Right you are about not playing the game, though there are two facets to it. The first, like you remember, is the perceived shift away from being an RPG. It's hard, or at the very least a subject you could argue on, to define what constitutes an "RPG" in the video game-related sense. As for things that typically go hand in hand with the genre, I'd say I more or less agree with your list. To address what I think you missed:

Equipment - One I don't believe you mentioned, and one that I've heard has been heavily revamped (read: almost entirely eliminated) in such a fashion that I suspect I'd call it the opposite of an improvement

Exploration - For me, this is a big one. One of the things I loved about the first game was wandering around the space station, talking to all these crazy people from other races and planets, and generally feeling like I was living in another world that was full of people. The Mako sections go under this heading, and definitely could have used improvement, but I'd have opted for improvement, not elimination. I've heard there are some side quests you can run, but that the whole "huge open area and lots of side quests that can be going on at the same time" aspect of the game has been scaled back significantly, if not eliminated outright.

To reiterate what I've heard other people say, it's like they heard all of the complaints against the game - crappy inventory management and equipment choices, boring Mako segments - and rather than improve them, they just eliminated them. Those were things that I actually really like about the RPG genre (equipment and exploration), and to see them axed like that does not make me enthusiastic.



If a friend brings it over (which won't happen, since I'm the only person I know in real life that's even vaguely interested in the franchise), I'm willing to give it a play. I'm not going to spend $60 on it, though (particularly after having been burned by Uncharted 2, which I think will share a key fault with ME2).



This is actually my other problem with the game - the shift toward being an FPS. I know that that genre moves units like nobody's business, and hey, they're in the business of making a dollar, but there is no better way to turn me off of a title than to throw FPS action into the mix.

I hate FPSes. I loathe them. The long story, should anyone care, is that I played them - primarily Quake, Quake 2 (by far the leader), Quake 3, and Counterstrike - almost nonstop for two years, and then fairly frequently for another two. I have burned myself out on the genre completely. When I was little, the only bread my mom would make sandwiches out of was wheat bread. To this day, I can't get a piece of wheat bread past my throat. Same thing. I'm not saying that FPS games suck (though I do think the FPS genre is one of the most stale, overdone, lowest-common-denominator, and innovation-free segments of the video game world, but that's another story), but what I am saying is that I do not like it, and I will not like it even if it's good, and even if it's great. It's still an FPS. Some people don't listen to rap, some people don't eat Mexican, some people don't watch TV; I don't play FPSes. They are like digging a ditch or watching grass grow or getting punched in the back repeatedly - they are the very opposite of fun.

Which brings me back to the producer's comment: I suffered through the combat in the first - suffered, as I absolutely hated it - so that I could level up, get new equipment, explore, do side quests, and see the story through. When I hear that the second game has ratcheted up the elements I hate to the point that they're now dominant and eliminated a significant portion of what I endured that shit for, I'm not interested in playing anymore. Maybe the story is more taut and even more well-executed. Maybe the character advancement is intact and refined. It doesn't matter, because the FPS still overrides everything. Even if the biotic plays more like an RPG, it's still an FPS. I do not buy that it's that different. You still hide behind crates, you still try to put enemies in the center of your crosshairs, you still shoot people. I played a biotic in the first game (if my memory serves), and I did not enjoy combat in the least. From everything I have read, Mass Effect moved from 1/3 FPS & 2/3 RPG to 1/3 RPG and 2/3 FPS. That is the difference between playing and not playing for me.