Mass Effect 2 Announcement and Speculation

This announcement actually caught me off guard. I was expecting EA/BioWare to hold off announcing Mass Effect 2 till one of their own events or E3. We’ve known that stuff was going to be discussed at GDC for a while now but I figured it would be very basic and non-specific stuff since we already knew the game was coming around (it was announced as a trilogy).

The trailer itself is actually pretty basic, listing off your character’s associations and accomplisgments as it panned over the basic N7 Normandy armor that you start out with. Then at the final moment we see that it lists you as Killed In Action and your lifeless body is being held by a pissed of Geth before the trailer cuts out. Like I said, I was caught off guard by the trailer. Now for some speculation.

I’ll flatly say that I don’t believe Commander Shepard is dead. Too much of the universe is based on Shepard and what he (or she, if you rolled that way) did, such as finding the Beacons and getting the messages from them, speaking directly to Sovereign, speaking to the AI Vigil, the list is pretty long of things you’ve done. To throw that away and make you start a new character would be a pretty big pill to swallow for fans of the original. On top of that, you never reveal something this big in the first trailer for a game that I’d suspect is at least and a half out.

The far more likely scenario is that the presumed death of Shepard will play a major part in, I’m not sure, the first half of the game? You’ll create a new character and progress through the game as you investigate his “death” and other events in the galaxy before meeting up with him and joining his squad. For some people, they’ll have two holes in their roster with the potential death of Wrex as well as the choice between Ashley and Kaden. Your main character could fill the hole created by the sacrifice as your control is reverted back to Shepard for the remainder of the game.

It’s hard to see how they’re going to manage the sequel because of it’s place within the trilogy. For Mass Effect the excitement was beginning the story and learning all of the secrets the galaxy had to offer. I’m not saying BioWare can’t mimic that in Mass Effect 2 but just by the nature of the beast, Mass Effect 2 is serving as a middle ground between the opening act and the curtains falling. Like with Halo 2, it most likely won’t change any key elements of the story until the ending cutscenes as it sets the game up for Mass Effect 3. I use that comparison because in Halo 2, most of the earliest events such as discovering Delta Halo and the other locations had no last impact until the Great Schism and the activation of the ring.

It’ll be interesting to see how Mass Effect 2 evolves. It is still currently my favorite game of all time (not Halo 1,2, or 3 as some might suspect) and I’m waiting eagerly for more information on the sequel.