Mass Effect 2 - Preview Roundup

BioWare's recent press event for Mass Effect 2 has resulted in a flurry of articles, so here's a small collection courtesy of Blue's.

• MMORPG.com (written by Scott Jennings, presumably the well known developer)
• Atomic Gamer
• IGN AU
• TenTonHammer

Interesting that two of the sites are dedicated MMO networks.  Here's a sample from Scott Jennings' piece:

Much of the story was left unexplained for reasons of preserving spoilers (some of which we were told happened at the very beginning of the game, such as the destruction of the original Normandy as seen in Bioware's E3 demo). However, what was obvious is that the story of ME2 is much grimmer - much like Empire Strikes Back to ME1's Star Wars (and it was explicitly stated that a ME3 was already planned). As Casey Hudson, ME2's project director, told us several times, "This is a suicide mission. People are most likely going to die. Your character can possibly die, a permanent death." The loyalty of your NPC party members are tracked (and explicitly displayed) as you move through the game, since inspiring your crew to die for your cause can be a bit difficult. Speaking of NPCs, most of the characters (at least the ones that survived in your imported save game) from ME1 appear in ME2, though they aren't recruitable NPCs. The reason given for this was that, quite simply, most of your henchmen in ME2 are probably going to die. Yes, this is definitely, consciously aiming for a darker experience.