A quick study guide to prepare you for the complexities of Mass Effect 2 and how they relate to the broader canon. The races, characters, locations, and events that you’ll need to be familiar with if you’re going to understand everything that’s going on.
The Mass Effect universe is vast and complex, and to fully immerse yourself in the sequel, releasing January 26, it’s important that you have a firm grasp on the fundamentals. You need to know which races hate each other, which characters you might have stumbled upon before, and who did what to whom in all of the currently available fiction. What follows is a quick primer to get you up to speed on the essentials so you’re prepared for the bulk of what Mass Effect 2 will throw at you. It’s by no means an encyclopedic resource on the lore of the franchise, but it should help demystify some of the complexities you’ll face.
Spoiler Alert: If you’ve not played the first game through to completion, but are intending to do so before playing the sequel, you may want to approach what follows with caution.
Location The Citadel
The Citadel is a massive space station constructed over 50 millennia ago in the heart of the Serpent Nebula. The Citadel serves as the center of the galactic community and acts as its political, cultural, and financial capital. It is also the seat of the Citadel Council, the primary governing body in the galaxy. At the end of the first game it came under attack from the Reaper known as Sovereign, and any reverence toward Commander Shepard in Mass Effect 2 is due to his efforts to save it. There are challenges associated with the location in the new game however, as human efforts to help rebuild after the crisis have been seen as politically motivated, and have resulted in anti-human sentiments among many alien races.
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Elbow-dropping Majini is cool, but what we really want to know is if the game will be delayed to coincide with the new release date for Sony’s motion controller.
Capcom introduced a new character and some more info on its upcoming Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition this morning with some screenshots and a press release.
Excella Gionne will join the lineup of playable characters in the Mercenaries Reunion mode. Note the fashionable wrap dress and high-heels paired with the syringe.
Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition is a repackaging of all the Resident Evil 5 downloadable content plus some new episodic campaign gameplay. Episode two, “Desperate Escape,” features Josh Stone and Jill Valentine as playable characters out to assist Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar’s mission. We don’t know much mroe about this new episode besides a quick bit of info from today’s press release that tells us Josh can “elbow drop injured Majini.”
Interestingly enough, Gold Edition on PlayStation 3 is compatible with Sony’s new motion controller and was originally going to hit shelves in Japan right around the spring 2010 release date for the new controller. However, as of yesterday, Sony’s pushed back the motion controller release to fall 2010.
We’ve asked Capcom if that means Gold Edition will be delayed as well and haven’t heard back at time of press.
UPDATE: Capcom got back to us and said that the delay of the motion controller will have no impact on the Gold Edition March 9 release date. Furthermore, “Capcom has not announced any compatibility between Sony’s motion controller and Resident Evil 5 in North America.”
One of the few flight sims currently available on the Wii, Project Ace’s anime-based dogfighter won’t revolutionize the genre by any means, but it’s a solid title with some of the best aerial combat currently available on Nintendo’s console.
The Ace Combat team is no stranger to anime-based games. Having previously worked on the Japan-only mash-up Another Century’s Episode games, they’ve returned to the realm of licensed entertainment with Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces. This time, however, they’re playing more to type, crafting a game that plays like an Ace Combat set in an alternate World War II.
Based on the Mamoru Oshii’s animated film of the same name, Innocent Aces is a prequel of sorts. Like the film (and the series of light novels upon which it is based), the plot centers around a war organized by a pair of corporations and its young participants. In a departure from Ace Combat, there are no heat-seeking missiles or ultra-modern jet fighters. Instead, battles are close-range dogfights between variants of classic World War II fighter planes.
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Following the footsteps of Nobuo Uematsu before him, Square Enix composer Masashi Hamauzu is heading out the door.
Longtime Square Enix composer Masashi Hamauzu is leaving the company after a 15 year career, Square Enix Music Online reports.
Square Enix seems to be having a hard time hanging onto composers for the Final Fantasy series. Famed series composer Nobuo Uematsu left the company in 2004 after having passed the torch to Hamauzu and Junya Nakano for FFX and to Hitoshi Sakimoto for FFXII. Sakimoto actually composed the FFXII score as a freelancer, having left Square Enix in 2004. Nakano left in 2009.
Square Enix Music Online goes on to say that Hamauzu isn’t the only composer leaving the company. “Further departures from the remaining four composer team[s]” are expected in the coming months.
We’ve contacted Square Enix to request confirmation and will update this story with any information they may have for us.
The official Final Fantasy XIII soundtrack goes on sale in Japan January 27. The game comes out in the US March 9.
They’re calling it P3P — as in Persona 3 Portable.
Atlus announced today that the PlayStation Portable port of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 would make its way Stateside this summer.
Apparently, the developer is skipping over Persona 2: Eternal Punishment and Personal 2: Innocent Sin (which never got a US release anyway) in their PSP port series of the super-popular role-playing games.
Persona 3 PSP (or P3P) came out in Japan in November 2009. It’s an “enhanced” version of the PlayStation 2 original with the option to play through the game as a female character with altered story elements as a result. Also, the battle system is tweaked to more closely resemble Persona 4 for PS2.
