Three years after the launch of Mass Effect on Xbox 360, the team at BioWare certainly underwent some changes. As Mass Effect was released, Electronic Arts finalized its purchase of BioWare. Coinciding with BioWare’s move from being an independent studio to a branch of EA was a decided change in the design philosophy of Mass Effect 2. While there certainly was far more money put into the game’s production values with vastly improved visuals, the introduction of more orchestral music and a number of big name actors added to the voice cast, the gameplay philosophy was overhauled to make the game less of a classic BioWare RPG and more of a standard third-person shooter.

While Mass Effect 2 was a near complete overhaul of what we played in the original Mass Effect, that doesn’t change the game entirely. It was still Mass Effect but it had a really nice new coat of paint.
Read the rest of this entry →