BioWare has once again begun posting to its blog on IGN. For the very first Mass Effect 2 post, Executive Producer Casey Hudson has already begun clearing up rumors and making news. The first bit of exciting news is that Mass Effect 2 will indeed be shown at E3. Hudson promises, "you can look forward to some incredible new experiences in Mass Effect 2 as the story takes on even larger proportions, along with a ton of gameplay improvements and a return of the things most loved by players of the first game. "

One of those things people loved was their very own Commander Shepard, a character that was hinted at being killed in the first Mass Effect 2 trailer. Hudson closed out the blog post by saying, "Oh, and I've heard some rumors that Commander Shepard is dead. Better not be. We had a lot of big plans made, so if someone's gone and killed Shepard then things are going to take an unexpected turn… "

New Bioware IGN Mass Effect 2 Blog:more here...

http://blogs.ign.com/BW_MassEffect/2009/04/30/1192...

The Mass Effect game coming to iPhone and iPod Touch is not a prequel, but a “side-story” about an upcoming Mass Effect 2 character, says Bioware.

Forum community coordinator Chris Priestly got to the bottom of it for everyone, and posted the facts:

BioWare is making a game for the iPhone and iPod Touch based in the Mass Effect universe.

We were going to announce this, but one of the testers at a focus testing group broke the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) and things were revealed before we had the chance.

The game is going to be available for the iPhone AND the iPod Touch.

The story of the game is not a “bridging” story between Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2. It is a cool little side-story about one of the upcoming Mass Effect 2 characters.

It is not “required reading” to enjoy the core trilogy, but if a fun optional “extra” game.

The development on this game is being done by a separate, dedicated team with no connection to any Mass Effect DLC development or patches so this is not “the reason there hasn’t been new DLC or patches”.

BioWare and the Mass Effect team want to branch out in a number of ways with the ME universe, and this is just one example of such branching out. We think the iPhone and iPod Touch are exciting new platforms for games, and this game was designed for these platforms from the ground up.

More information about the this game is coming later this month. None of the info that was leaked is ‘official’ by any means – it was research. We’ll have much more information in the future.

Priestly goes on to say that this is just the tip of the iceberg for information on both the iPod/iTouch game and Mass Effect 2 as more information is to be released this month and in June.

Hmmm i wonder how this will turn out, the guys on the mass effect forums are not to happy and see it as Evil EA doing what they do best!!, i think i will keep an open mind until the game comes out, but for now anything that expands the mass effect universe and maintains its Bioware quality is all good in my books.

I can understand there anger, i mean you have a whole legion of Mass Effect fans on the PC and 360 platforms and you go and release a side story on the iPhone, i could understand if it were coming to Live but as far as i know its not, i'm a bit pissed also as i dont have an iphone/itouch.

Evil Chris just twittered this:

Just watched tomorrow's new Mass Effect 2 pre-E3 video. ME2 is definitely looking very cool. - Evil Chris

That is so Shepard!

Oh and here's a little heads up :) .http://twitter.com/biofeed

1UP: Okay, I have to ask: what's with the robo-dogs in the new video? Are they some sort of Geth hound or something?

CH: [Laughs] I don't think we've shown them elsewhere. That obviously ties into telling a pretty important part of Mass Effect 2: we're putting a lot of work into making enemies a lot more interesting to fight. We've put a ton of work into the A.I., and you get really interesting things happening, and beyond that, we have enemies of very different kinds. It's not just "re-arting" stuff that you've already fought; it's stuff like a dog creature that can run up to you and maul you, or very different kinds of creatures that are anatomically different and have different behavior and special powers.

1UP: I'm noticing a lot of ominous skies and dark halls that look very un-Citadel in the new video. Where do you go in Mass Effect 2, is there a fair amount of revisiting established places, or more about exploring the unknown?

