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Mass Effect 2: New Details Revealed

We go hands-on with new content and chat with BioWare about making the series' Empire Strikes Back.
by Chris Stead, IGN AU







Australia, October 8, 2009 -
BioWare is a studio that impresses. Its game-ography reads like the
evolutionary pathway of the western RPG: from top-down to third-person,
from D&D-based combat to real-time action, from narrative linearity to
open-ended emancipation and – dare we say it – from PC to console, the
developer has never failed to boldly take the RPG where no RPG has gone
before. Its latest project is arguably its most ambitious yet: an epic space
opera which spans across three games and plays like a shooter, yet remains
very much a role-playing experience. This week Greg Zeschuk, the co-founder
of BioWare, dropped by Sydney to show off a brand new level ahead of Mass
Effect 2's (ME2) early 2010 launch. And as the middle child, it's designed to be
the trilogy's Empire Strikes Back.

"Yeah we have definitely designed it in that fashion," he told us. "If you recall,
Empire Strikes Back was the darker chapter and that is how we designed the ME2
story and experience: to try and make the player reflect on the challenges of the character.
If you put ME2 next to the original it is definitely a darker, harder game."


Grunt goes hunting some wabbits. Sorry, biomechanical zombie things.

Beginning "soon after" the events in Mass Effect, Commander Shepard is scouring
the galaxy looking to recruit "up to a dozen of the galaxy's most dangerous operatives"
as a new threat begins to wipe human colonies from existence. In the new level on show,
we got to experience combat alongside two of these operatives. This included Grunt from
the burly Krogan race who is certainly a handy fighter to have on your side. "Grunt is good to
fight alongside. You would have seen the Krogan Rush where he just runs guys over - you could
make Wrex do it in the first game but Grunt will do it spontaneously which is interesting. It is
different than working with guys that have more traditional powers as Grunt has a much bigger
chance of surprising you."

And surprise you he does. Frequently during combat when confronted with close encounters,
Grunt would break into a run and wreck havoc. This new level was selected for the very purpose of
showing off this in-your-face combat. "We chose this level to show the range in what the player can do.
We had already shown in our PAX demo the long range combat, and now we wanted to reveal something
that was a lot more intimate. We can show off the melee combat, and the shotgun and the ammo types."

Combat has dramatically improved in ME2. As soon as you get it in your hands and begin running for cover
before snapping up your sights on oncoming enemies, you forget that you are even playing an RPG. It's all so fluid.
"Well combat was one of our big focuses. The original was the first time we had ever really tried a shooter, and just
getting the game done was a lot of work. So as time has rolled on we've just got a lot better at doing the combat. The
tradition of the RPG is a lot more like Dragon Age, whereas Mass Effect is more like a game with RPG features. I would
consider it more of a Shooter RPG. Especially after the changes we have made in this one: it is even more like a shooter.
It's very doable to make such a mix work; you just need to get practice with it."


There may not be a machine gun/chainsaw combo or shotgun/battle-axe, but the combat is much improved.

And practice is something this particular team is not short on. "We've benefited greatly in that we've kept the same team,
and they learnt a lot of lessons from the first game. The one way to make sure you create great games is to have a consistent
development team. The team that made Mass Effect 1 was the same as that of the Knights of the Old Republic, and literally those
same guys, plus a few new additions, are making ME2. That's why things like the shooting have gotten better because all the decisions
on what to focus upon were a lot easier. You see that with a lot of the best games: they stuck with the same team from Uncharted 1 to Uncharted 2
and look what happened! The games get so much better."

The second character we got to play alongside was Thane from the Drell species, a race new to the Mass Effect mythology. "You can
see that he is a fish-like guy, but he is also a really effective assassin. His race is still a little unclear, as in, it is not broadly known throughout the
galaxy – all we really know is that guys like him are really efficient killers. He is perfect for stealth assassin modes and there are certain missions where
he will be particularly effective with what he brings to the table."

It must be fun being able to create a whole new race, right? "It is! From the beginning you need to decide the purpose that the race serves
and then that can lead into artistic visualisation. You know back on someone's desk or in digital files there are like 42 different fish men and slowly it
evolved into a look that was this kind of cool, kind of calculated, aquatic guy. Then in a fighter you need to decide what powers they will have and
then you put them all together in a way in which it can be executed and modelled. The focus with Thane is aquatic, so we made his skin texture look
iridescent so it looks a bit shiny and fish-like. Even with the voice, he has this kind of bubbly voice. All this culminates in a base character that you can
toy with so that every other individual from that race is a variation."


Beware the fish! (That caption goes out to all the Gordon Korman fans out there!)

