Mass Effect 2 Interview

The guys at VideoGamer have gotten around to posting an interview they did with Mass Effect 2 associate producer Jesse Houston during last month's GamesCom event.
VideoGamer.com: I noticed a few of the new powers - pull I think is new. Can you take us through them?

JH: Pull is brand new. Literally every ability that was in Mass 1 that we've carried over into Mass 2 has been completely revamped. For example pull is new. Throw has been revamped though. In pull's case, its reason to have is if you've got a guy behind some cover and you want to pull him out, then you can let the shoot-ey guys take care of him. Or you can start using some combo abilities. For example, one of the things I'm doing all of the time is I'll use Jacob to pull them out and I'll then fire a concussive shot off at an angle that will up and arc around and knock the guy off the bridge, or off of a ledge.

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VideoGamer.com: I think there's a bit of confusion online about what will happen to the abilities you've gained when you carry your game saves over from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2. What exactly will happen?

JH: Some will transfer. Some will not. We're still tweaking over which ones are going to transfer, which ones are going to give you bonuses, basically. The big thing to remember is we don't want to punish people who haven't played. And we have a really large gap in between beating Mass 1 once and beating Mass 1 17 times. For the players who are level 60, absolutely max level, the whole nine yards, these guys, we want to give them appropriate bonuses, but not so much that they don't have any fun and don't feel challenged in Mass 2. And the guys that are level 20 will want to do the same thing, but obviously we want to reward players who have played more, with more.