Mass Effect 2 - Skills would do a romance sub-plot but he has work in the morning
 

Just noticed this today. First teaser trailer. It could be considered a spoiler I guess so be forewarned.

Mass Effect 2 - Teaser

It won't be out until Fall 2010 most likely since Dragon Age: Origins, the other Bioware game, which is a spiritual successor to Baldurs Gate is coming out near the end of this year.

Game was fantastic even with the glitches, so I am looking forward to it greatly.

Fuck Dragon Age. I want ME2 NOW.

In before Enemies Everywhere 2 will have boring planetary expeditions yet again.

Is there any chance that the game will actually play like the game they show off in the developer interviews this time?

I mean, waxing lyrical about how you'll be able to talk to nearly everyone in the universe you meet, interupt conversations mid-speech and switch to different characters during battle is great, unless you actually drop every single one of those things before you release the game.

I liked Mass Effect, despite the massively repetitive side-quests, but I'm not going to believe any of the hype about the sequel until I've seen it running on the final build myself.

They actually said all that crap would be in the game? I didn't actually pay attention to the hype for it and grabbed it on the way home from work one day on a friend's recommendation. I loved it, but I wasn't really sure what to expect, either. Glad I didn't read the hype.

Well, the switch characters system in combat that allowed you to set waypoints for them and directly control if needed was one glaring omission. They demoed it early on, but apparently removed it.

You could interrupt conversations and walk away, but it didn't really have that much of an effect. Anything else probably stems from how the game wasn't quite as vast as it appeared to be and Shin is just being bitter.

The teaser is kinda worrying though. Does this mean we can't transfer old characters and have to make a new one? Are they planning on releasing it for PS3 as well and this is their way of making a fresh start of people who haven't played 1? Or is that one of those "this is where it ends, now let's flashback the hell out of this" things.

This is why I pay minimal attention to the hype for most games. It makes me more easily satisfied by what is actually there. I don't want to be dissapointed by what is missing, when I could focus on what is actually on the disc.

I'm excited for ME2, but I don't plan on watching trailers. I'll just snag the game when it hits shelves.

=P

The only video I really watched was an interview from E3 where some dude went into pretty great depth about the combat system (Including character switching) and the fact that inter-personal relationships were really important, showing a demonstration of how the Turian dude was being a bit bolshy so you could just tell him to shut up and do what he was told mid-sentence, with the heavy implication that your relationship with the other characters would have a big effect on the game.

What they actually gave you was a combat system where your team mates spend a lot of time standing in the open right next to some nice cover, getting killed while you just spam the shoulder button commands for the achievement points and kill all the bad guys with pop-up and shoot tactics not unlike Rainbow's but with all the risk of getting killed with a headshot or being outflanked by the clever enemy AI removed. The other members of your party had opinions but rarely voiced them unless you went looking for them and their opinions didn't make the slightest bit of difference to the story, with each major decision (All three of them) being blindingly obvious and being made at that point, bollocks to how you acted all game.

Like I said, I liked the game but after KOTOR 2 with it's depth of characters, an affinity system that actually affected the plot and a combat system than had some semblance of tactics to it (Even if it was incredibly easy to build a broken, over-powered character), one could be forgiven for expecting a little more from Mass Effect, especially after they said there would be a lot more in an interview no more than three months before the thing was launched.

Really, they shouldn't have bothered with Mass Effect at all and spent the time finishing KOTOR 2 and making a third one of those.

yeah i was thinkin about this too, would be super gay since then hyped it all up that you would transfer your char and shit.

I expect save files to carry over, but only so they can set the game up for you without asking questions about Shepherd (aka: KOTOR II). That way they know who you killed off, what Shepherd looks like, who you went to bed with, and so on.

I hate the idea of Shepherd being dead and you having to make a new guy to follow in his footsteps or track him down and some shit. That's what I'm expecting from the sequel after watching the trailer. Just like KOTOR II. -_-

You guys can't seriously believe Shepherd is fucking dead, can you? They would just kill him/her off in the blank area between Mass Effect and the sequel, despite talking repeatedly about how Shepherd will be in ALL THREE GAMES?

I mean it's one thing to remove character switching or interrupting conversations, but to just go back on something like that would be fucking ridiculous.

Given that EA now has the ball, that three games may be multiplied by two. They'll milk the hell out of that thing as long as it sells.

Why are people acting like Bioware had anything to do with KOTOR II?

That is true people, it was Obsidian. Although they are coming back to KOTOR with the Star Wars KOTOR MMO, probably in like three years

Oh and here is a new interview with Bioware CEO's from G4 on Mass and Dragon Age.
http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/69...e-Origins.html

And just finishing watching it, they don't reveal much of anything

Of course he's alive. If that trailer's not just an obvious fanboy hype generator then I'll be eternally surprised. Safe money says he's on some top secret mission and they're telling everyone he's dead as some kind of cover-up. The game will probably start with some kind of gay as all fuck MGS2 effort where you play "A mysterious man in a space suit" who surprise surprise turns out to be Shepherd.

