Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: January 26, 2010
The reality of the game industry today is that software revenues (and thus releases) are dominated by big-budget, franchiseable titles that usually emphasize lots of action and the slickest graphics possible. So when game developers plan sequels there's usually very little desire on their part or their underwriters' to take risks: make the graphics slicker, add some new bells and whistles, but for God's sake don't make much of an effort to respond to criticisms of the first game and make sure it's out by the holidays!
It was into this market that BioWare, which is owned by Electronic Arts, published Mass Effect 2. The original Mass Effect was published back in 2007, and represented BioWare's first serious foray into the action-RPG genre (yes, I don't count Jade Empire). The studio's previous efforts were magnificently crafted RPGs with a real-time turn-based combat system that used the Dungeons and Dragons rule set. (Yes, that was even true of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.) So Mass Effect was a big departure for them: it was a BioWare RPG, set in a totally new universe, with a third-person squad-based shooter grafted onto the RPG foundations.
Mass Effect's RPG underpinnings were quite good, displaying many of the hallmarks one would expect from a BioWare RPG. You played ___ Shepard, a customizable human space marine: you could select gender, appearence, first name (s/he ways always addressed as "Shepard" in-game), and class. More interestingly, there was a moral mechanic insofar as you could select how you wanted to interact with characters: be nice and gain Paragon points, be a jackass and gain Renegade points. How you approached key moments of the game, and your choices overall, affected your ending and a bunch of other stuff. It was a little too simplistic in that the moral choices weren't that much deeper than what you saw in Lionhead Studios' Fable back in 2004 (or BioWare's earlier Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic), but it still added a nice touch of immersion, as did the romantic subplots and multitude of sidequests.
Likewise, the universe that BioWare created was utterly original: yes, it drew from other sources, but it didn't feel like the Star Wars rip-off many "original" science-fiction universes are. In fact, it was arguably the game's biggest selling point in the face of some major problems.
First off, Mass Effect's combat system was designed with the idea that users would take cover and fight strategically. Except that you never really had to: if you were a soldier, you could just use the plentiful supply of new weapons (combined with the game's unlimited ammunition) to make yourself a tank and shoot your way through. Or if you were a biotic user (think spellcaster) you could overpower your enemies with biotics. Basically, it was an easily exploitable combat system that suffered from a really dumb AI -- the hazard of an RPG team trying to make an action game. And the rest of the game's general lack of polish in some significant areas was fairly obviously the result of the studio's staff focusing too much on how to make a shooter, at the expense of improving upon the mechanics that BioWare built its name on.
These faults were made even more obvious by the fact that Gears of War had come out the previous year and set the standard for this sort of shooting system, making Mass Effect seem like a bad rip-off in comparison. Even worse, both games used the Unreal Engine, but where Gears was gorgeous and smooth, Mass Effect (which admittedly had to render a much bigger game universe) had pretty good graphics and was incredibly buggy. So while Mass Effect was a commercial success, its critical reception was probably the worst BioWare has ever seen. But it was an enjoyable game in an interesting universe, and BioWare went ahead and made a sequel.
At that point, BioWare could simply have done a typical sequel, but they didn't.
Not at all.
Mass Effect 2 retains the few (but significant) strengths of the original game, tosses out everything else, and rebuilds from what is essentially the ground up. The game's universe is kept, it's still powered by the Unreal Engine, and the base mechanics for interacting with characters are still pretty much unchanged.
The shooter-RPG hybrid nature of the game is also kept, though it's hardly recognizeable when compared to the original. Every single one of the original's flaws has been utterly and completely erased. Guns now have finite ammunition, which adds depth to your combat inventory that was previously absent, especially since ammunition is shared between all weapons. Both the enemy AI and your squad's has been improved to the point that, even playing as a soldier, it's hard to make any progress in the game without using the cover system, which has also been overhauled -- so much so that it actually works now. Enemies are more aggressive and really put pressure on you, while it now occasionally behooves you to actually use your squadmates.
The health system has been overhauled for the better, with Shepard's health managed by a Gears of War/Halo 2/ Halo 3/Uncharted/etc.-style recharge system. Whether or not other characters regenerate health depends on their race (humans don't, for example), and shields are still around and still rechargeable, though the new health mechanic definitely makes them more important.
Similarly, the over-reliance on maxed-out skills and amassing as many weapons as possible have also been junked. You now improve skills less often and acquire new versions of weapons very rarely, which balances your character out better. It's offset by the addition of a research and upgrade system that makes sure people who explore every nook and cranny are thoroughly rewarded, and I imagine that this system doesn't punish people who play through quickly as severed as the original did (I'm not a professional journalist and thus didn't get an advance copy to play through a bunch of times).
In other words, Mass Effect 2 copies Gears of War fairly successfully by streamlining the combat, while simultaneously rounding out the sharp edges that the underlying RPG elements created in the first game. And think about that: an RPG, made by an RPG company, has a shooter mechanic that's a great facsimile for that of Grand Theft Auto IV and Gears of War. A pretty robust RPG mechanic underlying a fast-paced, high-octane shooter. That's unreal.
Speaking of Unreal (see what I did there?), the game looks absolutely stunning. Fundamentally, it's the same engine (the system requirements for the PC version are apparently basically the same as those for the original), just tweaked. But those tweaks make a huge difference: it's actually hard to believe that these two games run on the same engine. Plus the whole game runs so much more smoothly than the first, and I have yet to see any bugs save for one small clipping error. The UI is also aesthetically slicker, though that's more of a coat-of-paint improvement.
