Mass Effect [X360]

The key choice will be your military specialization, which is the equivalent of a class in other RPGs. The main choices are soldier, engineer, and adept. The soldier is good with guns and armor, the engineer has a holographic multitool on his or her arm, and the adept is capable of wielding the ancient forgotten power that gives the game its name ("mass effect" is described in the game as "a force that controls the fabric of space and time"). Also available are three hybrid choices: infiltrator, sentinel, and vanguard are all combinations of the main military specializations.

Each class will have its own talents, which are like skills. They're mostly combat oriented, and your talent points from leveling up are relatively rare to encourage tough choices. There are only about ten talents per character to keep things streamlined, and casual users can play Mass Effect with an auto-leveling system if they don't want to bother with assigning points. Inventory is simplified as well. Your weapons can be modded, and unneeded items can be rendered down to omni-gel, which is a basic resource that can be used for everything from healing to lockpicks.

Watamaniuk showed several parts of the game that might be construed as spoilers, so we'll refrain from detailing them. Suffice to say that BioWare's trademark moral choices are present. As you play, you'll earn "renegade points" or "paragon points", which are stored up separately. This means you can never undo what you've done, but you can eventually balance it out if you want a middle of the road character.

During a demonstration of combat, Watamaniuk uses cover and flings grenades when he's not shooting. It's almost like he's playing Gears of War. Mass Effect's fights seem to play very much like a shooter with one important caveat. At any time, you can hold down the right bumper to pause the action and call up a "power wheel". From here, you can use skills and command your two teammates. You can also freely look around to check enemies and target them. When you release the bumper, you're back in real time action.

Just as BioShock was a shooter one step closer to an RPG, Mass Effect looks like an RPG one step closer to a shooter. But based on what we've seen, Mass Effect is primarily concentrating on a detailed story, with heroes, villains, and lots of room in between for you to find your own place in this interstellar rogue's gallery. "Over ten years, BioWare has made games about story and character," Watamaniuk says. "That's what we do."