BioWare gave us a rundown of how the talent and upgrade system works. Though experience is awarded on the fly during the real-time battles, once you level up you'll have to enter the menu system to distribute your points. Points can be dropped into any of the talents and skills, giving you the choice in how you'd like to shape your characters. Put enough into one talent and you can unlock new attack moves or entirely new talents. Each class of character also has their own unique set of talents, including one that only that class has. The Krogan Battlemaster class, for example, has the Krogan Battlemaster talent. Simple, eh?
Next we were taken aboard the Normandy for a look at the galactic map. This interactive list of everywhere you can travel shows the immense size of Mass Effect's game world. We started out at the solar system level, where a handful of planets could be visited. Not all of them can be explored; some will just provide clues when you scan them or have other minor use. Next we zoomed up to the star cluster level. The local star systems could all be viewed and warped to, with a blue flag over the destination where the main story continues. With one more zoom out, we saw the galactic level, with a host of star clusters to visit.
Kind of like KOTOR eh
IGN: Mass Effect Preview
Linear Mode
