Mass Effect 2 ships this week, and the early reviews seem to show nothing but glowing praise for BioWare's latest epic RPG. Based on just six reviews, the game's Metacritic currently stands at 96, which beats the first Mass Effect's score of 91. BioWare seems to be benefiting from their hard work. The team really took all the feedback they received on the original game to heart and set out to correct any and all problems for the sequel.
In a new interview with Gamasutra, Mass Effect 2's lead producer Adrien Cho explained, "Every area needed improvement... We knew what we wanted to change right away. As soon as we shipped Mass 1, every group knew that we wished we had a little more time. So, those were easily identified. But the other part of the equation was actually taking all the feedback -- I'm not saying some -- absolutely every feedback from press and the fans, and collating all that into a huge list."
"Everything eventually fit within certain categories, and when we looked at that, mapped with the things that we wanted to fix, it became really clear. It became a blueprint. It made making the sequel really easy. But making the sequel, it makes sense both financially, and effort-wise. It was really hard to make the first game. I cannot describe just the amount of effort, the tensions. But once you get that out the door, there's this firm foundation. And the team, they understand exactly what we're building."
Cho also noted that Mass Effect 2 isn't just an evolution of the first Mass Effect, but in reality, the game is the end product of design that started out on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) for the first Xbox.
"Here's the interesting thing. Mass Effect is really an evolution of KOTOR. [Laughs] The core team's actually the same team," he said. "And you can see, if you look at KOTOR to Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 2 really represents the embodiment of all those things that maybe we wanted to try in KOTOR but were limited by hardware, by gameplay design decisions... And so, KOTOR was still kind of turn-based, but you still got a bit of action in there. Mass Effect, we took what we learned from KOTOR and said, 'Okay, so we're limited by that at this point, whether by IP, or by technology. Let's bring in a little bit more action into it.' I say we tried pretty good, it turned out."
"But then when we got to Mass Effect 2 and we realized, 'Alright, if that was our first foray into real-time, let's make it way better.' Buy you still don't lose the core aspects, which are story, character development, which I think at the end of the day is really at the core of a BioWare game. We always say 'shooter shooter shooter!' for Mass Effect 2, but I think our fans always know that when you buy a BioWare game, you always get a fantastic tale."
3 Comments
January 26, 2010
The first thing people will point to: taking out the Mako driving sequences, which most people didn't seem to like. The second thing: making the game's combat more articulate and taking out much of the equipment micromanagement.
January 26, 2010
it was OK at first, using the mako to explore planets but it did get repetitive after the tenth planet or so. im not certain how bioware could let the player explore planets without the mako as it would get tedious on foot unless they took it out completely which in turn would take out side-quests and lifespan.
January 26, 2010
From what I understand, there's still exploring but they've switched it up a bit. You can still explore undocumented planets, where you can launch probes and search for materials to upgrade your weapons or uncover sidequests. So exploring is still there, just changed around and apparently better.