Mass Effect 2 - Progress Report Part 2

Graphics Engine & Character Creation

"The graphics engine has been enhanced, overall. The character creation is similar because we need to make sure that, when we import your character from ME 1, will look the way you expect them to."

"The graphics engine has been enhanced, overall. The character creation is similar because we need to make sure that, when we import your character from ME 1, will look the way you expect them to. But we have improved a number of things. We've gone back and improved some of the hair and skin shadders, stuff like that; overall, the lighting system and the shadows... We have higher resolution, but also we've gone back and improved the lighting model as well, so the graphics engine itself is much improved," commented Casey, in relation to the graphics and the character creation system in ME 2.

Missed me!

Again, that wasn't me.

Dealing With Technical & Design Challenges

After reading a lot of impressive stuff about Mass Effect 2 and seeing how much work went into this complex game, we wanted to find out how BioWare coped with all the technical challenges during such a massive endeavor. So, we asked them:

Transferring the saves from the original straight into ME 2 is a cool feature. From a technical standpoint, has this proven to be a difficult task for the development team?

"... It's a very complex process because it's one game's save file format looking at that of a different game and then bringing in all of those decisions."

Casey Hudson: "It has actually. Part of the trick is that we've moved from Microsoft to EA, as our publisher and there's a lot of security stuff regarding games from one publisher being able to read those from a different publisher. That's one of the technical hurdles that we've had, but beyond that just the fact that it's a very complex process because it's one game's save file format looking at that of a different game and then bringing in all of those decisions. If it was few decisions, we could have a conversation at the beginning and you tell the game what your decisions were. But it's actually so man more decisions. It's more than could ever wanna go through, 'cause literally your save game with all the different plot variables and everything that you've said. Therefore, we need to pull all that stuff in and make sure it works in ME 2."

"That's just the technical side," continued Casey. "The creative side of weaving all those decisions into the story is the other hard part. As you walk around the Citadel, for example, many of the details that give the environment flavor are different based on the way that you left the Citadel and the council in the end of the first game. It's all of those things that we had to tie in, and it's possibly the hardest thing we've had to do in this project...make sure that that's working and that people are going to be happy with how fully we've supported it."