Game Developers Conference Wishlists

GamePro and PC World have each put together wishlists for what they’d like to see at this week’s GDC event in San Francisco, and Mass Effect 2 gets mentioned in both.

Here’s what GamePro has to say:

At this point, we’re guessing new info, screens, videos, and the like for the hotly-anticipated sequel to Mass Effect, will trickle out of Microsoft at a painfully slow pace. Mass Effect 2’s development team will be discussing their new level-design process in a session at GDC 2009, but there are no guarantees that anything from the game will actually be shown.

And PC World’s blurb:

Confirmation that Mass Effect 2 will actually be a role-playing game. Mass Effect wasn’t. Hey, no problem, just rebrand yourself an adventure with action elements and statistical window dressing and you’re golden, no? Maybe. Even then, Mass Effect was frequently monotonous. How many of you (fans included be honest!) really looked forward to popping into some massive new area, knowing you had hours of wandering and chit-chatting and “Tell me about…” dialogue loops ahead before the next major plot dish or action sequence? I’m all for dense narratives and dramatic character arcs, but off the nauseatingly contrived talky rails, please. And if you’re going to toss optional areas in to explore this time, put some meat on those bones. Venturing off-path to chart the peripheral planets in Mass Effect’s “galactic” play-scape was like loading random levels in some forgettable last-century game.