Mass Effect 2's producer talks about the game

PC World - BioWare's Xbox 360 and Windows interactive space opera Mass Effect 2 is still half a year away, but for lead producer Casey Hudson it's happening right now. Busy as he is, I managed to grab him away from dotting i's and crossing t's as his team moves into the sequel's final feature beats to make its planned early 2010 debut.

In part four (part one, part two, part three) we cover Commander Shepard's level drop, the game's updated abilities, new vehicle attributes, the overhauled interface, and Casey explains why storytelling in at least some games doesn't suck.

Game On: In Mass Effect 2 we play as Commander Shepard again, a guy who finished up the first game with some pretty advanced abilities. As I understand it, you're resetting the character back to ability basics. How are you dealing with that retrograde motion story-wise?

Casey Hudson: There's something that's happening with the story that explains what happens with your abilities. It's something we can't go into detail about for obvious reasons, but it actually happens the other way around. Our goal with the story, in terms of getting the game started quickly and players into really compelling story situations...that dictated and allowed us to do certain things including changing the way that your abilities work and the way you develop your character.

Part of it, too, is the fact that we've gone in and improved literally every system in the game, your powers, the controls, aiming, the way that your character stats work and how you build a character, the inventory system, weapons, and so on. All of those things have been dramatically improved, so there's no direct way to map the stuff you had in Mass Effect over to Mass Effect 2 anyway.

That said, we're taking into account all of your accomplishments in terms of building a character from the first game. So things you'd expect to be acknowledged, like if you were a level 60 character, or you were highly Renegade and don't want to start out at the middle again. If you import your save game from Mass Effect, these kinds of things will be acknowledged in ways that map across to the new system. You will feel, even in terms of the character that you build, that you are continuing as that character.

GO: Has the attribute and developmental pathing changed at all? Is it still essentially soldier/weapons, engineer/tech, and biotics/magic based? Have the special upgrades that occurred along each attribute's development line been changed or altered to reflect the character's maturation?

CH: The attribute and leveling system is similar, in that we have the same character classes [Soldier, Engineer, Adept, Infiltrator, Sentinel, and Vanguard]. Some of the abilities are the same in name and in their basic function, but they've been improved substantially in terms of how you can use them and your mastery over them.