With Dragon Age already on store shelves and off to a pretty solid start, BioWare is now turning its attention towards its next major release, the sequel to Mass Effect. Although the first game garnered numerous awards and was a success for BioWare, some gamers felt it was too easy.
Mass Effect 2 producer Adrien Cho sees this as an unfortunate trend in the industry and he's looking to at least provide players with a greater challenge in the upcoming RPG slated for January. “Sometimes I think we’re pampering gamers too much,” he told VideoGamesDaily. “Just recently, a game like Demon Souls is fantastic because when you die, and you fail, it’s not because the game was cheap it’s usually because you didn’t do something properly. It goes back to that learning mechanism of 'Well, I tried this – it didn’t work. I’m going to try something different.' And I think that’s going to be something in Mass Effect 2, we don’t want it to be a cakewalk, you want a challenge."
Sometimes developers don't give gamers enough credit. “I think gamers want a more sophisticated game, they don’t want a breezy game where you see all the cinematics and just put in your hours and play it through," added Cho. "So definitely there’s some serious consequences. Delicious consequences! You’ll have to play to find out.”
Personally, we found the first Mass Effect to be very enjoyable (except for the horrid item management and elevator load times), so we're eager to see what changes BioWare has made. The game will likely be a top seller in calendar Q1 of next year as well, which is looking far busier than any Q1 in recent memory.
3 Comments
December 4, 2009
I'm certainly looking forward to this game, but I have to agree with the dificulty level.
Thankfully though many games now include harder difficulty settings, where the variables that control enemy damage increase, and your damage decrease, but that's it. Still, it provides a challenge.
I prefer though a challenge where the AI gets better as the difficulty increases though.
December 4, 2009
Hey, props for trying to make games more of a challenge. Some of us have been playing them for two decades and have gotten quite good at them; it's nice to have our skills tested.
December 6, 2009
Bring it.