Mass Effect 2: Welcome to Omega

By McKinley Noble
November 09, 2009 14:19 PM PST
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Mass Effect 2's putting more action into your space opera, and danger is lurking around every corner for Commander Shepard and his crew.

More Mass Effect 2 @ GamePro

Our recent demo with Mass Effect 2 definitely proved that the planetary colony Omega is not a safe place for humans. Before we even got our hands on the controllers during a recent demo at the EA headquarters in Redwood City, CA, Commander Shepard was dead. It wasn't the Reapers, the shadowy beings that continue to threaten the Milky Way. It wasn't even Legion, the mysterious new Geth assassin who debuted in the very first Mass Effect 2 trailer. Of all things, it was nothing more than a poisoned cocktail drink that killed our hero.

"Yeah, that kind of thing can happen," quipped our Bioware representative as he reloaded the game. Batarians, the main antagonists of the iPod Touch/iPhone title Mass Effect Galaxy and one of the less trustworthy races of Mass Effect, still have a track record of hating humans (who are still not overwhelmingly popular in this galaxy) and Bioware doesn't want you to forget small details like that. After all, if you were a famous human among an alien species that hated your entire race, would you take a drink from one of these four-eyed thugs?

Your survival on the mining colony Omega depends on how you act towards the people in charge, and even the resident Asaris tend to be a little ruthless.

Bigger Galaxy, Bigger Threats

Mass Effect 2 is full of little consequences like poisonous space martinis, as Bioware is taking huge leaps in making their space epic sequel even deadlier than the original. Everything's a lot bigger, too, from the stakes of Commander Shepard's suicide mission to the very worlds that players will visit on their quest to save the human race from extinction. We got just a taste of it as we walked around the mining colony Omega, which is essentially to the Mass Effect universe what Oakland is to California -- a "heart of evil" filled with crime and lawless inhabitants from Who Knows Where.

Looking over the vast mining colony, it's obvious that Mass Effect 2 is pushing the visuals even further than first time around, as the lights and buildings that littered Omega's skyline seemed to stretch for miles. Even when we entered our destination, "Club Afterlife," the high ceilings, smoldering fireplace displays and bright, neon flare of the intergalactic alien saloon reached far beyond the confines of what we could see on the HD television screen. Bioware also noted that "there's not going to be as many small, confined spaces" as the previous game, and that players would be coerced into really studying the wide open environments. Oh, and just in case anyone was wondering, the elevator sequences aren't more than 15 seconds long.

In Mass Effect 2, humans have been disappearing at rapid speed, thanks to the 'Collectors,' a dangerous race of kidnappers that is being manipulated by the Reapers. Shepard's tale in ME2 deals with his suicide mission in dealing with this threat, as well the new crew he collects in his quest. But what do the Collectors want the humans for, anyway?

Back to the scene in Club Afterlife, after passing by the rows of Asari pole dancers we eventually walked over to the bar, where a four-eyed Batarian glowered at our crew. After choosing the option to order a drink, Commander Shepard chucked back the cocktail and promptly collapsed in a heap on the floor... and the screen went black. Oops, guess that old "hatred for humans" thing still applies on Omega. We later learned that had we gone further through the seedy dive, we would've been privy to a long conversation with Aria, one of the meanest and most cutthroat Asaris we've ever seen, who explicitly threatens to kill Shepard if his Spectre business interferes with her iron-fist rule over the colony. Huh. So much for elegance and diplomacy.