Mass Effect 2 Interview

Polygamia had the opportunity to grill BioWare's Heather Rabatich about the dark second chapter to their Mass Effect trilogy.
What would you say to the Dragon Age fans, Baldur's Gate fans to make them interested in Mass Effect? It's more shootery, like an FPS/RPG hybrid.

Fans of BioWare tend to enjoy the story and obviously Dragon Age has an in-depth, amazing story with some great combat, great weapons and all that. Mass Effect is a different subgenre, but I think any Dragon Age fan could easily pick up Mass Effect and enjoy how it looks and feels and have an appreciation for what we're doing with the shooter gameplay.

So, during the gameplay, which is more important, player skill or character skill?

I think your skills as a player do transfer into the skills of your character. What I like about Mass Effect 2 is that you have all these different types of characters that you can play as. So you have a Bionics Expert, you have an Assassin, you have Grunt. And you need to think tactically or strategically about how to best combine these skills in a fight. Like a coach, where do you put the right people, what do you do with them? It's a really cool way to hand that control to the player to command them, to give the player access to all these skill sets.