[Intrepid Homoludens]

Video clip previews...

Engineer class
Adept class

Tali returns to your party

[UPtimist]

I guess I didn't want to be spoiled about Tali being back, but then I'm glad she is. Absolutely the best character in Mass Effect and yet they left her so shallow. Nothing but the basic background information and they just didn't explore the character at all as much as they could've.

The badass characters I'm not too excited about, at least from the rather cliché trailers, but I have a feeling these trailers are pointed towards a very specific target group.

Looking good!

[Crunchy in milk]

The Cinematic trailer was released on the 28th. I finally sat down to watch most of the videos on the me2 website and I think the class videos are the ones to watch above all others.

The engineer's drone and the sentinel tech armour look... forgive the terrible adjective, awesome. Not much has changed from the Adept but their powers definitely look prettier and now work around corners and over obstacles!

One thing worries me, after seeing the class videos is there's still no soldier demo. I hope the soldiers only cool feature isn't that he gets to play with all the toys (more weapon choice, heavy armours). Maybe some sort of battle focus (bullet time) or special melee power.

In the forums I read a post about how your ME 1 saves will be transferred across. Its prompted me to reinstall ME 1 and try to get a few saves just 'right' for transfer. I only hope that in transferring, you can still tweak your character appearance to make use of ME 2's slight character generator improvements.

Oh here's the quote that answers my questions re:importing.

Quote: Posted 12/12/09 03:36 (GMT) by Christina Norman
This is exactly how the process works:
1. When you beat ME1 an import save file is created storing your class, level, choices, paragon/renegade, achievements etc.
2. When you import you'll be given a list of saves to choose from with information on each save
3. When the game starts we'll give you some additional information to help you remember the choices you made
4. As noticed otherwise you can customize your appearance and class

#1 is why you need to have the rich achievement when you beat the game, we're gathering that information from the save file.

I hope this is helpful.

As for getting 60, I personally don't have any 60s (I'm not a new game + player) and I'm not going to bother getting one for my imports. You don't need any import bonuses to enjoy Mass Effect 2, your choices are what's really important.

[hild]

Play had a good article that dealt with Mass effect 2 and in the article they state that companions from the first game will still be on your ship depending if they survived. I hope its true since that seems better then all the chars from the first game leaving.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

I have it pre-ordered.

[D.C.]

Seems like Mass Effect will follow Dragon Age's lead and have DLC for free on launch.

I thought BioWare did an incredible job seemlessly intergrating Shale into the main quest in Dragon Age. (Despite the fact I installed that content mid way through my first playthrough.) This time I think I'll get the DLC straight away! It's weird to think we'll be playing ME2 next week, just months after Dragon Age!

[AndreaDraco83]

It's what will come next that baffles me. DA:O's DLC have been erratic at best, and I really hope that ME2 won't have the same treatment.

[D.C.]

Admittedly I've only played the DLC offered for free on launch for Dragon Age, but that was a massive improvement over the original Mass Effect DLC. What do you mean by erratic? The crazy delays for the Return to Ostagar one or is there something wrong quality wise?

IGN have posted a video walkthrough of the process of importing your Mass Effect character. There's some potential Mass Effect 2 spoilers in the gameplay footage, though. (Not to mention major ME1 story point spoilers on the import screen.) Watch at your own risk!

One reasonably minor feature outlined in the lastest Developer Diary is the ability to customize the colour scheme of your armor. This is good news!

[AndreaDraco83]

Originally Posted by D.C.

Admittedly I've only played the DLC offered for free on launch for Dragon Age, but that was a massive improvement over the original Mass Effect DLC. What do you mean by erratic? The crazy delays for the Return to Ostagar one or is there something wrong quality wise?

I certainly mean the unbelievable delays of Return to Ostagar and the whole debacle of last week, when the DLC was briefly released for XboX only to discover later that it has a major bug concerning the specializations. However, I also refer to the many, severe issues the DLC have: many, many users - you can check the social site, under the tech support forum and see the numerous threads dedicated to these issues - can't see the new locations on map, can't leave them once in, can't talk to Shale or use Warden's Keep's items, and so on. The most annoying bug happened to me too last week, during my second playthrough (Dalish Rogue, by the way): whenever I tried to talk to Shale, the whole party was teleported into a black screen where the golem activation dialogue played out again,and again, and again. This apparently happen when the game fails to connect to the social site servers while loading a DLC content. The only way out is restore a previous save game (when this failure hasn't occurred yet) or use the developers' console to debug the DLC.

