Mass Effect 2 Announced For Early 2010 72
Bioware has confirmed rumors that development for the sequel to Mass Effect is well under way, and they're planning on a release in early 2010. They mentioned PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game, but no information was given about a possible PS3 version. CVG has a write-up of what we know about Mass Effect 2 so far. Quoting: "In the shooting department the developer's official announcement promises 'intensified combat' and 'expanded weapon options.' We're hoping some of the work goes on improving the game's shooting mechanics, which were solid enough but could certainly do with some polishing to meet 2010 standards — especially in the cover system department. As for 'expanded weapon options,' we can only assume this refers to the in-depth gun tweaking and customisation options available in Mass Effect 1."
Re:Sequels (Score:5, Interesting)
True, but sometimes the sequel get's it even more right. Can you imagine a world without Zelda: Ocarina of time? Or Half life 2?
I'm not opposed to well thought out sequels. It's the Electronic-Arts-sequel-every-year-regardless-of-need-or-quality that I'm opposed to.
(To EA - Keep developing games like Dead Space and Mirror's Edge and I'll stop making you the brunt of all my gripes)
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For instance:
Maybe this time around we can get an inventory screen that actually works.
Sorts by Name.
Groups identical items.
Allows easy comparison of items.
Generally makes it possible to open your inventory and not feel like dieing.
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I love sequels. If it's a game I like I want 100 more of them. Another fallout game? Yes please. Another star trek movie? Hell yes.
Down with sequels! Down with adaptations! George Lucas should have stopped at a new hope! Peter Jackson should never have made LOTR! Hamlet s
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FIX THE DUNGEONS. That's all they need to do to make their blockbuster even more bockblustery.
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However, if people modded you down because the quality of your post was poor, which it was, then more power to them.
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This Troll also shows that they know absolutely nothing about the game, since when ME was first announced BioWare stated that it was intended to be a trilogy. Way to impress us, d00d!
Re:Sequels (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sequels (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sequels (Score:5, Informative)
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That's been my impression so far, I was about 7-9 hours in and then I upgraded to Vista and didn't backup my save. So I need to start over again.
Re:Sequels (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, props for the immediately ignorant first post.
Mass Effect was ALWAYS planned as the first in a trilogy telling a larger story.
Good to know that you actually pay attention before spouting off ignorance.
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It was always supposed to be a trilogy (Score:5, Informative)
Bioware announced Mass Effect as the first part of a Trilogy at the 2006 E3.
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...Uh. So your reasoning is that anything that isn't stand-alone is automatically crap, even if it was planned out as a trilogy in the beginning? That sounds very flawed to me.
Personally, I'm looking forward to it. Perhaps the combat wasn't amazing in Mass Effect, but the story and overall *fun* made up for it, to me.
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A modern game as complex as Mass Effect (ME) costs a *LOT* of money to develop (the time and effort it took just to write such a complex backstory and create such an in-depth "world" of ME must have been staggering). If a developer is going to put that kind of money and effort into a game (not to mention the incredible *risk* that it might fail or have mediocre sales), they need to know that they're not just doing it as a "one off" game. If ME had no possibility of a sequel and no further possibility for us
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How about more variety? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess a new cover system might be nice, but I'd much rather they spent time designing side-quests that didn't all take place on identical ships/outposts etc.
Re:How about more variety? (Score:4, Insightful)
True. After a while, I knew where the mobs would be and where the target would be without ever having set foot in that particular facility. All it took was identifying what the first room looked like, and everything was identical after that.
Other than that, the game was damn near perfect.
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But fix the bloody Mako controls.
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The mako controls were awesome. I could make that thing turn on a dime and run circles around those giant serpents. I've never felt more connected to a game vehicle except for the warthogs from Halo. I explored so much of each planet it's just not even funny. I spent literally hours navigating mountain ridges just for the hell of it. It's like they took lunar lander and made it 3d and awesome.
Thank goodness they didn't borrow control schemes from Half-Life 2 eh?
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The landing and Mako driving parts always reminded me of Star Control 2 and driving around searching for minerals and biological samples and such. God I loved that game! I wish they'd make something similiar with Mass Effect.
How about instead of buying your gear and upgrades, you only got the blueprints, and you needed to gather the raw materials on the planets you land on? That'd give me incentive to explore, and there'd be more valuable or rare materials on the dangerous worlds.
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They hired 30 more artists and designers back in February pretty much for this point I'm guessing. I agree with you though.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22530 [gamasutra.com]
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Weapon variety please! (Score:5, Informative)
One of my biggest complaints with the first game were the entirely generic weapons and mods. There were differences between types of weapons, but that was it. The routine eventually comes down to:
There was never any reason to break from this pattern and this essentially made the weapons generic "loot" to collect. If that was all they were intended to be, just automatically give the player credits instead.
Named and unique weapons would go a long way towards fixing this. I think only few times during the whole game did I actually scavenge a useful weapon. All of the others were bought in stores. The situation is almost identical for mods, except that I did acquire more useful mods via scavenging.
The weapon mods also had the addition problem of being almost entirely useless. All enemies fit into two categories: organic or mechanical. Simply equip the appropriate mod to boost your organic or mechanical damage bonus and fire away. I rarely had to stray from this model. When you get the ability to equip two weapon mods things open a little, but that happens rather late in the game.
