Mass Effect 2 Trailer Dissection, Screenshots

If you had a tough time following BioWare's new Mass Effect 2 "prelude to E3" trailer, the guys at Games Are Evil and GOONL!NE have you covered.

First, Games Are Evil "dissects" the video:
Combat has been added to a lot, it seems. More varied types of weapons, rather than the add-ons that we saw in the previous installment. I saw at least another three new weapons, although these could be one-offs (a la comparing the Redeemer to the Rocket Launcher in Unreal Tournament) of the four that we had last time (namely Pistol, Shotgun, Assault Rifle and Sniper Rifle). The effects looked great, and it appears that we also have a reload time for some weapons, as was demonstrated at 00:50 with a brief pause in fire, and reaching for something on the uniform. I doubt this is anything more than a levelling measure for one-hit-wonder weapons, but it could bring about different core concepts of weapons (like Too Human's Slug, Plasma, and Laser weaponry). Of course, there's the obligatory limb-removal, and subsequent changes of combat style, speed etc (if you take a leg off, they'll crawl after you), but this looks like a natural progression despite the unnatural enemies, so therefore it is awesome.

Let's consider the bread of the RPG sandwich; the story. Mass Effect was touted as a game that you could truly control the ending of, who survives and who doesn't. You chose between who to save (and if you had romantic interest in them through the game, boy was that a tough choice), the actions in dealing with a certain rogue character, and many other, less meaningful choices. What's great, is that it carries on through to the sequel. If you had a character killed, they don't come back. And from what I've seen, it is an educated guess that the ending you chose will determine whether Shepard lives or dies. Already, I'm seeing a multi-disc title, and I'm itching to play it. The only certain things are that the Reapers are coming, the Geth are going to be more plentiful and powerful now that their gods' have arrived to cleanse the galaxy of life, and somewhere along the way, the Normandy gets torn to pieces.

And if you don't have the patience to sit through the video again, GOONL!NE has posted a bunch of still shots from the trailer.