Mass Effect 2 Interview

GameSpy brings us some of the first solid details about Mass Effect 2 in the form of a pre-E3 interview with executive producer Casey Hudson.

GameSpy: In the original Mass Effect, decisions had a real impact on the game. Has that changed significantly in Mass Effect 2?

Casey Hudson: It’s definitely a continuation of the idea that you can have agonizing choices and that they all have very real consequences to the story. The fun thing is that Mass Effect 2 is going to make people realize that their actions in the first game really did have consequences, because the results go beyond those in the first game.

I think it’s something where people are going to realize that to such a degree that they’ll want to go back and play the first game again with that in mind. For example, from the moment you start Mass Effect 2, you’ll realize that the world that you left behind in Mass Effect 1 is where you start in Mass Effect 2. It starts out being shaped a little bit differently based on your endings and the choices you made.

All throughout the game, you’ll see that if you made a decision in the first one, like where someone died in the first game, that character will be dead in the second. It makes you really think that when they reach a moment in Mass Effect 1, or Mass Effect 2, they’re decisions that can impact the ending of the trilogy. That realization will make an impact. You’ll recognize characters from the first game, and the consequences of decisions from the first game.

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GameSpy: Other major fixes?

Casey Hudson: First of all, combat. Combat just feels and plays better. As soon as you pick up the controls, it just feels the way you want a shooter to feel. Buttery smooth aiming, very subtle little things to make the aiming work better and control better. New powers, too.

In Mass Effect 1, people really liked the idea of having a squad of three, that they can move around, set to follow, and send on ahead. But, for example, you frequently would come up to a door, and you could send them up ahead, but you wouldn’t know where they’d go. With Mass Effect 2 it’s a relatively simple change, but you can tell them exactly where to go, and you have exact control over their positioning. It’s just one of countless changes. I think we listed 38 areas of improvement, not improvements themselves, but categories.

The Mako is one of them. We haven’t talked much about it, we won’t even show it at E3 yet, but we’ll still have that aspect of the gameplay. Space exploration will still be there. People really loved getting really immersed in the science fiction, going beyond the barrier of a handmade story and going out into the galaxy to see what’s there. They loved that idea, but they wanted it to be richer, more variety. So we’re addressing those things for Mass Effect 2.

One of the other things we’re doing is changing the fundamental mission structure. Part of the issue with the way it was done in Mass Effect 1, is that missions didn’t tie back into the story at all. You’d go off and do a mission, and it was a one-off thing. But in Mass Effect 2, things are more fundamentally intertwined. You can go off and there’s a lot more interaction with how you explore space, how you find a landing location on a planet, and once you’re there you’ll find much richer, more varied things to do on the actual planet. That mission itself, in the end, will have a much more important effect on the story.