I'd suggest though that while you might be able to carry over the character, they won't be carrying over the plot nuances, seeing as how they mentioned Wrex in the trailer as a companion and it's quite easy to finish the game up without him. I mean, KOTOR 2 assumes you didn't leave Carth behind to die on the last planet or kill Bastilla or Jolee Bindu if memory serves.

Pang, I think we're all talking about KOTOR 2 as Bioware are widely associated with the franchise and still are. I forgot they didn't actually do the second game. Still, they could have learned a lot if they'd played it...

I did catch an interview somewhere where a developer for ME2 said that they would, in fact, keep whatever choices you made in the sequels. In a way I guess that makes there no "official canon" storyline.

Seems pretty difficult. I'd like to see it get pulled off, but... I guess we'll see.

Maybe the being dead/super secret mission thing is an excuse for you to remake the visuals of the character. Hopefully they got more choices this time so you can make a sexy hero.

My second playthrough character looks like a female Heinrich Himmler.

More hairstyles. I mean it's a minor gripe, but there was like ONE style for the women that didn't look dreadful, and no style at all for the men. It was a problem because the NPCs you met use the exact same few hair styles and it looked ridiculous.

I found all the evil conversation topics a bit dissappointing. Shepard sounded like a teenager and less like a new Saren.
That said, I wouldn't cry if Shepard is really dead. As long as I can create a character myself that doesn't look like crap compared to BioWare's pre-created dudes.

New Bioware team working on Mass Effect 2?

Not exactly sure what this means for the game. Hopefully nothing bad.

I think it's been common knowledge for a while that EA were shedding jobs and restructuring their studios. I'm sure I read something in Edge before christmas about Bioware being one of the ones getting the chop but I can't find the article now.

The story you linked to is them trying to put a positive spin on the fact they've made a load of people redundant and are cost cutting in terms of locations too. Essentially they've taken two or three studios, sacked a bunch of people and then put those left together and probably decided Bioware was the best name to keep.

One would hope this is a good thing though as new people will bring new ideas and you'd think that the ones who kept their jobs would be the most talented (As opposed to the cheapest, which would be bad news). EA have also said they're concentrating on quality over quantity these days and a rushed out ME2 would do them no favours.

It all depends how far into development they are. If the engine is built, the systems are all in place and they're just scripting the thing, new talent would definitely be a good thing. If they're pretty much starting from scratch then they're fucked, as the release of trailers implies a sooner-rather-than-later time frame for release.

I would have assumed they'd be working on an updated version of the first game's engine, so I'd be very surprised if they were starting from scratch.

Not in the slightest. I can believe the game might start with Shepard missing, presumed dead. That's about the most I can imagine they would do. No chance they are going to kill him off, in my mind.

It's a nice touch when they do decide to do something drastic like kill of the protagonist, though. Shepard is kind of bland no matter what way you played him as, so I wouldn't be crushed if they killed him off.

I'll take Wrex as the protagonist any day. God that would be so awesome.

Maybe you'll have to create a new character at the onset of the game, and at a certain point, you get to pick up Shepard again - which makes sense in terms of carrying over the same character from the first game. That way all the high-level abilities and weapons Shepard has doesn't go to waste.

That actually kind of makes sense, NP. But then what about the character you just spent time working on? New party member, maybe? Geth food, maybe?

So they were just kidding about Shepard being dead. Not that we didn't already know that.

I can only assume it would be pretty difficult to effectively carry out your spec ops duties while simultaneously being the most famous human in the known galaxy, hence the fake death.

"Oh, Shepard's dead, now we can go back to being nefarious in human space with no human Spectre to bother us!"

"Hey sup."

"Shepard? But you're dead. I just saw it on the news last week!"

"No, you." +25 Renegade

Mass Effect 2 Video Game, E3 09: Extended Cut Trailer HD | Game Trailers & Videos | GameTrailers.com

The new trailer looks pretty damned sweet. I hope they put back in the able to disrupt a character in mid sentence and it sounds like they're going to revamp the combat from interviews I have read. Oh and hopefully they fix the Mako's controls and improve the texture pop in. Otherwise this is a day one purchase for me no contest. I'll more than likely pick up the limited edition like I did with the original. Hell I just recently bought the two books and the soundtrack.

I have gone to a conference 2 weeks ago from the creator of mass effect and they were talking about the development of ME2. Basically, what they said about ME2 is they don't want to reproduce all the problem they had with the first (texture pop-in, bad frame rate, etc). They are making sure that ME2 is playable at all time, even if at the start it was just gray box, dummy and text pop-in for cinematic.

