Some new news for Mass Effect Fans! Elevators, Difficulty, and a second disc?

Over at the Bioware Forums, It has been announced that there will no longer be the same system used to move the player from one zone to another. The elevators will be replaced by loading screens. Personally, I had no problem with the elevators…as they were intereative and less boring then a simple loading screen. Yet, at the same time, the loading screens they did have in Mass Effect were pretty neat. So…more loading screens. Less Elevators. Suppose the masses will rejoice!

The elevators were made in ME1 so we didn’t have to show boring loading screens. However there were a lot of complaints, so we’ve gone back to loading screens and movies. We still have elevators in ME2, but you don’t wait inside them. We’ll cut to a loading screen instead.

We’ve tried to make the loading screen more interesting this time by adding interesting visuals and information.

The elevator conversations had some funny moments, but hopefully people will enjoy this new system better than the old one!

On another note. Mass Effect will come with two discs. I suppose this gives fodder to the sony fanboys to both poke fun at the 360 lover-boys and scream that Mass Effect 2 would obviously perform better on a single disc while promoting obesity by restricting any type of movement. Ok, that last point was a stretch…how many calories will you really burn by changing a disc?

Ok some details for you.

1 – Yes, there are 2 game discs for both the PC and Xbox 360 versions, both the Collector’s and standard editions.

2 – There is a 3rd disc with the Collector’s Edition. This is a movie DvD containing making of and other bonus information.

3 – The PC version is a standard install. You install the information from both discs and then play with 1 disc in the drive. No swapping.

4 – You can install the game to your Xbox 360 Hard Drive as long as you have enough memory to do so and have the correct disc in the drive when you play.

5 – Even though there is a disc swap, it occurs at a carefully planned place in the game (that does not interfere with gameplay) and is done once. You do not swap back and forth. 1 swap and then done.

6 – Why 2 discs? Answer: Because you cannot fit this much awesome on one disc.

Hope this helps.

Edit: Changed point 4 as I had the wrong info initially.

Anyways, another bit of news that comes from Destructoid, is that Mass Effect 2 may end up having a harder difficulty for the higher end choices. Insanity may actually be…insane? We shall see.

“Sometimes I think we’re pampering gamers too much,” says Mass Effect 2 producer Adrien Cho. “Just recently, a game like Demon’s Souls is fantastic because when you die, and you fail, it’s not because the game was cheap it’s usually because you didn’t do something properly.

“It goes back to that learning mechanism of ‘Well, I tried this — it didn’t work. I’m going to try something different.’ And I think that’s going to be something in Mass Effect 2, we don’t want it to be a cakewalk, you want a challenge.”

Josh T. Announcements, Games, PC, xbox 360