After Effect: Mass Effect 2

Commander Shepard isn’t dead; we can tell you that much. At least, he doesn’t die —if in fact he croaks at all — until later on in Mass Effect 2. But first, let’s start at the beginning. It’s late April, still a chilly time of year at BioWare’s Edmonton HQ, and the Mass Effect team is deep in cloakand- dagger mode. As they hustled to prepare an E3 unveiling that’d launch Mass Effect 2 like a rocket, we spent a day with the team to bring you the world’s first look at this massive sequel, its improvements, and, yes, its secrets.

While our day up north raised plenty of questions that won’t be answered until E3, it also answered just as many of them. Frankly, even an elcor (the game’s adorably monotone elephant-like species) wouldn’t be able to contain its enthusiasm for all the details we uncovered — including the first news on Mass Effect 2’ s endings…

Still A Tease

BioWare sure knows how to make an entrance. A few months ago, the first Mass Effect 2 teaser hit the Internet like a nuke (watch it at tinyurl.com/me2trailer). Could Shepard really be dead? Did that geth really murder the series’ main character? When peppered with those questions, Casey Hudson, project manager at BioWare, smiles like a cat with canary feathers between his teeth.

“We actually didn’t say anything overt with the teaser, and the fact that so many people know why those things are interesting speaks to how much of the story got through,” he replies. “That’s been a really satisfying part of working on Mass Effect because we are trying to build a bigger story than has ever been done before. It actually is an interactive story that spans three games, and your choices cascade between the first two games and into the third one.”

Sweet, he just confirmed Mass Effect 3! But, um, what about Shepard? BioWare’s keeping his exact fate a secret until E3 (see sidebar, far right), but we saw a lot of the early portion of Mass Effect 2 in our visit, and you definitely play as Shepard for at least a decent chunk of the game. We checked out some fascinating gameplay sequences with our hero (details in a moment), and as you may have noticed on page 43 (where he’s on a new krogan planet), “Shepard appears much bigger and more powerful, and he’s presented in a darker, grittier style,” says Hudson. “This is all part of [the game’s] high-action descent into the darkest, most brutal parts of the Mass Effect universe.”

Interesting…but we still had to fling a few guesses about Shep’s fate at Hudson. He promptly shot them down, adding “I’ve read a lot of good theories, and interestingly, none have guessed it accurately.” So we’ll have to leave that mystery unsolved for now and get on to the mother lode of Mass Effect 2 dirt we uncovered.

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