at such high frame rates.
