When Mass Effect was released, we were very happy to see how well it was received. But the first thing we did in designing Mass Effect 2 was to listen very carefully to what people were saying about how they played the first one – what they loved, what they wanted to see improved, and the countless anecdotes that describe players’ personal experiences with their unique paths through the story. We read forum posts, reviews, watched people playing the game on YouTube, and literally noted and categorized every piece of feedback we could find, to help us target an overall evolution of the gameplay to the way people actually experienced it. In other words, when you were talking, we were listening.

That important perspective, combined with the existing trilogy story and our own ambitions for new features, formed the blueprint for Mass Effect 2 – the dark second act in the trilogy.

And so we arrive at today, with a game still veiled from the public but bearing so many improvements and exciting content that it feels like it’s straining to break free. Fortunately we’ll be able to do that this summer when we demonstrate it at E3. Until then, I can only say that you can look forward to some incredible new experiences in Mass Effect 2 as the story takes on even larger proportions, along with a ton of gameplay improvements and a return of the things most loved by players of the first game.​