good round up of what we know so far on ME2 artical on CVG

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?i...

I picked up the book today cant wait to dive into it later.

Chris Priestly
Community Coordinator


Posted: Thursday, 19 March 2009 05:05PM
I was walking down the hallway and spotted Geoff Keighley and Game Trailers TV interviewing Casey Hudson.

I knew that Game Trailers was in house to do some interviewing with Ray, Dan Tudge and some of the Dragon Age Origins team, but it seems they have managed to get some time with Casey (and possibly others on teh ME2 team).

I'll have to keep an eye on things and see what I can learn. (I may have to grab my camera as well and see if I can sneak a few pictures or video).

Stay tuned.

Chris Priestly
Community Coordinator


Posted: Saturday, 21 March 2009 12:33AM
While I wasn't able to "Mission Impossible" from the ceiling (my bulk + harness + pulley = calamity), I did manage to get some pictures and video footage.

Geoff Keighley and crew were all very nice and promised not to press charges once when they caught me scampering around with my cameras. I even got in a few words with Geoff in between him grilling Casey about whether Shepard is dead or not, grilling Dan about dragons in Dragon Age and grilling Ray about all of our games including the MMO.

As part of my plea to avoid prosecution, I have to wait until Monday before I can show you anything. Stay Tuned.

I can't wait for ME2. But I get a feeling that EA won't show anything until after Dragon Age comes out.

Chris Priestly
Community Coordinator

Posted: Monday, 23 March 2009 07:50PM
I'm trying to make a "commercial" to promote Friday's episode of Gametrailers. Due to technology hating me, the video isn't compressing properly so I am delayed.

Whatever I get finished WILL NOT be nearly as cool as the actual video. I'm not going to spoil Geoff's interviews with Casey, Dan Tudge and Ray by releasing video before their show.

The only sure way to see whatever information Geoff was able to pry out of Casey, Dan and Ray is to watch Gametrailers on Spike TV this Friday Night March 27.

Bioware GT Preview trailer:

http://na.llnet.bioware.cdn.ea.com/u/f/eagames/bio...

pure sci-fi sweetness..

He shifted gears into Mass Effect 2, the upcoming sequel to the science-fiction epic, the first part of which was released in 2008 for the PC platform, and in late 2007 for the Xbox 360. "Mass 2 is going to have some plans [for DLC]. We'll look at Mass Effect 2 differently because it's a different kind of game. It's a very cinematic action shooter / RPG and with different kinds of consumers and different kinds of likes for DLC, so that's something we're always going to be iterating on."

No word yet on whether Mass Effect or its sequels will ever show up on the PlayStation 3, but will it show up on Xbox 360 and PC simultaneously when it ships next year? "We haven't disclosed that, but the development efforts are simultaneous," said Muzyka.

With regards to the interface, which was altered quite a bit during the time between the release of Xbox 360 and the PC version, what can players expect with the sequel? "Every version, and this is true for Dragon Age as well, we want players to feel when they play they should feel like it was natively developed for that system," said Muzyka. "Our philosophy is to lovingly handcraft every version so that players have a different entry point, different interface, different controls that work really well. A lot people said when they played the PC version 'Wow that's cool, it's like they designed it as a PC game.' Well yeah, we did, because we made PC fans feel supported. We also made 360 fans feel like it was developed as a 360 game because it was. Both answers are true. And we're doing the same for the console version of Dragon Age and we'll do the same for Mass Effect 2."

What about the technology behind the Mass Effect franchise? How does that develop and improve with the sequel? "What's interesting about making a game especially like Mass Effect one is just getting the galaxy on one disk is a lot of work. So you've worked on it for over three years and two and three-quarters of those years were just figuring out how to make it all work and then the last quarter is like ok, let's finish it all off. The great thing about a sequel is you start from the point where you know everything works, you know what the good and the bad things were. One of the big objectives we have for Mass 2 is we go through your reviews and everyone else's and…"

"We made a list of the features," picked up Muzyka, "that reviewers and fans and internal people, all whose opinions we respect, thought were really important to make the game better. Then we added a bunch of cool **** on top of that."

"The key thing is," said Zeschuk, "when you're working on a sequel like Mass you start from day one knowing most of the answers. And then you know what your faults were and you can address those specifically. First and foremost are things like performance and textures and everything like that. We maximized that to make sure it's hot. In some ways the problem we've had we haven't had the chance to do a sequel for like seven or eight years, we've always been doing one-offs…We've learned a lot about the technology after the first one and there's already stuff that's like wow."

Unfortunately the two weren't willing to go into any specifics, not that it was really expected at this point, but Muzyka broke down a few basic categories where he asserted changes and improvements were being made for the sequel. "There's a few bigger buckets of things we're working on. One of them is the intensity of the action, amping that up so people will see this as a shooter RPG…It's going to feel like shooter fans are going to have a great experience…Another category we're working on are the moment to moment interactions, kind of grabbing control of them more, and we'll show that later as well." By later, he means later in the year.

"Exploration, we're still trying to tighten up that experience," Muzyka continued. "It's still optional and there's still uncharted world that'll be optional, but we want every single one of them to feel like they're adding something important to the main storyline. So you feel yeah they're optional, but I feel like I really want to do that. So that's a philosophy change too."

Was there ever a definitive word on whether you could use the same character from Mass Effect in the sequel? "We've said two things. Everything we've said in the past about keeping your saves, that's all true. Everything you've seen in the teaser is all true. What does that mean?"