Mass Effect 2 Editorials
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We start things off with this article on GamerLive.TV that analyzes how improvements made to Epic's Unreal Engine 3 technology helped catapult the sequel into multi-platinum status:
(Having shipped the game on Unreal with a Mass Effect total framework into that engine, we really looked back and looked at what our final performance memory budget was and billed Mass Effect 2 to that budget,) explained Hudson. (We didn't have the opportunity to do that in the first game, so that helped us develop the content better. We also were able to look at where we were spending the most time on the least effective tasks. So it's not that we're using more of the CPU, it's just that we look at things like the previz phase for example in scale form and we rewrote our code for that. We just found little opportunities where we were surprised at how much time we were spending in the wrong places like you do in any normal game development process.)
Hudson's team also focused on the fidelity in Mass Effect 2. Although he said the lighting models in the first game were (really sophisticated and really detailed, they were a pain to that cost in Mass Effect one.) He explained that a lot of times the lighting situation caused those materials to flatten out so players didn't get to see or appreciate them for the way that they were built. With the sequel, the team designed the way its light manager works so it creates a pretty high contrast and compelling lighting scenario regardless of what lighting condition a player is in, so that it shows off the materials to their full potential. When all of these details are added together, Mass Effect 2 runs on a higher frame rate and yet it also has greater texture, resolution, and more material information than the original.
Moving on, OXCGN tells us why the game is less than perfect:
Mass Effect 1 had a lot of weapons and armour. A huge amount. Every few minutes you'd have a new toy to play with and be checking new equipment out against your current stash.
This has had a significant overhaul in the sequel, with collecting new suits or weapons almost entirely gone. Instead, you '˜research' new individual improvements using the resources collected from unexplored planets which are automatically applied without any visible change in the suit.
While you can change the components such as arms, chest, legs, etc from my entire first play through I only had between 1 and 3 different choices for each section. It's lucky then that Bioware provides limited visual customisation of the armour, which is just choosing a base colour and a pattern (out of 2 possible) to overlay.
And then The Brainy Gamer takes a slightly different approach by refuting the game's advancement of the RPG genre:
I'm not suggesting ME2 lacks refinements. As an iteration on the original game, ME2 is chock-full of mechanical, interface, and visual upgrades. As many have noted, its shooting and cover system is vastly improved from ME1, and Bioware seems to have learned from its mistakes in this regard. ME2 improves on ME1 in all sorts of useful ways, and that's a good and praiseworthy thing.
But when we discuss Mass Effect 2 as the game to finally shatter RPG genre limits and chart a new narrative path, I think we project too much on a game that exchanges some limits for others. I want meaningful interactions with my environment, not pop-up notices for glowing blue frames. I want dialogue unbound by a nice/naughty/neutral triad. I want to do trivial things. I want lower stakes. I want to play a game that doesn't insist the future depends on me. I want a game that defines role-playing more broadly than dialogue choices. I want a game that won't insist my actions and movements (what I do, not what I say) are merely bridges to the next fight.
