• To Infinity and Beyond
Exploration this time around will be handled differently, as Project Director, Casey Hudson explained in our one-on-one. Exploring planets will have more variety, and won't be reduced to one rocky wasteland after another. There will be more ‘hotspots’ to engage in while rummaging through the solar system. These hotspots will be like miniature side-quests, with some directly tied to the history of your assorted crew members.

While I didn't learn any new details about the naviation interface, I did learn that you will have to be concerned with running out of fuel while traveling, and that the scanning mini-game of finding minerals has been removed from the game (thank you). It wasn't fully explained how you will now aquire these minerals (lridium, Platinum, and Element Zero), but we now know that is these minerals will go towards upgrading your character, and the Normandy. Again, we didn’t get to ‘see’ any of this, but it sounds like Mass Effect 2's exploration has been significantly improved.

• The New and Improved Elevator
You might laugh at addition of 'The New Improved Elevator', but the slow elevators in the first Mass Effect ended taking a lot of criticism and complaints because of their speed. The complaints mainly focused on the Normandy because you spent most of your time using this one, but even the elevators around the Citadel caught some slack. Well, things have changed.

In Mass Effect's ambitious nature to please, the elevators have been optimized, and are now running better than ever. The optimization also applies to the entire game, as the engine seems to be handling the visual upgrade quite admirably. Even though I wasn't playing the final cut of the game, ME2 looked great.

• Quick-Timed Conversation
The innovative dialog wheel returns in Mass Effect 2, and it like everything else, it has also been upgraded. You will now have more options to explore during conversations, with the ability to cut someone off while they are talking with a direct response. Paragon, and Renegade answers still carry over to your conversation choices, but a new twist has been added. Continuing to finesse the system Bioware has added quick-timed conversational answers, or quick-time actions during a conversation. Like a boss fight, the game will prompt you to press a button to active the quick-time event, or ignore it altogether.

In the demo this came up once where I had to choose between saving a minor NPCs life, or ignore him, and let him die. I investigated with both answers, and found that both sides came with interesting results. When I saved him, he was (obviously) thankful, and gave me more useful information to use in my current quest. When I let him die without aid, I didn't get the information, but I was able to loot his body. You can see how this forces you to quickly choose between a good, or bad answer, which can be shockingly self-reflective. I can't imagine how Bioware will exploit this feature in the full game, but I am sure it will bring out some interesting moments, to say the least.

• Uh, More Blasted Mini-Games
From what I have seen Mass Effect 2 is a major improvement on the original, but not everything was awe inspiring. What I particularly did not enjoy about Mass Effect 2 are the new match making mini-games to unlock certain objects like containers, and log files.

The one mini-game was your typical matching game that has you flipping over icons looking for a match (Even Mario uses this one). The second involves matching a phrase of gibberish on a scrolling page of gibberish. What I mean by gibberish, is a paragraph of unreadable words that you have to match by looking at their basic structure, and not actually reading. Huh? You got me there.

Both games are mildly interesting, but the match game is too basic and easy, and the gibberish one is a lot harder, and ultimately pointless. I am sure both of these games are not going anywhere, so be prepared to put on your thinking cap whenever you want to unlock a locked container, or view some restricted logs. Hopefully this is all we will see of the mini-game concept in Mass Effect 2, as I can't see a real purpose to having these included.

• Zombie Shepard!?! (SPOILERS!!)
I am not sure how much you have reading about Mass Effect 2, but in an early trailer for the game, you witness what looked like the death of Commander Shepard... well, he is not dead, but he did die... well, kinda. From what we learned in our time with Mass Effect 2, when the Normandy was attacked the crew evacuated in escape pods, and Shepard who was the last to leave, asphyxiates in space. If Shepard actually died it is unknown, but his body was saved and has been surgically rebuilt by Cerberus, the organization Shepard fought against in the first game.

Rebuilding Shepard was codenamed the 'Lazarus Project', and after two years of working on animating Shepherds' corpse, they have done so. The mission we played started up with Sheared awaking in the middle of a space station that is under heavy bombardment. In this hostile environment, Shepard is told about the Lazarus Project when Miranda Larson, who was lead on the project and Jacob Taylor, come to his aid.

The duality of knowing you have been rebuilt instantly starts to show in Shepard's reactions, and with the added stipulation of working with the enemy, it is simply too hard for Shepard to comprehend. In defiance Shepard treks on to find more questions, and even less answers, as he interrogates his new found company. This is all done under the constant aggression of a battle that has broken out on the station. Talk about stress!

Aside from that “big” spoiler, we did not learn too much more about the intricacies of the plot line, and its obvious Bioware has a lot of twists and turns for the player to discover.

Downtown Jimmy | 12.22.09