Mass Effect Preview

Jonas Allen has a Mass Effect trilogy preview up on Daily Game. Using the lessons learned from the success of the first KOTOR BioWare is planning big for the Mass Effect series.

Gamers play as Commander Shepard, a cop-like character given extreme authority in the outer regions of the galaxy. The world itself is bright and vibrant, but it harbors a dark secret: every 50,000 years, a sinister technology resurfaces to try and obliterate all organic life in the galaxy. Naturally it’s up to Commander Shepard to thwart this fate, something players will help him do by making strategic use of a three-person team that is determined before each mission (a la KOTOR).

As Shepard, a player chooses either biotics or weapons specialization. Weapons have a different feel than KOTOR as combat is real time. The combat system is comparable to Rainbow 6. However players are allowed to pause the action to issue commands to their characters.

Conversation within the game has been streamlined so that each type of response will be unidirectional. All “nice” responses could be triggered by pressing right, while as “mean” ones could be chosen by pressing down.

This gave the conversations a much more instinctual and fluid feel than reading entire chains of text, and it made them feel much more like cinematic cutscenes than interruptions in the gameplay. It also will help gamers who buy Mass Effect for the tactical-shooting elements breeze through what they might feel are the “boring” parts while still being engaged in the story.

Allen also has high praise for the animation saying even the small details like subtle facial animations are really as good in game as in the original trailer which was not prerendered. This is all the more reason to get excited about Mass Effect.