"You will notice a lot of that in ME2. For example you will remember the Salarians, which are kind of the traditional looking aliens: well we have new
Salarians in ME2 that are a little bit different from the originals but they are in that same zone. That's the neat thing! Once you have created a race
you don't want to stop using them. That is one of the really fun things about making Mass Effect : you get to watch these races take on a life of
their own."

But these are not the only things we learnt from our latest play session with this highly anticipated game. As Greg points out, the team "also wanted
to pick something that just looked cool." Despite being an enclosed level, the sense of scope and attention to detail is immediate: it feels like something
that is much bigger that what is immediately apparent. You can feel the weight of the galaxy around you. Indeed, in the course of the last two years
BioWare has managed to forge a much greater understanding of Unreal Engine 3 and make improvements towards a more enjoyable and poetic gaming
experience.

"We took three main steps to improving the engine. We put a lot of effort into both your team and the enemy's A.I. You'll see enemies do really smart
things like running from cover to cover and mounting or even jumping over obstacles properly. But we really focused on your team mates too, to make
sure they are pretty smart and their combat is really strong. In particular the way they use cover and their precision shooting. [Plus] we use a really
smart reticule. So if you are actually focused on an enemy you have different options you can [order your squad to] do: you can bring up set commands
on your hot buttons. If you point at the floor you can paint a 'go to' position on the ground, if you look at a power button they'll press the power button.
We really just wanted to make sure that no one was doing anything dumb: like walking into a corner.


Mass Effect 2 - darker, less clear cut and with more heavily tattooed chicks.

"We also made a lot of technical changes to improve performance. After Mass Effect 1 we had
a really good idea of what levels worked well and worked fast but now we can do it with a frame
rate which is rock solid. Now there are no slow-downs at all: that was one of our main goals from
a technical standpoint. That and making sure that there was texture consistency throughout and
it was all super slick: that was really important to us."

And the third step? "Lighting: we actually worked a fair bit on the lighting as we wanted to refine
it and to make it a lot more dramatic. It's almost a harsher lighting system, where the blacks are
really black and there are a lot of hot spots which you'll see reflect off Shepard's armour. Those
were our three big focuses." We also noticed during our hands-on a much greater depth and
improved quality to the audio experience: this was not just related to the SFX, with seemingly
longer conversation trees that evolve beyond the already stellar system in the original to deliver
greater characterisation and even a bit of humour.

This new level also managed to give off some interesting titbits about the narrative: or at the very
least, the enemy we encountered posed some intriguing questions. "Obviously this level shows off a
new location, but the strangest thing is seeing the Husks again. Your team is questioning what the
Husks are doing there, as they had thought they were tied in with the Geth and were thus a vestige
of the first Mass Effect. Their appearance is designed to make you suspicious. I think you'll find it
interesting when you play ME2 trying to work out what is going on with the story. It is not nearly
as clear cut. In Mass Effect 1 there's an attack on a planet, you see the ship fly away and you think
"okay so that is the ship that caused the problem," it is pretty clear when you're there. ME2 is a lot
less defined. There is an enemy you need to defeat at the end of the game and you generally know
who it is, but you have no idea what they are up to and what sort of technology they are using.
We really tease out the details."


Aww... it thinks it's people!

And what of Commander Shepard? Is he truly floating through space as a humanoid icicle?
Maybe not according to Aria, Queen of Omega – a mining station which is the "underground
equivalent to the Citadel." In a small level demonstration revealed to us before our hands-on
session we caught some conversation between her and Shepard in her Mos Eisley Cantina-inspired
club called the Afterlife. The phrase "you look good for a dead man" suggested a ruse has taken
place, but certainly didn't confirm it.

Indeed perhaps it was just a throwaway comment and a bi-product of a narrative decision
made earlier in the game, a feature that remains a massive part of ME2. "The way we have
designed the in-game designs is to have an indirect impact on the player. It's not like you
will have a completely different experience depending on what you do. It is more the flavouring
of the experience which is significantly affected: it's not like you can destroy the experience by
fooling around with your decisions. However, the people you interact with could make your power
base on a certain planet completely different. We do have to limit ourselves because if you have
too much variability the challenge of building new content becomes too high."

This must be especially true when dealing with DLC? "Definitely, although it is interesting dealing
with Microsoft and DLC, because the DLC has to be self-contained. You can still do a story, like
over three chapters or something, but you would need to build it in a way that you are able to play
the second one independently and not have to purchase the first one."


More Mass Effect 2 News & Previews

Miss the Subject Zero trailer? Click here to check it out.

But let's not get ahead ourselves. Despite Greg enthusing that there will be a lot more DLC this time
around and it will be a lot more user-friendly in the way it is integrated, we just want to purchase the
game itself first. But will it hit its early 2010 release window or slip like so many other games recently?
"I think the chances are very good. ME2 is certainly coming along very nicely and absolutely we're set
to hit our target window."