These two are based on your gender. They are reversed if you are female.
If you import you get bonus paragon/renegade points depending on if you filled your charm/intimidate bars. You get bonus starting cash if you have the ‘rich’ achievement. Bonus minerals (I think this is level based) and you start on level 5 if your character is imported at level 60.
Stupid Euro release dates. I’m really impatient to begin my game. Right now all I can do is pre-load on steam and wait.
The official story never matches what I myself did. In Fallout 2, not only was the Vault Dweller assumed to have been male, the official history also had Dogmeat dying in the Mariposa base. What the hell? Why didn’t the official Vault Dweller just keep pumping the dog with his massive stockpile of stimpacks?
Anyway, I’m looking forward to having my actual actions taken into account.
I’m only about an hour into it and without tryint to spoil anything, Cerberus plays a major role, in ME2 and your activities in the first game don’t go unnoticed.
I’m not completely sold on the plot yet and it’s got a different feel than ME1, but I’ve already met a character I hope to keep around because I like him as a person, and one who I’m already wanting to genuinely drop out an airlock because she’s a world class biatch and I believe it. In that regard, ME2 succeeds for engaging me that quickly with the characters more than most games do in their entirety.
That’s not the most egregious fault in the previous incarnations of that mechanic.
Testimony : I personally killed Imoen. I did. I took pleasure in silencing her whiny arse, in the first 5 minutes of actual gameplay too. Had I been able to, I would have paraded her skull around as a warning for annoying voice actors around the world.
Fuck if I didn’t have to jump through 10.000 GPs’ worth of hoops to rescue her in the sequel anyway. At which point I, of course, killed her again. But she still appeared in the extension :smack:
Excellent. Since they tried to kill my Sole Survivor Shep on Akuze I figure rebuilding him is the least they can do. And even then he still has a score to settle for Kahoku and his men…
Thane?
Subject Zero?
Friday can’t come soon enough.
The hacking sucks. Is there no way to open things just by rubbing some goo on it?
Unfortunately, the jettisoning of the inventory seems to also come with the jettisoning of hacker’s Miracle Goo.
For those like Kobal2 wondering about the import system there’s a vid up showing the mechanic ME2 uses (spoilers for ME1, obviously). It also confirms the new game plus system returns, which is good news. I always enjoyed unleashing a massive singularity on Fist’s bodyguards in Chora’s Den.
What paths with you take? The dark flavour of the sequel seems to favour the ‘I did what I had to do’ style of the renegade over the somewhat naive paragon choices. In the first I took Machiavelli as a mantra; “…men should either be treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries - for heavy ones they cannot.” So a saint to my friends and a devil to my enemies, leading to a mostly paragon playthrough but with a significant chunk of renegade points. ME2 players apparently benefit from choosing one or the other early on, so my first playstyle might not work in the sequel…we’ll see.
Question that I’m wondering if it is touched on in the sequel at all:
Spoilers for ME 1 Ahead!!!
The citadel is a mass relay tuned to some other mass relay somewhere in intergalactic space. It’s the doorway (as far as anyone knows the ONLY doorway) to the galaxy.
If that is the case, and it took two fleets to kill a single reaper, then why isn’t the citadel destroyed? That’s what I would do. I suppose it would take a long time to evacuate everyone and of course all of that technology would be gone, but Ilios (the planet where the protean scientists survived) might have clues as to how to create mass effect technology.
Has no one put this idea forward in the game?
P.S I just beat ME1 tonight and I’m firing up ME2 now! YAY!
ME1 Spoilers
The Citadel, as Prothean (or if Sovereign is telling the truth, Reaper) technology, is made of the same stuff as the mass relays, one of which (the Mu relay) was caught up in a supernova explosion and is none the worse for wear, other than being knocked out of its position. Any damage the council races could do would be eventually repaired by the Keepers.
Even beyond the immediate problems of evacuating and re-establishing its functions, the Citadel is also the hub of the mass relay network, so trying to destroy it may cripple the fastest means of interstellar travel, effectively crippling galactic civilisation.
If not outright stated, it’s heavily implied throughout Mass Effect 1 that the Citadel is effectively indestructible. On top of that, something like a few billion live there, colonies/habitable planets are already implied to be somewhat low on space, it would be at best heavily impractical to tell everyone to pack up. Besides, if you think the political bickering is bad NOW just wait until people start discussions on who gets to host the new galactic center of government.
You know, now that I think about it, wouldn’t it have been easier to make the Citadel a Reaper, or program it to send out messages to the sleeping fleet after a certain amount of use (negating the whole stupid scout thing), or at the very least seep out indoctrination rays when a Reaper is near? This is why I get the feeling that the Reapers aren’t telling the whole story when they say they had no creators.
Maybe, maybe not. What does matter is that it made it a better/more engaging game 
“The Citadel has awoken, erm, the Reapers are coming and, well, we’re all dead now. Sorry, Game Over.”
Must. Sleep. Work. Tomorrow.
I have to say, after my first hour of ME2:
Best. Game. Intro. EVAH!