Aside from these concerns, though, quality-wise, I've adored both The Stone Prisoner and Warden's Keep, and I've no doubt that Return to Ostagar will be amazing too, I just hope that ME2 will be free of these annoying compatibility issues.

[UPtimist]

So... There's DLC for free, on release. Is there a reason not to download? Is there a reason it's not just included in the game originally?

[Dale Baldwin]

Originally Posted by UPtimist

So... There's DLC for free, on release. Is there a reason not to download? Is there a reason it's not just included in the game originally?

It's a pack-in with the game, so for those that rent the game, they'll need to actually pay for it. They did a similar thing with Stone Prisoner for Dragon Age.

[kuddles]

Originally Posted by UPtimist

So... There's DLC for free, on release. Is there a reason not to download? Is there a reason it's not just included in the game originally?

The primary reason it's not included on the disc, as Dale Baldwin has stated, is it's a tactic by EA to discourage you from renting or buying a used copy. They did it for Dragon Age and they are also planning on doing it for Skate 3.

An additional reason has to do with the fact that DLC is usually created seperately, with their own budgets and people working on it. For example, one of the reasons Dragon Age had the day one DLC that was download only was that all content has to be "locked" months in advance, so that any polishing and bug-fixing can happen without something else being added that could potentially cause new problems. This is especially the case with console titles since they also have to pass a QA test from the console manufacturer as well, and since Dragon Age was being ported to consoles by an external developer, even more time was probably needed. Finally, making copies of the discs and manufacturing the packaging also takes at least two weeks.

This leaves a huge gap of time before release where most of the development team just moves on to a different project, although nowadays you usually have a small team staying on to do DLC for the title.

[D.C.]

Andrea, that explains a few things. Eeeeep. Luckily I haven't experienced any problems with the DLC and had no reason to check out the tech support site. I had no idea those problems existed. I knew of the crazy Return to Ostagar delays, but it surprises me to find out that the DLC has been so buggy! I hope you were able to salvage your second playthrough!

[hild]

yeah I havent bought any o the DLC from DA:O. My only problem with mass effect is trying to decide what system to buy it for originally bought it for 360 and played it most on 360 but also bought it off steam when it was 10 dollars, and havent put near the amount of time on the PC version. I am sure I would prefer the PC version but all my good saves are on console.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by hild

I am sure I would prefer the PC version but all my good saves are on console.

According the IGN review (9.6/10 score btw) you'll notice a difference between starting a brand new Shepard and carrying your old Shepard over. If you're new to the series you won't notice, but if you had played the first ME you'll miss out on certain details in ME2 triggered by all your choices in the previous game. Not a very dramatic difference but enough that you'll definitely notice.

Whichever characters died in the first ME will not come back in ME2. As well, if you don't care to carry over the look of your Shepard you can rebuild him/her in ME2.

[Roper Klacks]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

Whichever characters died in the first ME will not come back in ME2.

I wonder what will happen to those that didn't played the original. Is there a canon story?

[hild]

I was thinking that I would probably buy the console version and maybe buy the pc version if it ever comes down to 10 dollars on steam.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by Roper Klacks

I wonder what will happen to those that didn't played the original. Is there a canon story?

There probably will be. From what I've read it was very difficult for the writers to work with many different plot detail possibilities. However, if the player is playing ME2 without having played the first ME this shouldn't be a problem for the player. He really doesn't know that certain characters may or may not have died previously as per player choices so he places no value on it.

But as for me and others who had played the first ME it makes all the difference to have the continuity, I think.

[UPtimist]

I think in some video they explained that if you're not carrying over from ME, you'll have dialogues in the beginning that determine what happened, for example

Spoiler:

whether the Council died or not

Or am I talking about something else?

Also, how much does it suck that the release date is 26th in North America and 29th in Europe? Then again, I'll have the time I need to finish Assassin's Creed II.

[booB]

I just watched the G4 X-Play Mass Effect 2 special, and I'm probably going to skip this game. The combat mechanics have been changed to be more FPS-related than RPG, and I HATE FPSs. According to the hosts of the show, your combat prowess now depends more on your own FPS-playing ability than your player or equipment stats. That's not fun for me.