That way they were making sure that everything worked as they planned and knew if the pacing was right.

but in a game development, bad frame rate and other problems like that often get corrected at the end of development, it's a way to polish the game.

But the way they talk, the bad frame rate of the first is the one thing that really bothered them and are making sure it doesn't happen in the second. That and all the elevator thing lol

Could you type a legible sentence just once, Inhert? Christ almighty.

Anyway, if anyone knows what the song is thats used in the E3 trailer, lemme know.

well sorry Lehah, I know you might have heard this excuse before but English is not my first language... (French is my native language)

I think the ideas of capitalization and proper punctuation are well known in France.

Yeah, but people in Quebec rarely receive any sort of proper education.

He's from Quebec, you're expecting way too much from him. I always wonder if English is anywhere in his first fifteen languages though.

About the trailer music, according to the Bioware forums, the song was custom by Bioware for the trailer.

So I guess if I'm not American, I shouldn't even try to be on this board...

So when you finally listen and type write - you get emo.

STOP THAT.

I hope this is a sign of the direction the music is headed. ME had some bitchin tunes in it.

From the looks of the trailer, we might be exploring more Cities and not just Ice_Planet_A, Lava_World_2 and Underground_Bunker_Gamma, which would be a welcome mix-up. Not that I minded traveling and uncovering alien worlds, but there wasn't quite enough variety. It seemed like the only cities you visited were direct story-line related. Ah well, probably a minor complaint of just my own.

Anyway am I the only person who thought that the music in the trailer was NIN's The Day The World Went Away at first? Especially since they were blasting Manson through the Dragon Age trailer.

Oh ho ho, Jessy caught my joke!

Someone crown her queen of the paste-eating crowd!

Oh ho ho, go fucking kill yourself.

That was perhaps the biggest of several let-downs for me in the first game. All the publicity crap before it came out banged on about how rather than just visiting five planets all game (Like KOTOR), there were whole galaxies to explore. What they didn't mention was that each one had about three visitable planets in and those were all basically featureless wastelands with cut and paste bunkers dropped in from time to time and the bulk of the game would actually take place on no more than about seven planets.

There was also the whole switching characters in combat thing, the interupting conversations, the being able to have a conversation with every single npc, the decisions you make actually effecting the story and it not looking like Quake 3 running on a 486 with the graphics setting turned up to max. I liked Mass Effect well enough but god damn was it nothing at all like what they promised. One would hope that this time round they'll either actually put in one or two of the features they promise or they'll just shut the fuck up rather than making shit up constantly. I honestly think that Mass Effect was a contender for Fable's crown of "Most lies told about a computer game by the developers prior to release".

YOU'D LIKE THAT

BUT I'M MORE LIKE CHRISTOPHER LAMBERT THAN DAVID CARRIDINE

The E3 Prelude Video they released a bit back says they're still suffering Molyneux syndrome. Derek Watts, the guy in the checker shirt, is particularly bad in this respect, trying to play it up like its the darkest shit you've ever seen.

Also, their comments about the shifted color palette kind of annoy. A game doesn't have to be pastel, but I like some color and a game I don't have to play on Gamma -> Max. Plus, dark color != grit. Did they not see Doom 3? Worry I'll spend the entire damn thing trying to distinguish varying shades of black from one another.

On the city scenes shown in the previews, one and all those look like shots of the Citadel arms which you can see from the scenic outlooks in ME1. It appears they're just going to have you go down into them. Course, if the Citadel section is anything other than endless Financial -> Markets -> Financial -> C-Sec fetch quest runs it will be an improvement.

Really, I hope for ME2 they just kill the Mako garbage completely. When ME1 was on its game, doing well scripted / designed missions, it was one of the better RPGs to come out in a long time. I enjoyed the hell out of Noveria, Feros, Virmire, ect... But the randomized worlds were god awful, and enough to make you forget any successes. Hell, even Diablo level randomization of the bunker interiors would have been a slight step up. Even the DLC was more of that crap.

:( Just completed an achievement run through, so the annoyance is still fresh.

What if Wrex was killed? Kinda hard to take him as a protagonist then. I'd rather take an Asari protagonist.

Dragon age doesn't seem so bad. Besides if you get DA you'll get a nice armor for ME 2.

I agree that ME2 needs to take a page from KOTOR 2. It's just that I'm not sure Bioware has it in them. Their writing just can't ever seem to measure up to that of Black Isle/Obsidian. They always focus on the outcome of a choice rather than examining the choice itself. It makes me feel like I'm essentially just picking an attitude to run with (especially in ME, where it's basically good cop or bad cop, be like the Federation or be like the Romulans) as I tackle another 'stop the big bad guy' story.

