Mass Effect 2 Interview

USA Today has posted the results of an interview they conducted with Mass Effect 2 project director Casey Hudson during last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. An excerpt, as usual:

GH: What will fans of the series be most surprised at when play Mass Effect 2?

Hudson: How good the overall gameplay and combat feels. I think everybody expects the story to be really cool and interesting characters, and it has all those things, but the surprise is when you pick it up it feels like a top shooter with precise shooting. But instead of being just great combat in between points of a story, I think you’ll find you want to get back to the story and see what the results of your fights are. This usually isn’t the case in a shooter. So we think we’re offering a nice balance there.

GH: And unlike Dragon Age: Origins, you’ll hear your protagonist’s voice, Commander Shepard, along with the characters you meet?

Hudson: Yes, there’s around 130,000 lines of dialogue, all of which are spoken. Not only does it have a non-linear story and your choices affect things in the real-time dialogue system, but we found quite often one person is watching the gamer play — maybe a wife or husband — and they like the fact it’s cinematic, very movie-like. We first heard this a lot in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, so we we’re hoping for the same kind of stories to come out of those who play Mass Effect 2.