CH: That is one of the fun things we want to do, I think there is a balance because, part of the great thing about establishing places like the Citadel, is that it's kind of there so you can return to it and have more and more stories that take place there. And we're doing that -- you get to go back to the Citadel and see some places that you've been to, but also some places that are just different parts of that space station. But then we'll also go to tons of different locations you've never seen before. And as this game is the darker second act, it really is a descent into the most brutal parts of the Mass Effect universe. One of the places we mentioned in the [second] book, we talked about a place called Omega, which is basically the opposite of the Citadel. Where the Citadel is the elite and the best of the galaxy, Omega is a huge space station that is really rough and tough, the ultimate representation of crime, and a dangerous place to be in. But there's that, and many different places you go to.

1UP: I'm just curious, how can you top the crazy Citadel-falling-apart scenario in the end? Will you be fighting on a planet that's cracking in half for Mass Effect 2's setpiece or something?

CH: I can tell you that you start to realize the scope of what you're doing when you go from ideas to developing concept art, and then starting to play through the initial versions. Regarding the ending, I can tell you that there are times where I'm talking with a concept artist or art director, and we're looking at what you're going to see and do with the ending, and we're thinking, "oh my god, this is huge, this is going really far." And people who thought that the first one had an epic scope, this is really jaw-dropping. Even after playing the first two-thirds of Mass Effect 2, you still won't be prepared for what you get to in the ending. It really expands the scope of the story in fun and surprising ways. That's what Derek Watts is referring to in the video; there're some places that are fun to do, but nasty for the end.



1UP: Are the Reapers still the primary threat, or are they just a prelude to something even bigger?

CH: [The Reapers] are the high-level story and premise still. You look around, and you see civilization, the things we've built and the technology we've created. You see that Humans are sort of newcomers and there are other civilizations that have built this great stuff also, but then the realization is that all of this was planned and conceived. That we're a crop that was seeded by something much more powerful than us, and they're going to come back and harvest it. If you're an ant on an ant farm, then how do you prevent the scientist from coming in and ripping everything out? Do you have anywhere near the power to stop that? That is still the high-level idea of the trilogy.

1UP: One theory that I've seen pop up a few times after the teaser premiered is that maybe Shepard's consciousness is transferred into a Geth somehow, and that Shepard is infiltrating the Geth network undercover. How do you react to hearing a theory like that?

CH: My reaction is pure enjoyment. I love all the theories, because one thing it says is that people actually get the story elements that are at play, and what those things could mean. The more concrete answer is that none of the theories that I've read, and as many of them as I've read, none of them are what we're doing.

New Video Teaser is up!!! Bring on E3 too much epicness!!!!

http://masseffect.bioware.com/teaser/index.html

The game is gonna be out of this world. I am looking forward to this more than any other game, including ODST and that says alot!

Ve3tro & TAG: So what were some of those things?

Casey Hudson: What we did is, when we looked at the feedback, there were… basically in every aspect of the game, we wanted to make improvements, even just for ourselves, but also looking at the way people played it. One of the big ones was space exploration. We knew that people really loved the idea that even in the context of an intimate, very emotionally engaging story, that you’d still be able to go off and explore the galaxy and find interesting things, and people liked that aspect but they wanted more richness and more variety. So that’s an example where we’ve taken that whole portion of gameplay and added a level of interactivity to how you take your ship out and find a new star system. You go to a planet and figure out where’s a good place to land there, what’s going to be interesting to do.

And then, when you’re there on foot, much more interesting missions and really cool things that you find…. things always being different as you go from one place to another, and all of that stuff in the context of something that’s extraneous to the main story but the other thing we wanted to do with the subplots and what not is to actually tie them in. Whereas in Mass Effect 1, you go off and it’s a … it’s a really cool little side plot maybe, but then it terminates. In Mass Effect 2, we want to really bring these things back to the core thrust of what the story’s about.

Ve3tro and TAG: As far as stopping the conversation midway, by making a selection, would affect (the NPC’s) decisions and replies?

