Yep and also Spoiler: Additional items fish for your aquarium and a bunch of different models (SR1, Citadel...). Can the female Shep hook up with Ash?
I never tried and I'm not too sure, but I have a feeling that Shep can only hook up with the human of the opposite gender. May be wrong about that though (went for Liara both times).
I played ManShep twice (first playthrough, then New Game+). I didn't have a problem with Mark Meer's voice acting. But I also played FemShep twice (two separate characters). As for Kaidan, he died in my male Shepard's storyline (since I was romancing Ashley), and he died in my Renegade FemShep playthrough (not for any romantic reasons). He survived my Paragon FemShep game, though. That's gonna be real tough on me since one of the romanceable NPCs in ME2 looks and sounds like Yvonne Strahovski.
Right managed to get this game a few days early(Ahh the joys of having access to somebody in retail),and tried to import my ME1 save game to ME2, no dice, and after doing some searching around the net it seems i can only import my ME1 save game if I'm using ME2 on the same 360 i completed ME1 on, well seeing as that specific 360 died of the RROD long after i completed ME1 it looks like I'm either going to have to start ME2 with a fresh character or start ME 1 all over again. Although i have about 5 saves from ME1 through various parts in the game, i wonder if i can load up ME1, load in the most advanced save and complete the game from there, would that count as completing it on this console....i hope so, i was looking forward to that little feature. We shall see, fingers crossed, just installing ME1 now.
I managed to save Ash every single time, since on my third run through the Kaiden achievement fired just after landing on Virmire. Carth-lite was so irritating. I think Carth Original was the only one I could stand for an entire run-through. Alistair sucks balls, too. Bioware needs to go with some new archetypes. Hopefully, ME2 is as awesome as it looks.
It looks like you can romance half the damn crew in ME2 including Spoiler: character appearance Garrus (as femshep).
StraightShepard is a mini controversy... and while I appreciate that they stuck with making people straight in the universe (as opposed to the ambivalence of Dragon Age where sexuality almost becomes a joke), I suppose I can see why some people are pissed. Not that I wouldn't want Gay/LesbianShepard, but this is a game where FemShep is a billion times better than MaleShep but BioWare INSISTS on using bald space marine as the cover model because 17 year old boys can't handle a girl with guns who isn't just a walking pair of breasts. Oh well.
Blame the marketing department. The reason there's practically no marketing stuff with FemShep is to preserve continuity with ME1's marketing after the multi-gender ad campaign for Jade Empire didn't pan out. As for why they didn't go with FemShep in the first place, it might have had something to do with the fact that scifi is still considered to be a guy thing, despite large numbers of female scifi fans existing, but it's more likely that it had something to do with the development process of the game, considering that most of the early ME1 stuff had Ashley's face covered up, possibly indicating that they hadn't gotten decent motion captures of female faces to work with when they made those videos.
Hah, I suppose I could see that they couldn't get female faces to work. One could argue that they still don't look right. Given that I skipped the Xbox, I didn't really know how they marketed JE. I presumed they went for just generic martial artist art with the NPCs?
Destructoid did an interesting article on why Shepard is better as a woman which I completely agree with. I can't help but play as and think of Shepard as a female (and I usually play male characters). Putting aside the rather sizable gulf in voice acting abilities, FemShep is just a more interesting character.
Out of the three playthroughs I'll be carrying over, Kaidan survived one of them (Paragon FemShep). He died in my Paragon ManShep game to make way for Ashley, and...I'm not really sure why he died in my Renegade FemShep playthrough. I was playing an Adept and used Ashley and Tali, so she must have been all about girl power or something.
He survived my Renagade FemShep playthrough. Boy was I glad I could change my ManShep appearance. I wasn't happy how he looked in ME1 and I didn't want to play through ME1 again just to get a different appearance. Punching the reporter sure felt good, too.
Well, the game is proving to be as awesome as I expected. There's even a cool little detail I found. When you wind up in the club on the asteroid world, try knocking back a few drinks
Ah so a few of you did save Kaiden? I was all ready to feel sorry for the voice actor because nobody might hear his work in ME2. Game Trailers has a video review up. Though it's a bit academic since I've already pre-ordered (released over here on the 29th I think) but I'm gratified to see that so far all the results are coming in 9s & 10s.
So is anyone even going to bother playing any of the "pure" classes (Adept, Soldier, Engineer)? The hybrid classes (Vanguard, Sentinel, Infiltrator) all look way better. The Sentinel was kind of a joke in ME1, but the ME2 version looks surprisingly awesome.
I saved Kaiden in my FemShep playthrough, so he'll be around. And yeay, Sentinel on insanity is almost perfect. Tech Armor leveled up to level 4 has saved my ass early in.
Well I put in a few hours last night (more than I probably should have ), so here are my first impressions. SPOILERS AHOY!!! Even though I knew the beginning where the Normandy is destroyed, it still had a big 'Wow' moment when I went to save Joker and stepped into part of the top deck that was open to space. I just tilted into the camera and stared into space, taking stock of all of the damage. The new system navigation system took me a minute to figure out, but it wasn't bad once I did. It just took me a minute of hopping between systems before I realized that there was a big Mass Effect Relay I could use right next to me. Combat I am starting to get the hang of. The cover system is taking a little bit more getting used to since they changed it up from the first one. I'm playing a Vangaurd and getting used to the new powers. The 'Charge at the Enemy' power is pretty cool once you get used it and accept the tactical possibilities of it. BTW, it is a bad idea to charge a Krogan with full armor. I do like the streamlined interface for weapons. As for the story, I am warming up to it. Not that it is terrible or anything, but like Shepard, I am still trying get a handle on what is happening. However, it already had a really awesome moment when I reached 'Archangel'. Right before there was the reveal of who it was, I figured out that it was Garrus and the action sequence that followed was simply awesome. It was well written and like Shepard, I was happy to see a familiar face and it felt like 'old times' as it were. I first tried to go to the Citadel to visit Councilman Anderson, but I could not figure out how to leave the 'mall'. The options for other areas of the Citadel in the mass transit were greyed out. Any ideas?