Thanks to the EA press folks today who granted the old GamingShogun and his cohorts EA Media badges. You see, in all my scheduling I forgot to book anything with EA. Massive doh!

Anyhow, once we got into the EA Media status, we got a behind closed-doors look at the upcoming RPG epic, Mass Effect 2. The demo we were shown featured a few different environments as well as showed off a bit of the game’s new features.

First thing we learned was that Commander Shepard is still alive. At least, for now, but more on that later. It seems that some unknown force is abducting human beings all over the known galaxy and Shepard has been tasked with finding out who… (cont.)
is responsible. So Shepard has to build up a new team to handle this mission which will find him aligning with a pro-human extremist group with some leads into the matter. From the way the developer spoke, it seems that the majority of the game is spent going from planet to planet and building this team.

Then EA showed us a new way to interact with others. Resembling a quick-time event, in some dialogue sequences a button will flash in the lower-left corner of the screen and upon clicking it, Shepard will effect some ‘physical justice’ on whomever he is talking to. This could be a simple shove or something as extreme as pushing a character off a ledge to their deaths (they showed this). All of these actions seem to be negative choices, which fits in with the darker tone of the game. They also showed Shepard and his crew (two unknown individuals) attempting to recruit this renown assassin named Thane.

Thankfully, on the way to Thane they encountered multiple new enemies that we had not seen in the previous game, as well as a few we had… The combat looks a ton more streamlined and is definitely touching more on the line of a shooter. Thankfully they keep their tactical aspect by allowing you to stack-up actions against multiple foes and then returning to real-time to watch them play out. Overall this looks to be a welcome combat upgrade.

The final thing thing they showed us was a ‘spoiler’, SO DO NOT READ PAST THIS POINT if you do not want to know it….

The final sequence illustrated the fact that Shepard does not have to survive this game in order to complete it… In this spoiler, the Normandy was shown being destroyed and Shepard made a series of decisions leading to his demise. If this happens, your character will not be allowed to continue him and his stats on to Mass Effect 3…. You have been warned.