Mass Effect 2 Devs Promise the Greatest Game Ever Made

Videogamer.com recently met with Mass Effect franchise producer, Casey Hudson for an in-depth interview that consisted mostly of questions that were the equivalent of: Your game is awesome. How awesome is your game? There were some new juicy tidbits revealed in the lengthy article, though. Hudson explains that one of the core focuses of the team was to produce a visceral shooting experience for players that will match the world’s best third and first person shooters.

Mass Effect (ME1) was riddled with framerate issues, long load times (Citadel elevators anyone?) and texture pop-in. From a technical standpoint Bioware is promising it will run smooth and look gorgeous at the same time. They’re adding individual squad member movement commands to the D-pad, so you should be able to setup a nice sniper trap or blind doorway entry with sufficient cover this time.

The most exciting advancement mentioned in the article was their admission that side questing in ME1 was too generic, which they have tackled with ME2 by having each side mission carry weight and have an impact on the characters or plot of the game. Hudson offers that he enjoys exploring the Normandy,  talking with the crew and the new captain’s quarters. This was another part of ME1 that dragged down the game’s pacing and sense of urgency.

The only groan worthy developments came when Hudson explained there would be new mini-games for resource harvesting and universe exploration. I don’t know about you, but controlling a Monopoly piece sized Normandy ship around on-screen sounds like a chore, at best. As far as I’m concerned a graphically overhauled and polished ME1 would have been enough for me to be pumped to play ME2.

Here’s hoping they didn’t jump the shark with too many tacked on additions and not enough gameplay and plot development. We’ve criticized Bioware and EA for their early marketing of ME2, but as January 26 approaches I for one am riding high and fast on the Bioware Hype Express, please guys don’t derail this one!