Mass Effect 2 Preview

BioWare's Mass Effect sequel is the subject of yet another hands-on preview, and this time it's over at Play.tm. Once again, the preview is based on the Eurogamer Expo demonstration:
I'm also given a brief look at the game's new antagonists: the Collectors. BioWare have hinted in the past that entire colonies of humans are being abducted, and they're now revealing it to be the Collectors who are responsible. Despite the name, they're not a fleet of eBay-roaming bargain hunters gone mad, but instead a race of glowing insectoid nasties with four beady, lambent eyes who use a swarm of smaller, nasty insects to paralyse pockets of humanity and then scoop them at their whim. The captured people aren't kept sealed away in pristine condition, either - they're all getting stitched together into weird abominations of bits of people and machines.

BioWare neglect to mention why it's humans specifically that the Collectors are after, but do let on that they've been armed to the teeth with fancy-pants weaponry supplied by the even bigger, even baddier Reapers - you know, the ones whose invasion Shepherd managed to put a halt to at the end of the first game. And now they seem to have a major human fetish.

Then there's Legion, a sentient Geth who goes a bit Fatal Attraction for Shepherd, stalking him and going so far as to incorporate bits of Shepherd's armour into his being. Legion's motivations aren't being explained in the slightest, but he's got a rather posh British robot accent and says stuff like "Organics do not choose to fear us; it is a function of your hardware." Saucy, and it's definitely good to see that BioWare are keeping the Geth - the primary source of fodder in the first game - active in the universe: it would be a shame to have seen them go.