Mass Effect 2's Potential

Video Games | Mass Effect 2 | E3 09: Extended Cut Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Mass Effect 2, the sequel to...that's right, Mass Effect, is previewed by Game|Life. Read:

Come for the action, stay for the engrossing story: Say what you will about its shallow take on morality and the occasionally campy stabs at romance, but the original Mass Effect was saturated with lore and excelled at presentation. Conversations became centerpieces, and even the typical dialog tree became interesting thanks to a liveliness evoked by careful camera work and accelerated pacing.

The Mass Effect 2 sequences shown off in the E3 presentation maintained that livelihood. In one segment, an interactive conversation plays out between two characters while the vehicle you’re flying in weaves through heavy traffic. But there’s a new sort of dynamism being folded in as well: an impatient Shephard interrupts a guard mid-sentence, and (with a timely tug on the Xbox 360 controller’s left trigger) shoves him through a plate glass window. Small touches like these won’t single-handedly win over the action-gamer crowd, but they do a great for embellishing the atmosphere.

And, yes, it's the little things that count. Mass Effect was a great RPG because the possibilities were numerous. The universe it created seemed endless. The operative word there is "seemed." The universe of Mass Effect was disappointingly limited. There were so many planets, but most of them were uninhabited. The inhabited worlds were, more often than not, limited to a mere mission rather than full of sidequests and people. Say what you will about Obsidian Entertainment's KotOR 2, but it had sidequests, it had teammates that were corruptible, that you could turn into Jedi, it had full worlds that took time to delve into. Mass Effect 2 could easily be great. But, if I have to spend any more time driving around in that Mako tanker, on lifeless rocks, searching for rocks, it will be a lesser game in my eyes.