Casey Hudson: Oh, yeah yeah yeah. It’s funny, because when you look at Mass Effect 1 and the course of developing it, we literally had to go from not even knowing what the Xbox 360 was going to be in terms of hardware and not even being able to see what we could do with this technology, to something that’s there and you can say “Wow.”. Specifically, with the interrupt stuff, we would have liked to have done better, and in between that is the fact that we developed a new dialog system. It was something that required a lot of faith for our writers to believe that you could actually have something that has digital actors that are compelling enough that they can give you a look, and that’s the line, and you go “Oh, I’ve hurt her feelings with what I said”, You know, moments like that.

They had to go on faith that we could even do that. But one of the things that we did learn obviously is that we weren’t able to get the interrupt aspect of simulating a conversation to the level that we wanted to. That’s one of the things we’ve improved for Mass Effect 2. We’ll be showing that at E3, like how really high impact those are now, because it’s an actual system, we actually built that in there. Just as a player, you’re starting to think “Well, I’ve had enough of this guy”, that’s where you can actually say as a character in the game “All right, grab control of this situation” and then you do something physical or something sudden and visceral. And then the conversation takes a completely different turn

Ve3tro and TAG: Kind of going back to the technical aspects for a second: On my own personal level, playing Mass Effect 1, it originally came out and I stopped after a few weeks because of the texture pop in and also the serious load times in the elevators. It really took me out of the experience. So what are you going to do for Mass Effect 2 to improve that?

Casey Hudson: Well, I think that both of those things are examples of things that we listed in the category of “things that have to be fixed outright”. Basically, those are not issues in Mass Effect 2. I think specifically, in terms of the transitions and what not, that’s actually become of the really cool parts of Mass Effect 2. When we do have to do a transition… we have a challenge I guess, first of all, that you don’t see in a lot of games because with most games, you know that the player is going to be moving a certain way to a level, and through the levels in a certain way. And of course, in Mass Effect 1 and 2, you can go halfway, turn around, go back, jump into your ship, you’re across the galaxy, and it’s completely non-linear. So because of that, this is a unique challenge, as far as how we get from one place to another. Part of what we didn’t do as well as we wanted was to actually show you what was happening so that you know what’s going on in the world.

So in the Citadel for example, people talked about long elevators, but the problem was that it really shouldn’t have been an elevator, because it’s like going from one end of Manhattan to the other. Lots of stuff happens. Now we’ll be able to show you things like “Here’s the amazing place that you’re in, here’s how you’re moving through it”, and at the same time, the loads are shorter, but they’re more interesting and entertaining, and they’re actually a part of the narrative. So now, it actually becomes a cool thing to look forward to as part of getting to the next thing. That’s just an example of something that… we hear the feedback like that, we absolutely will have to fix it.

Ve3tro and TAG: That brings me to a follow up. Speaking of level design… exploration in the planets.. because I did go back and I have finished Mass Effect and it’s a great game… but when you’re exploring out there in the vast galaxy, certain planets… they tend to start looking like the same planet over and over. Is that variety going to be mixed up?

Casey Hudson: Yeah, absolutely. So there’s a new level of interactivity for how you get there, and how you actually explore space, but then, once you’re there, we really have a complet ely different approach to how we create. Because we still want it to be light content. We put a tremendous amount of work into a really polished main storyline, but we want this stuff to be light content, but also equally polished and really rich and varied. We have a very different approach where basically, when you go off into these things that you’re exploring at the edge of the galaxy, there has to be some really exciting hook that’s different about that area than anything else you’ve seen. I guess one way to say that is in Mass Effect 1, after seeing one (planet), and then seeing the next one, you say “Oh, there’s a similarity here. I wonder if they’re going to start looking the same.” Whereas in Mass Effect 2, you see one and you go “Wow, that was cool!” and then it’s completely different in the next thing that you see, and you start saying “Wow, I wonder how different the next one is going to be”, and you start looking forward. It’s kind of the opposite effect.

New Video Teaser is up!!! Bring on E3 too much epicness!!!!

http://masseffect.bioware.com/teaser/index.html

Gamespot Video Interview:

http://uk.gamespot.com/xbox360/rpg/masseffect2work...