Shepard's Death and Other Mass Effect 2 News

In his blog over at IGN, Bioware's Casey Shepard announced that it will be your decisions throughout the game that determine whether the protagonist you've created will live or die. From the blog:

When we say that Shepard can die in Mass Effect 2, it’s not something that happens at points in the middle of the game. Yes, you can “die” in gameplay as normal but that’s not what we’re talking about here. It’s not a “Game Over” screen. It’s not a gimmicky thing where you make a choice, “die”, and reload to continue to the “real” ending. When you get to the very end of the story in Mass Effect 2, you will get one of a wide variety of climactic and satisfying endings. Depending on how prepared you were, your ending may involve Shepard making the ultimate sacrifice to accomplish the mission.

What that means: if your choices cause Shepard to die in Mass Effect 2, you will not be able to play as Shepard in Mass Effect 3.

Casey goes on:

If you do die in the ending of Mass Effect 2, it will not come as a surprise, nor will it be random. It will be pretty obvious that you headed into the final mission knowing that Shepard probably wouldn’t make it out alive. Throughout the middle of the game you are building up information, resources, a team, and a ship that will be able to do the job, and although you can jump straight to the final mission at a certain point, you’ll have a good feel for whether you’re likely to survive it.

Part of what makes the final mission dangerous in a more profound way is that each squad member could potentially die a real, story-based death during that mission as well. You might have an ending where Shepard’s entire team survives, or where the entire mission is a bloodbath and everyone (including Shepard) is killed, or anything in between. And for all characters, death in Mass Effect 2 means they won’t show up in Mass Effect 3.

One big reason you’ll want to be alive after the ending is that after the credits roll, you are returned to the game world - ready to head back out for more adventure. You can complete unfinished missions, explore the galaxy, and download new adventures to play. But Mass Effect is a trilogy about Commander Shepard’s journey - if your Shepard dies in the end of Mass Effect 2, that’s the end of him / her. In that case, you can play Mass Effect 3 as “a” Shepard – just not “your” Shepard. As in real life, not being able to keep living is really the main down-side of death. So if you care about playing the next game with your character, make sure you survive this one.

Wow. That's just ridiculous. I am quite seriously drooling in anticipation of this one. Casey goes on to give some more details of what exactly is carried over from Mass Effect into the sequel if you have a save game to import. He has confirmed that all choices you made in the first game will be imported to the second game and may have an impact on the events of the sequel. He has also confirmed that skills and items in ME2 have been completely redone from ME, so the import will "adapt the key assets of your character" without necessarily bringing the exact skill points and level over.

The primary party members from ME (Liara, Ashley, Kaiden, Wrex, and Garrus) will return to ME2 assuming you did not allow them to die in ME. Not all will be able to join your squad for ME2.

We also have some more information about the potentially really sweet interrupt actions. Watching Shepard push the guard out the window in the demo was really sweet, and this promises to be one of many such moments throughout the game.

Interrupts are not meant to be “quick time events”. They are additional options that can appear throughout an NPC’s line that allow you to take a more physical action versus one of the verbal responses. You don’t need to fixate on a part of the screen – a flashing icon will catch your attention in your peripheral vision when it is available. A red icon on the left of the conversation wheel means you can pull the left trigger to fire a hostile interrupt. A blue one on the right side means you can pull the right trigger to do a heroic interrupt. This system allows you to really throw your weight around and get involved in more dynamic interactions with other characters.

And finally, Casey gives us some more juicy tidbits about the improved combat system. I loved the combat engine from the first game - it was fun, intense, and full of strategic options. But this one looks to push all those bars to new and exciting levels.

We’ve made a bunch of changes that add up to the ability to fight without pausing. But you can still hold the powers screen up to pause the action and plan your next moves. One of the biggest improvements was the option to fire your powers in realtime by mapping your favorite ones to buttons – this is a lot of fun and really unlocks the real potential of the combat system. The other big improvement was separate, context-based squad commands on the d-pad. So with a single press of the d-pad you can send a specific squad member to exactly where you want him / her, or to hit an enemy with a special power. This means you can run around with the best powers of your team right at your fingertips and enjoy realtime tactical mayhem – or you can pause with the powers screen to really think about what you want to do next.

Color me excited for this game. It's easily the thing I'm anticipating the most for the new year.