Mass Effect 2 PS3 Media and Previews
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GamePro treats us to both a hands-on preview and a video preview:
Though no part of the main campaign has changed, project director Casey Hudson notes that players will notice that the source textures will appear sharper, and the shading will have more depth (deeper blacks, etc.).
The most exciting addition coming to the PS3 version of Mass Effect 2 is easily Mass Effect Genesis, an interactive motion comic that serves as a primer to players who missed out on Mass Effect 1. The comic was handled by Dark Horse, and the specific artists previously worked on the Mass Effect Redemption comic series. Through Genesis, players will be able to make choices at key moments in the truncated story, and--here's the kicker--import the choices they made in the motion comic into their Mass Effect 2 experience. It's not the full game experience of Mass Effect 1 by any stretch of the imagination, but it's definitely a really unique way to give PS3 owners a way to get the most of out their Mass Effect 2 experience-and, it looks friggin' awesome. Even cooler, the entire motion comic is narrated by either the male or female Shepard (players make the gender choice before the comic begins). The comic will take players roughly 15-20 minutes to complete, and consists of about 80 comic panels.
And then we get more details from GamesRadar:
Despite the quality of the presentation, even the best of graphic novels could never do justice to the experience of Mass Effect 1, especially given how short the recap is. It does an excellent job of hitting the major plot points concisely it's as if the Wikipedia plot summary was given a voiceover and set to pretty comic book-style art. What you don't get is a feel for the actual universe of Mass Effect, especially in terms of the personality of the characters, getting to know the various alien races and so on.
The succinctness of the recap causes a more specific problem too because only the basic plot is presented, it's impossible to make truly informed decisions. For example, I picked Liara as my love interest in ME1 because Ashley was a racist asshole once you got to know her (not to mention Kaiden was as boring as a sack of rocks). But the way the comic presents the choice, it seems like a betrayal to pick Liara over Ashley because all you really know is that Ashley has been with the squad longer and has been loyal to Shepard, whereas Liara just seems like a sexy, exotic newcomer enticing Shepard away. It bothered me that my decisions would have been totally different if I only had the graphic novel to base them on, compared to playing the game. To me, the "interactive" part of the novel is only successful if players end up making the same choices they would have if they played the game.
