"I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite blog on the Internet."

I loved the first Mass Effect despite hating certain design decisions: driving the floaty Mako to collect rocks that had insignificant money and xp values; playing Simon Says for rocks and lockers; unlimited ammo; the utter lack of variety in non-storytime quests, and the overabundance of items and navigation of items. With the exception of Skip Dialogue still being the same button as Confirm, all of this has been addressed in the much superior sequel.

Combat: ammo count is the big change here, and what I find most satisfying is the feedback when baddies are hit with firearms. In the first outing, shooting a baddie was like shooting a wall. Not only do the weapons in ME2 feel considerably heavier, the weight can be seen when baddies are pushed or stunned with each well-placed bullet. The submachine gun is a welcome addition; good as a fallback weapon or for killing swarms of baddies that don’t drop ammo since this gun has the highest max ammo count of the bunch. Plus, I’m getting sick of shotguns even if accompanied by the space adjective.

The biotics (haven’t used tech yet) also seem much more useful this time around; faster cooldown, and now with attacks differentiated by effectiveness against a defense type there is another combat tactic with utility – mainly because biotics don’t consume resources.

My only complaint is one I have with all cover-based games: it’s easy, to the point of tiring, to see an upcoming battle simply by the presence of cover. If I’m running down a hall that contains nothing for me to hide behind, that’s a guarantee I won’t be attacked.

Equip: strange not to have an Equip screen in an RPG yet the absence works. The first game had way too many items – as does every Bioware game. The lack of any true item collecting in ME2 means you spend less time in the Pause menu. In fact, even though the layout of the Pause menu is the same, the only reason to ever bring it up is to save and load. The majority of missions can now be seen on the galaxy map (Christ it was annoying tracking quests in the first game), and all upgrades are done through another menu.

No Mako: I mean, come on. Who the fuck actually liked driving this pile?

Space Dungeon Variety: the game is a lot more segmented. Gone are the elevators, the backtracking in missions. Missions are separate from hubs – unlike the first where, for example, you arrive at Zhu’s Hope only to have to walk to the Mako so you can drive to the Exogeni HQ. If this mission were in the sequel, you’d land on Zhu’s Hope, talk to the quest-giver and then the game would load Exogeni since the HQ would be a different map. I guess the game pampers you, but Christ, I’d rather sit through a loading screen than walk, which is just a poor attempt to invoke a grand adventure.

And what ties the experience together is the ability to import your ME1 saves. Sure, nothing you collected carries over. And yes, importing also makes checks for certain decisions you had made. Yet for me, the look of my character plays a big part. I spent a lot of time customizing my Shepard, and I invested a lot of time into both genders. I’m playing as my Shepard, not the Shepard Bioware created. Customizing appearance is important to me and even more so since this is a space opera, even more so since you see your Shepard from the front more than you do from behind (I never understood the point in changing your char’s appearance in Oblivion or Fallout 3). Usually I’m indifferent about character designs for protagonists – even with Bioware’s Shepard: Marketing Version. Perhaps indifference is too weak; it takes a lot for me to like a char design. The less flash the better. I’m not an adolescent – a woman who covers up can be just as sexy as a woman exposes.

And I have to say, I wouldn’t have invested as much time as I have if the voice actors for Shepard were less than stellar. Jennifer Hale in particular – mesmerizing.

A new teaser for Mass Effect 2 came out today, and now it’s looking like Shepard kicks some more Geth ass instead of the bucket. I fear Shepard’s demise is nothing but a setup of his design, that it’s a way for him to hide from his enemies. To be a ghost. To be, in every sense of the word, a Spectre.

I shudder at the thought.

I hope Shepard dies. And stays dead.

Shepard dying between Mass Effect 1 and 2 or Shepard dying in the sequel’s opening can be seen as a bold choice, but can also be a logical one. Despite Bioware’s reputation for writing, the Shepard character is no case study. Nothing stands out, nothing is an eye-roller. She is all strengths no weaknesses, and any ink spots in her past (if you chose Earthborn or Ruthless) still work in her favor since they still feel more like a tattoo than a scar. The sequel could present obstacles for Shepard that define her arc, but I think killing her is a much more interesting path mainly because if the time between her death and the introduction of the new protagonist is small, the story goes from an intergalactic war to a revenge tale. If the new protagonist is connected to Shepard on a personal level, the momentum you had when the first Mass Effect ended continues. I can’t imagine myself caring much about Shepard’s death if the new hero is human Spectre number 311.

Besides, I feel there is nothing left to tell of Shepard’s story if there are no deaths. This is a sequel to a story-driven game, not another installment in, say, the Devil May Cry series. If the story wants to raise itself to an epic, characters from both sides need to fall. You can either kill the hero or kill members of her crew.

And killing off most of Shepard’s crew would be just as compelling as killing off Shepard. It can elevate the surviving crew to veterans of a war that killed their team leader.

But if a third Mass Effect is made, would it be interesting if the new protagonist from the second dies in the third? Again, it would depend on who the hero of the third is and what the relationship is with the hero from the second. The further you distance the relationships between the protagonists the less people are going to care about the story. And instead of getting a story that always intended to plot a course that journeys across multiple games, we’ll end up with a ferry ride whose only purpose is an endless back and forth across a river.