Depends on your choices/alignment. If you follow the dark path, then nothing is said of Carth (he's replaced by another guy as captain of the Sojourn), which means he's either missing or dead. If you follow the light path, then he's alive. Bastila appears to have survived either way, however. If you're dark, then you hear about her through the holocron on Korriban (which is broken if you're following the light path). If you follow the light, then it's possible to see her with Carth in the sendoff scene at Telos (which may require accessing the T3 holorecording that Carth left behind; this is something you can't access if you're following the dark path, of course). Since KOTOR had two possible endings, KOTOR II kind of lets the player determine which path Revan followed (though it tells a story in which both paths had essentially led to the same outcome), which is definitely one of the more clever and subtle things about the game.

I don't think anything is said about the fate of Jolee Bindo. Disciple/Mical mentions the importance of preserving the stories of his adventures for future generations, but that's it.

Edit: Whoops, it turns out that you CAN get a similar message from T3 if you're on the dark path. It just winds up being Bastila (dark Bastila, just like with the Sith Holocron message) instead of Carth (who again is missing or dead when you follow the dark path).

If memory serves, there's a reference to Jolee Bindo surviving KOTOR 1 in the descriptin of the weapon named after him (A pistol I think), although it's been a year or so since I last played it. I agree though that the handling of the previous game was well done in KOTOR 2, essentially giving you the choice as to what happened in the first one during your first conversation with Atton.

MASS EFFECT 2 IS COMING OUT NEXT WEEK

MASS EFFECT 2 WILL FEATURE SPACE HAMSTERS

http://imgur.com/tRdeY.jpg

GOTY ALL YEARS

hehehe, I'm really excited about this game! Mass Effect effect is one of the few game I don't get tired to play over and over, so I'm pretty psyched to know what happen next!

I just hope EA will have received my copy next week.

Currently playing ME2. Only just finished the first mission.

(Early) spoiler regarding Shepard:


Game mechanics:
- It seems like they took out the inventory system COMPLETELY.
- No more infinite ammo. Well, technically you do, but now there's thermal clips which basically work like ammo clips. Enemies drop them.
- Ammo types (incendiary, etc) are now character stat upgrades, not weapon upgrades. (Why?????)
- Enemy closets. Lots of them.
- Am I still playing an RPG?

On the plus side, navigating the galaxy is considerably more interesting. Haven't tried planetary exploration yet.

Spawn closets really? Wtf Bioware. Dp they work differently from CoD or?

There's doors you can't open. Once you trigger an enemy encounter, those doors periodically let reinforcements through.

More details:
- MAKO is completely gone. In fact there's NO planetary exploration, you either land on a planet for a mission (in a defined perimeter) or you launch "probes" to harvest minerals right on the planet scanning screen.
- Scanning mineral deposits on planets is a huge pain in the ass ARGHAHGAHSG
- My memory of the original ME is rather fuzzy, but I think the missions are a lot more scripted now, with lots of objective updates and checkpoints in between. It almost feels like... Gears of War.

One major improvement: You now get personal messages from various characters you interact with throughout the game, updating you about their status and providing closure after missions and sidequests. It's a great touch and really immerses you in the story.

I did the scanning mini-game on one planet for a few minutes and was pretty much like "wtf". Pretty terrible.

The door and terminal hacking mini-games are vast improvements over the last game, especially the terminal hacking with the scrolling bits of "code".

The enemy spawning has not bothered me, but I will say this: in the mission to acquire the professor character, on Omega, the locations of some of the encounters were brutal, with plenty of ways for the bad guys to flank me. The fact that I jumped right into Insanity difficulty did not help matters. Krogan enemies are (early on) still serious threats, but manageable. I ran into an enemy who was sporting a flamethrower. Since he was the only enemy I had remaining to kill at the time, I kind of approached him lackadaisically, expecting my teammates to draw some of the fire. That was a mistake, as he burned me to the ground in only a few short seconds.

So far, I'm really enjoying the game, the look and feel of it is great. The character interactions, especially between Shepard and Mass Effect the first characters, have been great too. The Miranda Lawson character, voiced by Yvonne Strahovski (<3), is awesome.

There is a lot of "flavor" kind of hanging out along the edges as well, such as news feeds that you hear as you walk through the various locales, usually discussing the fallout from some of the missions undertaken in the first game. There was one that discussed government paid reparations to L2 biotics, as a direct result of the mission in the first game where you rescue a senatorial type guy from a group of angry biotics who were just looking to be heard.

Also, I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite shop on the Citadel.

LOL.


I finally finish the first run through on normal. >w< Lost 2 good man, that really pisses me off.

