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While everyone was floored at E3 2009 by what BioWare is doing in terms of story and characterization in Mass Effect 2, one aspect of the game that isn't getting a lot of play is the combat. Longtime BioWare fans love the pause-and-play skirmishes the company has been serving up since Baldur's Gate. Newer gamers would prefer something smoother and more fluid. It looks like BioWare is keeping up with the times. Project director Casey Hudson told G4tv.com aboot about the combat improvements:
"Much of the way Mass Effect 2 plays is similar to Mass Effect, but every part of it has been improved. The biggest difference, in fact, is when you pick it up, it feels like a precision shooter. It has all the depth that we had before, but now weapons feel accurate and powerful right from the beginning. We have physics-based special-abilities. All of these things can now be fired in real time, so you don't have to pause the game to select tactical options. It just feels so much more fluid. It feels fantastic."
I'm sure that younger gamers and players that are relatively new to BioWare games will love the improvements that Casey was talking aboot about. As an old school BioWare fan, I'm a little saddened by this inevitable modernization. I fondly remember the epic battles I waged in Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II -- part of the fun was hitting the space bar in the middle of a fight and spend minutes thinking about all the cool ways I could dispatch my enemies before finally delivering the deathblow. I totally understand that the majority of fans desire combat that's faster and smoother, but I wish there were more gamers that enjoyed a break in the action so that they could plot their cerebral assassinations.
Click here to watch the entire Mass Effect 2 interview in glorious HD.
What do you guys and dolls think? Do you like that Mass Effect 2's combat will be more fluid than the original's? Or do you enjoy pause-and-play gaming? Also, isn't Casey's Canadian accent awesome?
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Comments
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Sandmann24
argh! i cant wait any longer
MagmaS
ME1 may not have been perfect, but it was freekin' awesome!
shadowsoul1
Yay Mass Effect 2!!! Can't wait! Casey Hudson is HOT! LOL
apnance
Fallout 3's pause-tactics system blended much more seemlessly with the action and paid significantly higher dividends for the time spent micromanaging than did Mass Effects. ME's system was clunky and failed to convinced me that I was better off pausing the game versus just shooting/reacting quickly. That said, I'd like to see a more Fallout 3 like pause-tactics system in ME2.
apnance
I think Fallout 3 struck a great balance and set a new standard for these types of games. VATS was undeniably similar to the combat system in Mass Effect, but VATS added a more to think about during the pauses making the temptation to want to waste valuable seconds of my finite existence pondering my best attack versus the more visceral and immediatey gratifying guns-blazing approach.
REAPER094
hey r we going to find out more about the reapers or how they were made or even figth a reaper that will be awesome
koreankracker3
this game looks freakin awesome.
silent_jedi
I was fine with the combat, never liked fps' myself, but I agree with DoubleLeo, searching planets in the mako got boring. maybe if I could improve it some how, that would be cool. but damn those worm things sucked to fight. I did not mind using the mako when it was going through heavy weapons and such, just the exploring the planets got so boring.
Kulkaij
while i can't say i'm old enough to have played through baldur;s gate (no snipe intended raymond) but i have always enjoyued bioware's pause and play it brings a more interesting and intelligent approach to combat. any game could ask you to use x and y to slash and then use a couple of other imputs for other special attacks but i loved when i had to use my brain and pause and think what attacks or abilities would work against malak in kotor. but im glad that bioware isn't completely abandoning that system but just adding a new one that i guess "new" gamers would rather enjoy. but it didn't seem like that was what they were gonna do based on that little preview i saw.
osubluejacket
@E2thesamps
I just had to make that choice in my playthrough and decided to let the queen live JUST to see if they come out in ME2.
LMAO @ mckin3228
mckin3228
@E2thesamps
you should go back and NOT kill the gas bags on eden prime. You know that'll eff you up royal :P
AzraelHorn
"Mass Effect is a RPG, not a FPS. You should be able to take a minute to check out different moves and skills; not just randomly blast your gun continously."
Why can't it do both? I think that's what they're trying to address. I got bored with ME1 just because the combat felt pretty generic and boring. It played like a half-hearted 3rd person shooter with the guns not feeling much different from one another and the "powers" feeling a bit clunky to use. The improvements they're talking about have me feeling excited about picking up the sequel. For those of you who want to play it old school, you'll have the option.
E2theSamps
Hmmm... that bit about 'decisions in Mass Effect 1 coming back to haunt you'...For starters, maybe I should go back and NOT kill the Rachni.
DoubleLeo
I hope that they do manage to tighten up the combat this time around. Part of the fix needs to be that laggy frame rate. Mass Effect has such a great story, however, coming from playing games like Call of Duty, and Gears of War makes the sketchy combat in Mass Effect look and feel even worse. After two play throughs, I found myself wanting the game to just be a movie. Overall, I am still dissapointed with the first one. With games like Fallout 3 in my library, Mass Effect 2 has to be overwhelmingly impressive for me to consider it. Oh and what about the god aweful planetary exploration by way of the mako "tank"? Are they addressing that? There is so much room for improvement in terms of just basic gameplay.
MartyMcFly84
Much like the VATS system in Fallout 3, I like the pause-and-play in Mass Effect 1. Mass Effect is a RPG, not a FPS. You should be able to take a minute to check out different moves and skills; not just randomly blast your gun continously.
Spartan_458
The only pause-and-play I've ever liked were the Pokemon games and the VATS system in Fallout 3. Other than that, I'm all for real-time and smoother combat.
Greibach
Yeah, this game looks great. I think that it would be great to allow combat pause, if that's what you want, but I wished so very much in ME1 that I could have more than one shortcut Biotic at once, I felt it really broke pace to pause all the time. There was a real disconnect between soldiers and adepts/engineers. I think/hope they keep in the ability to combat pause, but also keep the ability to run completely on the fly.
osubluejacket
I'm so excited for this game that I deleted my previous Mass Effect saves and am currently playing the game through on Insanity level so that I can have my Commander Shepherd ready to go.
TelevisionEyes
No need to worry about any of this. I read on Bioware's developer blog that you can still pause the action if you want to. They are just giving more options to people that want that particular play style. I personally like pausing the action. I wish more games had done it. It was one of my biggest complaints with Oblivion. Too much time spent in menus.
livesintubes49
I don't care how the battle system works. I just want this game.
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