Armor mods fared slightly better, but only a little. In general, I found the best way to operate was to equip most part members with the best shield boosting mods available. Makes everybody much harder to kill.
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the higher level guns (and higher quality) equip 2 weapon mods and an ammo mod. the lower level ones equip an ammo mod what you described and a weapon mod (no idea how you cant count more accuracy as not useful.
example setups ive used
shotgun
heatsink to prevent overheat
knockback rounds
rifle
heatsink to fire longer
stability to stay more accurate
poison rounds (they arent called that but its basically what they do. they lower enemies abilites.)
sniper rifle
accuracy mod
explosive rounds
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Yes, I'm aware of the mod amounts. When I said 2, I meant the ability to equip two weapon mods instead of just one. And more accuracy *is* useful, I simply meant that once you find a useful setup there is almost no need to change it ever.
I suppose variety is good in that it gives different players different load outs, but it would be much more useful if any given player had reason to occasionally change mods. But, in the end, there are just too many mods of dubious value which most players will almost ne
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Mods were useless? Heh. I remember my sister taking a look at me
playing, and wondering "Where did you get a rocket launcher, I never
saw one!" It was just a sniper rifle with two damage mods and
some explosive bullets that had splash damage. One shot would
overheat it (three or four times over) but the damage was enough
to take out everything but the big walking tanks in one shot.
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Indeed. I spent a lot of time turning mediocre weapons into fearsome tools of destruction. There were definitely combinations that were a lot better than others.
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For the first two thirds of the game, the best weapons were typically found in the field, after that, you usually had enough money to start buying Spectre class weapons and then that was pretty much over with.
There were also a lot more mods then just organic/geth, but those are extremely helpful once you start getting them.
So, elevators again? (Score:4, Funny)
We can only pray that ME2 is blissfully elevator free (and therefore without 20 min. of load-time between scenes) ;P
Piloting (Score:1)
Would love to be able to pilot the ship.
Maybe some turret missions would be great, asteroid dodging too.
And would like more choice when it comes to planetary drops, the mako got boring.
would like planets you finished quests on to be revisited and maybe more quest done for that planet.
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I would like to see a smaller 'aerial/space fighter' type ship which can be launched from the main ship, a la the Mako, and some missions/maps which bring an element of an old school 'shoot-em-up' to the game. The mako missions, to some extent, did that a little bit, but I have an immersion problem with a deep future, high-tech game where any time you are on a planet, you are moving in a slow tank - that makes no sense most of the time; I can see that certain missions could require a tank (like a mission wh
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I played it on my 360 (then sold both) (Score:2)
I enjoyed Mass Effect, I would give it a comfortable 7.5/10 and 3 of that is for the amazing, moody music.
(Admitedly I was 'emo' at that time of my life myself)
None the less, lovely music, incredible graphics, not a bad story and gameplay, well... I don't know, people seem to rave about Biowares stuff but Kotor and Mass Effect did not do it for me, they sit in the action RPG area but the action is a bit well lame for choice of a better word and the RPG elements just didn't feel fully fleshed out.
Oblivion is
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Oblivion is an FPS with RPG trappings. If success in combat depends more on *my* ability to manipulate twin thumb-sticks and buttons quickly than *my character's* supposed combat abilities (driven by my decision-making), the game is a shooter, not an RPG.
I've just picked up Mass Effect cheaply, but haven't played yet. I'm hoping it's better in this regard; some previous forum trawling suggests that I'll be able to steer the gameplay in the direction of tactical combat decisions over twitch shooting.
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Long after getting my fill of Viva la Vida, I was still playing Mass Effect. It took a few months to realize that I'd been playing the whole time with the in-game music still muted.
Love the original (Score:2)
Mass Effect is definitely my favorite game of the current generation. Beat it three times in February alone.
The only thing I think that really needs fixing is the Mako. It just drove so crappily. Or maybe it was the way they designed the worlds. 75% of them had gigantic mountains and crags every five feet.
Anyways, can't wait for the game, but yet I will patiently wait. Bring it on.
let's hope it's a simultaneous release (Score:2)
they waited a good year and a half to release on PC.
I bought it for PC. It kicked much ass. I played it in full 1080p. Ran like butter.
The only thing I didn't like was the fact that to play "bring down the sky", you had to play through the whole game again. I had already finished it before BDTS came out for PC.
anyway, it was a true masterpiece and I look forward to seeing what bioware comes up with.
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it feels like a year and a half then!
The MACO (Score:2)
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That's "Mako" - it's a type of shark [wikipedia.org].
(and a concept car [wikipedia.org] that influenced the Corvette)
And I thought the Mako was fun to drive! It was like a little R/C dune buggy with jets. You just never flipped it. :)
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depends on the platform the thing was pretty easy to drive on the PC...
The entire game was way better on the PC than on the xbox, and cheaper as well
REALLY Looking Forward to This (Score:1)
I already owned a PS3, but I bought an XBOX 360 pretty much just so I could play the original Mass Effect.
I'm a die-hard RPG fan, and I'm actually looking forward to Mass Effect 2 more than Final Fantasy XIII. (Which is probably a good thing, since I'm pretty sure Duke Nukem Forever will come out before FF13 does.