Mass Effect 2 - The Subjective Story

Mass Effect 2's Subjective Story at Next Gen actually should have been titled the Objective Story.  Reporting on a GDC panel, BioWare's Armando Troisi explains that Shepard is less like a traditional RPG avatar and more like Kratos in God of War:

In attempt to fix these problems, or at least tackle interactive narrative from a different direction, Bioware chose to create something “really counter to the traditional roleplaying form."

“You are not Shepard. He has his own reasons and motivations for doing things; he’s more like God of War’s Kratos than he is the avatar of Dragon’s Age.”

As a result, the player fills a “voyeuristic” role—watching scenes and trying to influence them, not control them. Troisi considered that this had “almost completely” removed temporal distortion, offering a “real time narrative environment.”