Preview: Mass Effect (Page 2 of 2)
The Gentle or Not-So Gentle Art of Conversation
Conversation will be offer you the option of being as nice or as nasty as you would want to be in a fantasy setting.
Like most other BioWare games, Mass Effect will rely heavily on conversations with these alien and non-alien NPCs to move the plot forward. However, the developers plan to revolutionize the way these conversations progress by implementing a completely new system of character interaction.
In conversations from the "old" days of RPGs, players were given a choice of suitable responses whenever an NPC asks a question or simply stops talking, and the selected response would usually directly affect the flow of the conversation. But in Mass Effect, instead of being given a choice of responses, you're now given a choice of attitudes.
For instance, choose an aggressive stance, and your character will bully your conversation partner into revealing something under threat of force. Choose a "nice guy" stance, and your character will try to sweet talk his/her way out of information. Or, choose a bribery stance, and your character will try to obtain what you want in exchange for money or items.
Additionally, in an effort to make the game's flow of speech even more cinematic, your characters will also be able to interrupt conversation partners even before they stop speaking. In previous RPGs, pressing a button would either hurry or skip through a page of dialogue, but in Mass Effect, such an action counts as an interruption, which your conversation partner might actually perceive as rude.
Furthermore, the way you hold conversations greatly affects your characters' "morality", which has taken the place of the "good and evil" meters from previous BioWare titles. Not only will this measure of morality affect major events in the game, it will also affect events that take place in future installments of the trilogy.
With so many ways of holding a conversation multiplied by the number of potential conversations in the game, it's no wonder why the game barely fits on one DVD-9 disc.
Your very own Shepard
It looks as if character creation and customization will play a major role in Mass Effect, just as it has in most of BioWare's previous titles. Prior to the start of the game, the protagonist, known simply as Commander Shepard, can be adjusted for such variables as appearance, gender, and military abilities. Moreover, the equipment of certain items will have a direct affect on your characters' physical appearances as well, making it difficult to make any two Shepards alike without consciously doing so on purpose.
Your Shepard won't necessarily look like this.
Your Shepard will be given the option of choosing a warrior class at the beginning of the game as well, which depends completely on which talents and attributes you'd like him or her to start off with. Six different classes are available at the start, which is determined by your Shepard's aptitude with the game's three main skill groups: combat, tech, and biotics (a futuristic version of magic). It has also been revealed that six additional classes can be unlocked by your character later on in the game.
Due to its recent successes at RPG development, BioWare has gained a reputation as a company that literally turns everything it touches into gold. With all the hype and promise that Mass Effect offers, it's unlikely that this game will disappoint the general RPG-playing populace, but hey -- stranger things have happened.
Hopefully Mass Effect is right around that corner.
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