Did I mention that I freaking HATE zombies? I especially hate coming out of cover to fight them while being shot at. Especially on stages that is designed so that you are being flanked every other wave. <.<;

Well, I just completeld my first playthrough, on Insanity. Fully upgraded cryo ammo (set to apply to the entire team) got me through a lot of tough fights, especially when the husks were around. Having three people shooting a husk and freezing it about half a second after its armor goes down is nice.

Outstanding game overall. I think my only real complaint is with the planet scanning/resource gathering minigame. That part sucks. Everything else about the game was great. Great characters, great environments, great music, great combat. I like the changes they made to the combat system. Three types of protection (shield, armor, barrier) each with a specific gun type that is strong against it. It made building a team based on what you expected to fight fun.

Kind of disappointed that they nerfed Tali. She was extremely powerful in ME the first, when you could just lay waste to a battlefield with all of her tech skills, but on this one, she basically sucks.

I managed to get every achievement on my first play except level 30 character, complete a romance subplot, and the one for hitting 20 enemies with two biotic powers at the same time. I got to 16 on that one, simply because I hardly used biotic powers until near the end.

I strongly urge you to see the Tali romance, if only for how adorably awkward she is about the whole thing.

Jack is pretty standard fare damaged high school goth girl.

Yeoman is a joke.

And please, for the love of god, play a female Shepard to land Garrus. Hilarity ensues.

Alternatively just look these up on the youtube.

Jack and Tali are the only ones on the fem side that are cool I'm assuming Yeoman is Miranda?

Surely that character who acts as your secretary and annoys you about returning people's emails.

Kelly, yes. Talk about bland.

My first thought when choosing Tali was "Let's get weird," but the romance with her is very endearing... and weird, yes ("let me do some research to make... this work"). It's the same with Garrus, really. I think their subplots are more fulfilling, even if a bit outlandish.

The Yeoman is a girl named Kelly, who is your personal assistant. If you romance her, she gets much more 'personal' in her assistance. Miranda is your typical cheerleader / rich bitch type.

Also, Mordin is the most awesome party member ever. Just look him up on youtube when he offers medical advice.... or SINGS.

This is the one I was trying for, but I'm guessing that having a female Shepard disqualified me from the start.


I actually started this one, and got to the point where Garrus told me that he'd have to do some research on how to make it work, but at the time, I was still holding out hope that it would let me go after Tali or Miranda. Also oh god gross what the hell. I reloaded a save from a few minutes before I started that conversation.

To all of you people playing on Normal/Veteran, once you get past Freedom's Progress, do all of the enemies start having shield/armor, or just some of them? I started a new Adept on Veteran and none of the robots I ran into up until the boss fight on FP had anything but lonely little red health bars. No armor to speak of. It was....cute.

OK so that's at least two playthroughs I just have to make. Seriously, not even kidding. If I don't see both of those subplots, what was the point of me buying the game? :tpg:

I can't figure out how Tali's romance is going to work out. Her suit contains an atmosphere Shepard probably* can't breathe, and she can't breathe in regular Nitrogen/Oxygen atmosphere that suits most sentients. So unless they settle for dirty talking and some webcam cybering...

* I'm currently having this same discussion on another forum. I figure her atmosphere would probably kill most people, but then again... CAN SHEPARD EVEN DIE?

Additional Spam:
You mean the developers are open-minded about inter-species relationships, but they DRAW THE LINE at lesbian sex?

Spoiler about the Justicar:

So are the bits of the game where you're not holding hands with aliens any good?

All this talk of digital romance has helped me settle on a thread title at least.

I think it is more likely a case of the developers not thinking that would be in line with Tali's character, considering that female Shepards have the option of romance with Kelly Chambers. I guess I'll just have to play a male Shepard for once.

No, it's just some characters are bi and some aren't. A female shepard can bed Yeoman Kelly. A female shepard could bed Liara in the first game. But not everyone is gay.

P.S.

If you'd paid attention in the first game, you'd know that Tali doesn't have her own atmosphere, it's just that they spend their whole life on space ships with recycled atmosphere so they have no immune system. Thus the helmet.

P.P.S.

Shin, the title is tits, mate. Unfortunately Mass Effect is like the one game Skills hates.

Dragon Age has returned a measure of my faith to Bioware, and everyone who has made their opinions known to have disliked the first one for many of the same reasons I did seem to say this one fixes most of them, so I'm willing to give it a shot.

But two midterms and two major assignments due over the course of this week prevent pretty much any buyin', rentin', or otherwise playin' of yee olde space operas, so it's gonna have to wait until at least next Monday.

Yeah. I was just making a cheap wisecrack. However, thanks for clearing that up. I guess Kelly and female Shepard is more definitely lesbian than Liara and Female Shepard since she doesn't really have a gender. Even if she looks female.