As for the universe around you, where the first Mass Effect was populated by all manner of different creatures, Mass Effect 2's universe feels inhabited. It's much more immersive, in part because of the visual improvements, but also in other ways. The voice acting is great and incredibly deep -- the voice of the Male Shepard said he had twice as much dialog to record this time around -- and I find myself getting drawn in far more easily. The fact that the God-awful MAKO driving stages have been removed helps, as do the all-new hacking and safe-cracking mechanics. Plus sidequests are more carefully tied to the overall game, and there are cool little offhand news reports that broach how you handled (or didn't handle) sidequests in the original. The Paragon/Renegade morality system gets a little more depth as well, with certain moments allowing you to press a button to perform a Paragon or Renegade action (as opposed to just dialog choices), and moral grey areas are approached with a little more subtlety. At least, I find it easier to be doing the "right" thing consistently but still (however inadvertently) collect some Renegade points. And the decisions you make have a much greater effect on how things turn out than in it original.
The way the story is handled is a little more interesting, as well. The original Mass Effect followed a path a little too much like Knights of the Old Republic: at minimum, you need to go to these different worlds, do something, and then that world will open up some new piece of the puzzle. Then at the end you go to one or two different places, one right after the other. It felt a little like a linear game that had occasional delusions of being non-linear.
Mass Effect 2 is pretty different: you know from the first half-hour or so where you're supposed to end up. You know it's a suicide mission. The question is just when you want to go. There's a minimal number of things you need to do to get ready, but it's not that long before you can go on the final mission -- probably no more than 10 hours if you do very little else. Your job for much of the game is to recruit a team: you can see where each potential team member is, and past that pretty much everything else is up to you. Plus people who didn't play the first shouldn't feel too lost in the game's story and universe: you have plenty of chances to get background info from other characters, and the game's Codex function is still around to explain the inhabitants, objects and politics of the Mass Effect universe as much or as little as you like.
The original Mass Effect simply had characters on your team that you used, or didn't, and occasionally you had to make decisions about their fate based on your stats and how much you liked them. Mass Effect 2 presents a deeper mechanic, however. Basically, there is a trust mechanic that establishes a relationship between Shepard and each member of his team, and that mechanic is meant to become very significant once you're on the suicide mission. Loyalty, which is acheived by doing a special missions for each character, gains you a new color outfit for the character, a new ability, and can come in handy overall.
And there's reason to use different characters: each one's differing abilities and available arsenal are far more pronounced than in the first, creating far more pronounced differences in how you approach fights and interactions. More than that, your actions regarding them have real effects at the game's end. Best of all, the characters are all actually somewhat interesting: many of the characters in the original felt pretty bland, and those that are recruitable in this game are given more depth via their loyalty missions. And the new crew additions are also pretty neat.
But Mass Effect 2's greatest strength is a really obvious one: it's never boring. Mass Effect had exciting "wow" moments, but there've been more of those moments in 13 hours (so far) of Mass Effect 2 than there were in 30+ that I spent on the original Mass Effect. I'm talking about keeping the gameplay fresh and interesting, showing me sights that make me want to see what's on the next floor, the next station. Making me never want to put the controller down.
I realize that this has basically read as one long love letter to Mass Effect 2, and while it's an exceptional game I do have to admit that it's not without its flaws. First, the Paragon/Renegade system still needs some work. I like that there's a greater attempt to integrate it more fully into the game, but it's still a little too black and white. I'm not expecting perfection, and the improvements are quite noticeable, but it feels at times a little too much like a touch-up rather than a deep re-thinkin. Granted, that system needed far less improvement than the combat system and engine (which is where I imagine most of BioWare's time was spent), but I'd like to see a little more tweaking for Mass Effect 3. Also, some character animations are perhaps a little too jerky: for example, even though Shepard has reportedly ten times as many cover animations as in the first, many still look really robotic. And although Mass Effect 2 definitely removes some of the linear constrictions of the first, it doesn't necessarily remove as many as I'd like. But then, RPGs rarely provide the full sandbox experience, so I'm at best nit-picking and at worst complaining about something nobody reasonably should.
Where Mass Effect felt like a great idea that was afraid to take too many risks at one time -- and thus came up short in almost every way -- its sequel dares to make some major revisions, all of which pay off massively, while supplementing that with a multitude of smaller tweaks. Ultimately, where the original felt like an traditional BioWare RPG that had a shooter grafted awkwardly on to it, the sequel feels like a harmonious balance between shooter and RPG in which the approach feels as if it were to make a shooter first and integrate RPG elements wherever possible.
Mass Effect 2 isn't a step forward from its precursor. Nor is it a jump, a leap, or even an extended road trip. It surpasses its predecessor by roughly the distance between the Earth and the Moon. It's the difference between Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines and Deus Ex: both have many of the same ideas at their core, but one is so much better than the other in every conceivable way that it's not even a matter of opinion. It's fact.
Don't let all the comparisons I drew* fool you: Mass Effect 2 isn't just a fantastic sequel and the philosophical model for how a sequel should be approached. It's an epic achievement in its own right.
*I thought those comparisons were necessary to get across just how much better this game is. It's all about context.
