BioWare has offered some insight into the upcoming Mass Effect 2 by way of a short documentary included with the “Platinum Hits” edition of Mass Effect, including how it will continue on from the multiple possible endings of the original game.
While the next Mass Effect DLC is described as a “casino/gaming/Fight Club space station” that’s “much more combat orientated” with a lighter focus on story, BioWare also plans to use future DLC to carry the story into Mass Effect 2. Many characters from the original game, like Captain Anderson and Ambassador Udina, will be back in Mass Effect 2, and perhaps most importantly, saved games from the original Mass Effect will also translate into the sequel, to “continue the experience” of the trilogy.
“In the second game, you’re actually gonna go through a darker period where you’re really looking for answers,” Project Director Casey Hudson said in The Future of Mass Effect video. “It’s a lot harder to find what the realities are, and there are a lot of twists and turns and it’s generally a much darker experience.”
“What we want to do with Mass Effect is look at universal themes, themes that apply to somebody in the future, in the past, in our present, contemporary themes,” added Lead Writer Drew Karpyshyn. “So as we’ve explored in Mass Effect 1, we had things like love lost, consequences, choice, does the end justify the means, morality in a general sense. We’re obviously going to continue with those kinds of themes.”
“We’ve been very conscious of the ability of players to make choices, and we understand that if those choices don’t have consequences that carry on through the trilogy, there is no point in making them,” he continued. “That obviously has painted us into a difficult position, because we have multiple threads, multiple endings, certain characters may or may not be alive. It’s created extra work for us, but we felt it was really necessary to capture what we were going for in Mass Effect.” As a result, BioWare is creating “alternate version of all sorts of scenarios” to accommodate the various possible outcomes in Mass Effect which will dramatically affect the way the game unfolds.
Mass Effect fans who want to see the video but don’t feel like buying another copy of the game can see a lo-res webcam capture on YouTube. Mass Effect 2 is currently in the works but no release target has been set.
via: Ars Technica
Published: Feb 17, 2009 06:27 pm