Reapers couldn’t function indefinitely in the manner that The Citadel does (due to the work of the Keepers). Hence why Sovvie is dormant in the Perseus Veil for millennia before awaking and surveying organic life. The Reapers would never dream of letting organics maintain them, either due to blind hatred or dislike of the chaotic organic nature and evolution (the Keepers evolving in an unanticipated direction).
The usual Reaper plan is just to get the vanguard to send a signal to The Citadel, open the relay to dark space and usher in the rest of the Reapers to wipe out galactic government. Only this time the surviving Protheans from Ilos travelled through the Conduit and sabotaged this mechanism, which is why Sovvie needed the geth, Saren and a direct assault to take control of the station.
Managed to pick the game up a bit quicker than I was anticipating…
I got it last night and I’m couple of hours into it so far. I’m currently doing quests at Omega station, but haven’t tried out any of the exploration/planet scanning options yet. I figured it would be a good idea to get some semblance of a crew together first.
Couple of thoughts so far…
The combat feels a lot more visceral now, which i think is a combination of limited ammo and the streamlining of the tech/biotic skills. It’s definitely a new tactical consideration.
I haven’t seen this mentioned elsewhere, but combat “missions” now seem to take place in there own self contained sections. It seems that once you’ve entered a pre-determined area you’re locked in there until you’re finished. (You might be able to retreat, I haven’t tried that yet.) I don’t like the fact that you can’t access your map in these areas. So far they’ve been fairly straightforward, but I’m terrible with “off the cuff” spatial orientation in games, and I rely on maps very frequently. I’ve gotten turned around a couple of times and wished I’d had a map to bring up to re-orient myself. (I know about the “objective arrow” pop up, but it doesn’t feel like it’s enough)
Story thoughts…
[Spoiler] I do not trust Cerberus.
I do not trust the Illusive Man.
I’m not sure I trust Miranda yet.
I do not trust EDI. And why the fuck are you locking me out of half of my ship you bitch? If I get the chance to crack that AI core open I’m jumping at it.
I want Tali back in my group now. 
(I’m sure she’d have a few things to say about EDI)
Archangel was Garrus! I half suspected it, but it was still a cool moment. 
[/Spoiler]
A question - Is there anyway to see the raw stats for the different weapons? I’ve deduced that the “M-number” designations are relative power levels, but it doesn’t help me very much in comparing across classes. My heavy pistol probably does more damage per shot, but how does that compare to a three round burst from a machine pistol? How does a M4 machine pistol compare to an M6 heavy pistol?
Bioware pulled this stunt with Dragon Age and I didn’t like it then either. Give me raw numbers dammit! :mad:
Holy crap it gets better and better. I’ve gotten through the first portion of the game
[SPOILER] After you finish collecting the list that The Illusive Man gave you to form your squad. The fight to get Jack was pretty tough. I like the whole lot of them, and unlike ME1 I tend to trade out who’s with me.
Well, I always have Zaheed with me. He’s just too badass. I’m now fighting the collectors on Harvest where my girl Ashley is at. [/SPOILER]
I’ve had a couple crashes, one to desk top, one BSOD. It’s an unexpected plus, It forces me to take breaks to do things like eat dinner!
Another thing that’s occurred to me…
It seems like such a small thing, but I really like the changes they’ve made in the conversation animations. People move around and react to the flow of the conversations. If you choose paragon options people are more relaxed and friendly, if you choose renegade they’re more tense and aggressive. It makes the dialogue less static, which is a good thing.
What difficulty level/class are you playing on? During my first playthrough I played a Soldier on Normal and almost never ran out of info for my main weapon (assault rifle). I’m playing as an Infiltrator on Hardcore now and having a very hard time since ammo packs will only give 1 (sometimes 2) sniper rounds each. The combat is a lot more interesting and difficulty this time around.
Yes, and you generally can’t get back into those sections once its over, so make sure you’ve found all the upgrades, etc. before you advance.
There’s no way that I’m aware of, but I don’t think you really need the raw stats. Dragon Age was annoying in that it gave you some numbers that you didn’t have any context for and gave you a lot of upgrade options that you didn’t really have a way to compare. In ME2, there are only 3 of each weapon, and their damage is inversely proportional to their rate of fire and accuraccy.
“Normal” difficulty here, (whatever the default is), and my main Shep is an Infiltrator as well actually. My main weapon so far has been the machine pistol, as other ammo has been hard to come by. I’ve ran low a few times and have had to micro manage my party members abilities, as well as relying on my own tech skills, to get through some fights, but I haven’t actually ran completely out yet. I can see it coming though. I make it a point to comb over areas after fights looking for clips.
Sniper ammo is particularly hard to come by, and I’ve left it in reserve for necessary moments. Like enemies on balconies across a stretch of ground for instance, and one other particular situation that comes to mind. (No spoilers.)
I didn’t know that there was only 3 versions of each weapon, and that puts things into some context. That’s interesting. I’ve been experimenting with my heavy pistol vs. my machine pistol and I’m definitely seeing the performance differences now.