Mass Effect 2 ditching elevators for ... load screens

Expanding upon statements from BioWare's Casey Hudson earlier this year, associate programmer Thomas Roy took to the developer's forums (requires login) recently to explain how Mass Effect 2 would be handling the promised lack of elevators (used in place of loading screens). As it turns out, rather than executing on BioWares's promise of "a completely new system" that's "part of the game experience," the studio will be implementing "loading screens and movies."

Though the game will still ask players to walk into an elevator, it will apparently cue up a loading screen that offers "interesting visuals and information." We'd like to point out that before Mr. Roy explains any of this, he says that the first game used elevators "so we [BioWare] didn't have to show boring loading screens" and they only made it into the second due to "a lot of complaints."

We're so broken up here -- on one hand, the developer is caving to the demands of the fans and critics. Score! On the other hand, Mr. Roy is telling us that loading screens are totally boring. If we demanded it, does that mean we're boring? Great, now we've got a total complex.

[Via Kotaku]

Mass Effect 2

Reader Comments (121)

"All they had to do was put in some more chatter, and some sort of galactic news (like GTA radio stations) and it would be fine."

I like how you stalk me, and then disagree with everything I say. Pathetic...

Hm. Do you think this is BioWare's way of saying "Screw you, this is what happens when you complain!"?

The elevator thing wasn't too bad. The idle banter between characters sometimes was funny to listen to. Oh well, it's gone now. I wonder if they're gonna replace it by having cutscenes of the characters talking, to at least make it a bit more dynamic, doing camera close-ups of their faces when they talk or something. Seeing facial expressions of the characters that react to something being said could be funny.

Maybe this was a problem for the Xbox version but on my PC, the radio elevator announcements/conversations were longer than the actual loading process.

I'd rather have this than the elevators oddly enough. It just felt like such a long time for them to reach their destination(s) and having conversations like that. It got frustrating and a loading screen is something I'm used to and I wouldn't stare at it going "they still haven't gotten there?!"

Lol, before I knew the elevators were loading screens I thought they put this in as an actual elevator just to get some where and was getting pissed why it was taking so long.

seriously?..... seriously?

wow man.

I just hate waiting for a long time, period. Whenever it be Elevators or Loading Screens.

It was kind of boring

My guess is that they will use the same (new) Engine for ME2 as they used for Dragon Age Origins... so no big surprise here.
DAO had no elevators either but lots of Loading Screens (and the Chars talked to each other anyway).

More important for me would be that the PC Version could get a Toolkit and therefore enable Modding just like Dragon Age did.
Just yesterday i tried to replace a textrue in ME1 and i didn't understand how to do that because the game is absolutley NOT Modfriendly.
When i play ME1 now on PC i see a lot of lowres textures which could be easily improved when it just would have been more like Dragon Age.

No, Mass Effect uses the Unreal Engine, while Dragon Age used an in-house developed engine, codenamed the Dragon Age Engine, but officially named the Eclipse Engine.

The problem with the elevators in mass effect (at least in the citadel) was that you could just press a button and almost instantly be somewhere. It would be about a 5 second loading screen and you'd be right where you wanted to be. Taking the elevator took about 10 times as long as using the transit thing.

The argument that the elevators needed to last forever to load don't fly, because the game -didn't- need that much time to load stuff.

I would rather have the elevator load than a normal loading screen. It's more...unnerving then. I am still in the game but not quite and that gives me hope that i will be able to play the game soon.

Something like that. You know?

This.

Loading screens are pretty boring by their very nature, since your'e just waiting for the game to continue. If in the first game they did that in a way that kept you in the game experience and actually explained why you were waiting then I don't get why so many people complained.

But they did and now we're back with boring old loading screens again. :/

lol this is amazing. For years Bioware games (and others as well) have had those stupid loading screens with random artwork where the game would tell you some bit of trivia that repeats itself an insane amount of times. So much so they I would start to go crazy when I would see it. I kept saying "Do anything else! Even a Half-Life style thing where the game pauses for a second, but doesn't fade or go to a new screen would be better than this!" So with Mass Effect they went with the elevators which were better, but still repeated stuff. I figured they were taking steps in the right direction :( I guarantee you we are getting to an area of gaming that the best films have disowned. And that area is focus testing. Play testing is a very important part of games, but what people want isn't necessarily what is best for the game. People often don't know what they actually want, and it takes a smart person to figure out what to take as valid criticism and what to throw out.

I actually liked the elevators. The team talked about stuff and I got some time to look at Ashley's ass. Sometimes I even had Liara on my team so I could do some scientific alien-to-human comparisons. Isn't that enough "interesting visuals and information"?

Remember when Tekken had Galaga as the loading screen?

why don't more games employ this technique?

Namco actually owns the patent for mini-games during loading screens. It's why they still appear in the DBZ games.

It's really stupid.

wow! They patented this? I mean, its a good idea, but the point of a patent is to license it to people. even if ME2 had something as simple as being able to research star systems with a snazzy interface while it loaded would make the whole experience less mundane.

I remember in Symphony of the night on PSX, if you played with the controls, you could warp the logo all wacky-like.

should have been a reply to the above comment

@ CaramelZappa

...pretty sure what I just asked for has nothing to do with the elevators vs load screens debate, and everything to do with what I think all games in the genre need to be doing during loading in some capacity in general.

And yea. Games cost sixty fucking dollars. I'm in high school right now, so that's like a day and a half of work after taxes. I don't think it's that crazy to ask them to let me fuck with my inventory while the game loads. Do you honestly think otherwise or are you just playing devil's advocate here?

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Mass Effect 2 ditching elevators for ... load screens

Mass Effect 2

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