Mass Effect 2 Previews and Interview
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The first preview is at GameSpy:
Mass Effect was an RPG first, a shooter second as far as I was concerned. With ME2, the line becomes far more blurred. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because the quality of the gunplay appears much-improved. For one thing, you now have locational damage, so headshots count, and shooting weak points on enemies will have actual noticeable effects. Large mech-like enemies, for instance, will topple if you shoot the legs out from under them, while those aforementioned blasts to the dome will generally deal far more damage than shots to the chest area. Even the cover mechanics have been improved, as you can now slide in and out of cover and more naturally peek out for shots than you could in the first game. You'll still pop out of the real-time combat to relay orders, activate abilities, and do all that nerdy RPG stuff, but the core shooting gameplay has been overhauled considerably.
The second is at Eurogamer:
It's also a chance to foreground the improvements in character modelling, as a stubbly Shepard keels over at the bar and gets a very convincing case of the sweats. The results are pretty astonishing actually, with brilliant texturing and only the slightly awkward mouths continuing to give the game away: most importantly, the creepy dead eyes of the original Mass Effect are long gone, and Shepard looks canny, devious, hunted, and rather ill, given the circumstances.
And the third is at The Armchair Empire:
The premise of Mass Effect 2 centers around the mysterious disappearance of human colonies throughout the galaxy. It's not a case of raids by Batarian slavers (hinted at in the original game and its DLC expansion "Bring Down The Sky"). It's not invasion by the Geth where the corpses are turned into the chilling husks that you fought so often. They're just disappearing and not even the Citadel Council knows why. So, of course, they're going to send their human Spectre out to discover the truth and put a stop to it. Of course, doing so isn't going to be easy. Even Spectres need support staff, and you're likely to pick up a lot of the same crew members you got through the last game with, such as the burly and surly Krogan warrior Wrex, the mysterious traveler Tali, and the inquisitive scientist Liara. Of course, with a new game comes new faces, and the chance to add new crew members to your complement. So far, two of the new characters have been revealed, and both of them tend towards the Renegade side of Mass Effect's morality system. The assassin Thane is one of the new alien species in ME2 and, very much like Jean Reno's Leon, he's a professional who knows how to get in close. Unlike Leon, however, he has no compunctions about killing women as evidenced in the E3 trailers where he snaps necks and gut shoots several Asari with speed and fluidity. The other new reveal is enigmatically referred to as Subject Zero. Whether this is her given name, an alias, or something more sinister, it's hard to say. What isn't hard to say is that she is certifiably insane. Tattooed head to toe and in command of ME2's biotic powers, she seems to be a one-woman wrecking crew with very little regard for her own life, much less those of her enemies. Of course, when you're looking at a suicide mission, maybe these two aren't so bad.
Furthermore, a new video interview with BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk can be spied over at Giant Bomb. The twelve-and-a-half minute laid back discussion briefly covers the release of Dragon Age: Origins before moving into Mass Effect territory.