Oh damn. I don't even know how I missed that particular piece of information. I did pay attention to most stuff, even to the codex entries. Call it sci-fi prejudices? I'm used to seeing aliens in facemasks because they can't breathe what we breathe, a la Babylon 5 to name but one example.

Anyway, thanks for setting me straight a second time.

Additional Spam:
The shooting feels more involving this time around. Last time it was kind of weak, like they couldn't be bothered to go all out on the shooting elements. This time around, you can't say that. There's a cover system, you can get headshots. I don't know if other body parts take damage in any special way, but headshots can be an insta-kill which is a big advantage. Last but not least your team mates don't feel quite so fragile this time around. Can't even count the number of times I had to use Unity in the first game, to revive foolish characters who charged in and got blasted to shreds. Not so much, so far in this game.

All damage is localised I believe, and you can definitely trip people up by shooting their legs. In fact, with the mechs you can take their legs out completely and they'll start dragging their torsos along with their arms.

The combat is very much improved and whilst I enjoyed it in the first game mostly now it's an absolute blast. For one the biotics have been massively improved and are a lot of fun to play with (you can now curve biotics around things to an extent, so stuff like the biotic Pull can be used to drag enemies out of cover).

Fuck Tali, me and Jack are gonna become pirates :cape:
I think I might have led tali on though, Is there gonna be some shitty confrontation now?

Side Note: The sidequest that has you saving the crashing ship made me feel badass. Fuck yeah Death Mask.

I specific remember something like that where its like this:

[Paragon] Annoyed response
[Neutral] Punch him in the face
[Renegade] Shoot him in the foot

That would be the encounter with (very minor spoiler I guess)



- A million bland planets to ride around on in your Mako, only to discover a generic pirate base - FIXED
- Textures STILL trying to load two years later - FIXED
- Garrus being a complete sissy whiner - FIXED
- Elevator rides - replaced with load screens. six of one, half dozen of the other.

Significant annoyance added: resource gathering/planet scanning
Minor problems added: uh, not a whole lot of weapons to choose from, Tali no longer a powerful combatant, no real "on the fly" heals, have to be patient and wait for your shields to recharge (maybe this isn't as much a problem as it is a minor adjustment that you'll have to get used to since it worked differently in the first game)

This time around your teammates' AI is a lot better. They will move around the battefield a lot more independently, instead of kind of sticking inside an invisible ten foot bubble around you, unless you specifically tell them where to go. And you can control each one separately, so if you want your tank to go up front and be a distraction, tell him to go up there while you tell your other guy to go to X flanking position. Your teammates do a decent job of keeping themselves alive, but are definitely not immortal either.

Why doesn't the soundtrack have the songs that are played in the various nightclubs throughout the game. This is bullshit man.

As regards to the genre, this article brings up a good point...

Not exactly earth-shattering, but a good way to describe the game to people who haven't played it and are on the fence after the first one.

Some of the options are a little weird like that. In Zaeed's loyalty mission, for instance:

Dread to imagine what Renegade would lead to.

Ha, Zaeed, I still gotta download that add on. >.>; Is the loyalty quest for that guy any good? From what I got from the reading he just seen to be an after thought design to prevent secondary market.

Does anyone have any estimate when Bioware was planning to release the Hammerhead add-on? Like, this year or next year or what.

So here's my question. Does this game actually fix all the problems from the first game? Because, for one reason or other, I didn't like the first game that much. I WANTED to because the story was pretty good (or at least what I played of it) but I remember being frustrated as hell with the leveling and shooting and I just gave up. Everyone has been playing it and I'm kinda jealous that I don't have a new game to play. (Still haven't picked up Bayonetta)

Levelling system is completely different. Planetary excursions are divided into "missions", at the end of which you receive XP and level up. Combat is a lot tighter these days, too; the enemy health meters at the top of the screen are far more intuitively designed — if an enemy has a barrier and armour on top of its health, for instance, then it'll show you the health remaining in the barrier before you break through to the armour and finally the base health.

It generally makes a lot more technical sense than the first game did.

Not bad, actually. Provides an interesting bit of backstory to one of the mercenary groups, gives you a (very useful) heavy weapon, and feels totally seamless with the rest of the game.

I'm glad your mom died now. That is how much I hate you. She'd be disappointed and I'm glad she's not here to see this day.

My favorite part about the clubs? It seems that future ones will be just as self-masturbatory and uselss as present day ones~

Just finished it on normal, about to go through again on Insanity. Gotta say, didn't enjoy it quite as much as ME1, but it was still a damn good time.

Who did you wind up with, Frankie boy?

So I just finished my first playthrough the other day and Kinda pissed me off a little, because I did everyone's loyalty quests and got all their upgrades.

