Mass Effect 2 Revealed

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February 20, 2009 - BioWare has released a teaser trailer for its highly anticipated sequel to Mass Effect, and the brief new video raises as many questions as it answers about the company's upcoming sci-fi RPG.

The video transmission begins mundanely enough. A blue planet looms in space, framed by a field of stars. A readout is quickly overlaid on-screen, spelling out the basic identification information for Commander Shepard, the hero you created and got to know over the course of the first Mass Effect game:

Alliance Service Record 5923-AC-2826
Commander Shepard, SSV Normandy
Born: 4.11.2154
Enlisted: 4.11.2172


Then the transmission, which is intermittently broken up by static, switches to a slow vertical pan of a metallic object while additional information about Shepard's service record ticks by. The viewer is introduced to some of the more spectacular feats undertaken by your character in Mass Effect:

Notable Service:
Liberation of Eden Prime
Siege of the Citadel
First human Spectre



Watch the amazing first trailer for Mass Effect 2.


But what begins as an innocuous recounting of Shepard's life takes a more ominous tone as the music grows darker and the nature of the information begins to change. Now we're told about Shepard's "known alien associates," including Liara T'Soni, Garrus Vakarian, Tali'zorah Nar Rayya and Urdnot Wrex (all members of your party in Mass Effect 1).

And then, as the metal surface is revealed to have an N7 logo (the highest-ranking special ops designation), the bombshell drops:

Status: Killed in action


As a final spike in the hearts of Mass Effect fans who spent countless hours building and playing as our own version of Commander Shepard, the camera pans up to reveal that the N7 armor, presumed to be Shepard's, is being worn by a particularly nasty-looking Geth (we're assuming) robot. When the camera reaches its glowing blue eye, it strikes, and the transmission ends.

At the end of the trailer, the sun rises from behind the shadow of the planet from the first part of the trailer (is it Earth?) and the Mass Effect 2 logo emerges.

Shepard dead? Evil robots wearing N7 armor? Shepard dead? What happened immediately after the events of the first Mass Effect game? Was Shepard truly killed in battle, or can we hold out hope that our hero survived? Could she have faked her own death? Gone underground to avoid detection? Or is this BioWare's way of telling us we won't be able to carry the character we created in the first game over to the sequel?

One clue to the possible storyline of Mass Effect 2 lies in the trailer's delivery method. The trailer is housed on a page with the Cerberus logo. Cerberus is the shadowy group from the first game that's doing some shady research in the Voyager Cluster. The organization is also at the center of the novel Mass Effect: Ascension. Written by BioWare's lead Mass Effect writer Drew Karpyshyn, Ascension takes place in the months after the end of Mass Effect 1.

According to Karpyshyn's official Web site, the novel "digs deeper into an organization known as Cerberus, a radical pro-human military cabal." The book also introduces a new setting called Omega, which Karpyshyn describes as the Terminus Systems' dark, twisted counterpart to the Citadel.

There's a lot we don't know about what to expect from BioWare's sequel, which is set to arrive on shelves sometime this year. In the meantime, let the speculation begin.

Taken from IGN.com
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/955/955984p1.html

The game sounds good even though I haven't played the first.


small edit by:
CoFree

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thanks CoFree, didn't know if i should have put it here or there. And for the video, nice!

[CoFree]

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