Mass Effect 2 Preview
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Two immediate elements that stand out are the removal of health and the inclusion of ammo. This is a baffling switch, as in the first game you had regenerating ammo (as an overheating meter) and static health that you had to heal. In the second game, this is precisely the opposite. You not have heat sinks as ammo and your health regenerates like other contemporary shooter games. Why not include both static health and ammo, or regenerating health and ammo? It's strange to switch both systems instead of simply sticking with one or the other. It can be justified through plot however BioWare wants, but it's still quite confusing. Besides this, gameplay appears to be pretty much the same between both games, and while it was entirely expected, it would have been nice to see a little more variety in the previews as opposed to more of the same.
Once again, moral choices are being hyped in Mass Effect 2, as well as the causality effect. However, anyone who has played Mass Effect knows that these decisions amount to three different paths: good, neutral, and evil. Sure, they are called Paragon, neutral, and Renegade in Mass Effect, but it's basically the same. Jade Empire and Knights of the Old Republic use a similar system. It would be nice if instead of making dialog choices that correspond to our morality, we have an open-ended action-based system to determine. Something along the lines of multiple objectives with time limits that can affect our morality depending on how we approach them, rather than the standard good, neutral, and evil choices present in most games with a morality system.