Anyway, I started my second character on ME1 and chose the "Sole Survivor" backstory for him. In keeping with that,

Not possible to be the only survivor. There has to be someone besides Joker there to help him onto the Normandy. If nobody is there I'm pretty sure he dies.

Huh. I kinda figured all that stuff was pretty common knowledge, which is why I didn't spoiler tag it. I mean any magazine article about the game mentions it, and it even brings it up during loading screens. If you really feel it needs to be hidden though, I won't argue. My bad.

Anyway, bummer there's no way to do that. Thought it'd be pretty cool for that particular storyline.

I know, but I feel better safe than sorry, no worries. =o

Well,

I just got to the suicide mission bit this afternoon, on my first playthrough. On Insanity. While it's challenging, it doesn't really live up to its name. You do have to play a LOT more judiciously than you did on ME1's Insanity, though; shit, on my last playthrough I didn't use the cover system at all. Actually got through most of the game by sprinting past all the enemies.

Honestly, the difficulty curve is all over the place. First two hours of the game are pretty punishing, but the only genuinely hard bits afterwards are the ones where you're working against time or other factors—think the sidemission with the quarian and the packs of varren, or the bit where you have to defeat the hordes of mercs and not let Archangel get killed—and the bits of the game with husks/abominations. Apparently they don't have armour on the lower difficulties, which sounds ridiculously fucking easy to me.

Oh well, going to start a second (relaxed) playthrough on Hardcore afterwards.

edit: Praetorian battle on Horizon was FUCKING BRUTAL, too. As was the bit with the waves of collectors preceding it. That whole segment took me about three hours, I swear. Probably a lot easier without the armoured husks.

I find the only real trick you need to take down that Colossus on insanity is to stick to the left side, be patient, and rend him to pieces with the collector beam.

I did it by sitting back with the wounded quarian dude for a few minutes, eliminating all of the present geth, inching forwards to pick up ammo and activate the next wave of footsoldiers, wash, rinse, repeat. After that, I inched across the elevated bit to the far right, crouched behind the little bit of cover up there, and kept mauling it with a combination of Incinerate and the collector beam. Took about ten minutes and did it on my first attempt.

Watched my brother do it exactly the same way afterwards, but he cut out a lot of time by using the Cain to shave off most of the Colossus' health in a few seconds flat.

I didn't get the Cain until well after I had taken down the Colossus. I used it in a side mission inside a tiny, cramped little cruiser ship. 15 blue sun mercs became a lot of blue sun merc pieces.

But yeah, your approach would work. I guess I was just impatient. Sat back for the solid first wave, moved up and left and cut down the rest. Tons of cover up there. Sat to its left and let loose wif dat collectah beams. I attack the structure Wolvie Berzerk style, and knock out the fuckin' pin and bickety bam, the motherfucker is rubble. Hence, no game show.

http://imgur.com/lchI6.png

YEEEEEAHHHHH



Time to start a second playthrough, I think. Probably on Hardcore.

Beat it last night. Highly satisfying game in almost every respect. I think that this may be the first time a game sequel has delivered on the mantra of "bigger and better than the original" in every possible fashion. I'm a little iffy on the logic behind the characters from the original game showing up / not showing up but its still better than YOUR BIOTIC IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE shit.

I also don't care for the ammo update. I really liked that the first game only had you worrying about weapons overheating; looking for ammo seemed like such a lame 1998 FPS contrivance somehow.

LeHah --
I agree with it improving on the original. I always ended up stopping once I got full control of the Normandy in #1. I finally dragged myself through it, and the game only really shined when you got to storyline-focused joints. I did all the missions, but the worlds/planets were all horribly copy-and-pasted. Fuck the Mako. SPEED BUMP. TIME TO FLIP AND GO IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION :(

Going from #1 immediately in to #2 gave me a "whoa, holy fuck" reaction. It went from a shooter-ish RPG to a shooter with a tiny bit of RPG involved. Head shots being something I appreciated quite early on :V

I enjoy the ammo, but I would've loved to have more shots on some weapons. The shotgun only has, what, 10 or 15 total rounds? Please. And also, more weapons would be awesome. I don't know if I'm nearing the end or not, but I have only a few different weapons. Haven't found a different sniper rifle, and I only have the Collectors Shotgun aside from my vanilla one.

Last time I came across a game like this that improved on the predecessor so much was Uncharted 2.

I miss the Mako, despite its faults. I had hoped that the shuttle was going to be some kind of vicious fucking awesome Transformer type of hovercraft shit instead of just a deploying point.

And is it me or did ME1 have a LOT more side missions?

I'd take driving over bumpy ass planets again any day over scanning them. God damn that shit gets aggravating by the time you are on your third playthrough.

Yeah, the planet scanning shit was a serious grind. I wouldn't have been so bad if

1.) The scanning cursor was larger

2.) You could find Element Zero a little more often

3.) Shit picked up phat beats

Fuck larger it needs to be faster. If it scrolled as fast as it did when you weren't holding the button then it'd be fine. BUT IT DOESN'T.

I hope those people who complained about the Mako are happy. Assholes.

Planet scanning sucks. Mako sucked more. Here's hoping they do something better in numbah 3.

I don't know, I think it worked really well — in ME1 you could find a nice chest-high wall to hide behind and spend ten minutes sitting there picking off wave after wave of enemies. ME2's ammo system actually forces you to move forward, and it's never that hard to find.

Nope. Bioware are hard at work on ME3, and it might be coming out in 2011. Plus, there's always DLC to keep us busy; I'm hoping they'll put out a full expansion pack à la Dragon Age.

Does Krelian have any helpful suggestions for beating the game on Insanity? I just started that up last night and I figure its going to be a serious grind until I can get the bigger armor/health bonuses.

Well, if you're playing through Insanity with the Shepard from your first playthrough then you're in for a real fucking treat — all of the enemies start off tuned for whatever level you were at when you finished the game, and with no upgrades at first, you're in for a world of pain.

The main things I can advise are to conserve the hell out of ammunition and medi-gel. Don't use heavy weapons on anything other than boss encounters and YMIR mechs; you'll need as much of that shit as you can get (that said, I did beat the final boss without using any heavy weapons at all, seeing as I brought the flamethrower along like the dumbfuck I am). If you reckon you can get through a battle alone, then don't waste medi-gel on getting your assholes to stand up again. I don't know if resources like that are scarcer on Insanity than other difficulties, but until I learnt to conserve them I constantly felt like there wasn't nearly enough available.

Also, if you're playing an Infiltrator, Assassination Cloak is the best friend you'll ever have. I found the best way to deal with the sections of the game with husks and abominations — which are armoured on Insanity, by the way — was often to cloak, run the fuck away and find something to hide behind before spraying their legs with my SMG.

Basically just be prepared to spend most of the game in cover if you want to survive (unless you're playing a Vanguard or just enjoy getting up close and personal — in which case, good fucking luck).

Soooo here is my take on the game, i beat it last night on normal as an adept (I bow to the people who beat it on insanity). I love the idea of people emailing me and letting me know what happened to them rather than just doing it and wondering later. I loved the idea of some many different endings that its just crazy, i was sitting there the whole time thinking if Tali died i would quit right then and there. lol

I only killed Zaeed and Legion, I really didnt like Zaeed anyway.

Soooooo the only bad thing is with the way that i play i had a hard time finishing the game without very single planet that was in the game scanned and depleted. It took forever!! Whoever desgined that planet scanning system has had some serious problems. >.< Where was the automatic scan button when you needed it?

Why the hell would you scan every planet? You need maybe a tenth of them to get every upgrade.

Actually, that leads to one complaint: Not enough money in this game. Need more cash, man.

I said "fuck that noise" to scanning and popped open a trainer to max out my resources. Folks will bitch/diss me for it, but fuck that noise. As it stands, they set hard caps (ie: find X more of this upgrade time before you can do this) often enough that it ain't a big deal. Plus it allowed me to rather painlessly re-build my character a few times, in addition to swapping out skills until I found one I liked.

I've got a long enough backlog =I I ain't about to get bogged down by scavenger hunting for that extra 10% damage on my poopsock. I did planet exploration for a while, but scrounging for Element Zero or getting 50k of Palladium just grated on me.

Edit: Totally knew Deni would diss this :V

Three words.

Squad. Cryo. Ammo.

Holy jesus shitballin' christ the amount of ammo you save by killing an enemy because he's at half health and he shatters is immense. Drops both husks and collectors really quick. Only problematic thing it's not that great for is Scions, which you can deal with via the assassination cloak, though.

Also on insanity, since this game has no reward for actually killing enemies, if you can cloak and then haul ass to the next checkpoint, and if you die after that, the previous enemies count as killed. There are parts later on in the game with multiple husk attacks where you can do this and skip multiple annoying encounters. If you're super quick at the bypassing minigame you can cloak and do that to pass by some doors and fights too, although I never bothered with that. Using mouse control makes that easier I imagine on PC, than the slow scroll of the stick on circlebox.

I don't know how you can not like anyone voiced by Robin Sachs.

Anyone interested in dialogue left out of the game but the data still being on the disc, there was a thread on /v/ some time ago that had some interesting links:

Fuck them for not letting Legion be recruitable earlier.

For the 3 guys interested here, yet another DLC Coming soon.

I just hope to god it isnt another Hammerhead type DLC, because that was just terrible. The gimmick of that ship was over before it even began. Kasumi stolen memories was pretty good, but short.