I just watched the Mass Effect 2 demo on Gamespot...I know, I know, I feel so cheap....and I noticed that Shepard  was reloading his assault rifle every now and again. Did i see it right? I remember from reading the codex from the first game that the major abilities of a mass accelerator weapon is the fact that it rarely needs to be reloaded because of the way it works. I know it's nitpicking but what gives??????

Dude, you seem passionate about your mass effect 

Besides, it was just a demo; I'm sure Bioware won't screw up the lore in their own created universe...maybe.

Meh, who cares that much? Maybe it was an older type weapon?

The thing is that even in the books they mentioned that. 

Hmmm, I haven't noticed this. Let me look at that raw play video they have posted on gamevideos and I'll be back in a sec. Because yes, if Shepard is reloading weapons, thats wrong. And it would actually change game mechanics, because as of ME1, weapons just have a cooldown time, not a clip that empties.

The books state that the guns have bullets the size of grains of sand, so small that they barely ever have to reload. I can't confirm whether or not it's in Mass Effect 2, I'm trying to not spoil anything.

Yep, weapons are absolutely being "reloaded."

I'm curious to see if this isn't a mistake. There is a bit of information in one of the previews I read that I suspect wasn't supposed to be leaked (MAJOR pre-release spoiler territory, more so than I'm even feeling comfortable posting here), that suggests that Shepard might be using a different type of weapon. Plus, remember that there are supposed to be like what, 12 new weapon types? Maybe one of them doesn't use the same sort of artilery. That said, I doubt that the game would require you to manage bullets. Or if it did, you'd get enough from item drops for it to be negliable.

That said, it might also be a necessity so you don't just spam the nuke rockets or the other new heavy weapon classes.

Also: Apparently incendiary rounds is the new hotness? First Left 4 Dead 2 and now Mass Effect 2.

Wow. That is pretty weird. I liked not having to reload, although getting rid of cool time is also awesome. But I remember reading the codex and seeing that whole "weapons don't really have to reload ever" thing. I never got that overheat thing once, so I could basically just shoot and shoot, but if they do put this in then I will have to take the ammo left in my clip/inventory into consideration. Maybe they wanna make it more realistic? Even though... it is kind of in the future.... with hot, blue alien "women." Yeah. Very odd.

Well how weapons work in Mass Effect is essentially you place a block of lead into the gun which the gun basically "produces" bullets for you to fire out of that block. Traditional assault rifles in Mass Effect fire tiny grains of metal at almost light speed. There might be an evolution in the technology which overpowers the shots from your gun, however use up a sizeable amount of metal to fire. There is also the fact that energy based weapons may exist which don't follow the same principals of Mass Drivers, which may require traditional energy based sources (ala mini nuclear reactor) to fire.

I have no problem with having to micro-manage the ammo. What I do have a problem with is the way developers and movie maker sometimes tend to ignore some piece of information they put down as fact. I just liked the way Bioware explain how future weapon will work, it actually makes sense. This won't deter me from getting Mass Effect 2 in way shape or form. I think I am still kinda scarred by the whole  Midi-chlorians debacle. Thanks George Lucas for turning the force into an infectious microorganism.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they will be expanding the universe farther into space?

More races, more planets, and potentially, more varied weapons technologies used within these different sectors of space.

I remember getting into the Spectre assualt rifles (the actual names elude me right now) that you could continually fire forever basically.  Maybe its a way to make your guy a little less Rambo.  Although it could just be for the big powerfull guns too.

I can't decide if he's reloading, or just ejecting something. It happens pretty quickly. Can't see any kind of ammo indicator, but the gun icon turns red before he does it.

He's ejecting a heat sink!

Also I'm the lead combat designer on mass effect 2 (ya I know no one believes me but it happens to be true!)

"We're ready to believe you!"

I dont think he is reloading. It looks more like me is releasing heat from the gun...in a very reloadish kinda way.

He is not reloading, just released the heat sink from the gun

"

@Dany said:

" He is not reloading, just released the heat sink from the gun "

This. Casey Hudson explained this in a pretty lengthy Mass Effect 2 blog:

"Like in the first game, most of the futuristic weapons in Mass Effect 2 do not require ammo but they do overheat. The difference now is that instead of waiting for your weapon to cool, you can hit a button to eject a small heat sink to immediately cool the weapon and get back into firing. So it’s a similar system but now you are in control of the cooldown."

So yeah, for some weapons you don't have to wait for it to cool down so you overheat. Seems like kind of a weird addition, but that resolves that.
"

" @TheKidNixon said:

"

@Dany said:

" He is not reloading, just released the heat sink from the gun "

This. Casey Hudson explained this in a pretty lengthy Mass Effect 2 blog:

"Like in the first game, most of the futuristic weapons in Mass Effect 2 do not require ammo but they do overheat. The difference now is that instead of waiting for your weapon to cool, you can hit a button to eject a small heat sink to immediately cool the weapon and get back into firing. So it’s a similar system but now you are in control of the cooldown."

So yeah, for some weapons you don't have to wait for it to cool down so you overheat. Seems like kind of a weird addition, but that resolves that.
"

So everyone go into a fuss for nothing? "

mabey its new type of ammo or newer weapons, u can see that theres new armor in the demo so mabey the armor can withstand the old weapon ammo

" mabey its new type of ammo or newer weapons, u can see that theres new armor in the demo so mabey the armor can withstand the old weapon ammo "

" @Morter21 said:

" mabey its new type of ammo or newer weapons, u can see that theres new armor in the demo so mabey the armor can withstand the old weapon ammo "

"Like in the first game, most of the futuristic weapons in Mass Effect 2 do not require ammo but they do overheat. The difference now is that instead of waiting for your weapon to cool, you can hit a button to eject a small heat sink to immediately cool the weapon and get back into firing. So it’s a similar system but now you are in control of the cooldown." "

Now we have to discuss the fact that they made the health regenerative.  Does anyone else see that as kind of lazy game design?

" @Colonel_Fury said:

" @TheKidNixon said:

"

@Dany said:

" He is not reloading, just released the heat sink from the gun "

This. Casey Hudson explained this in a pretty lengthy Mass Effect 2 blog:

"Like in the first game, most of the futuristic weapons in Mass Effect 2 do not require ammo but they do overheat. The difference now is that instead of waiting for your weapon to cool, you can hit a button to eject a small heat sink to immediately cool the weapon and get back into firing. So it’s a similar system but now you are in control of the cooldown."

So yeah, for some weapons you don't have to wait for it to cool down so you overheat. Seems like kind of a weird addition, but that resolves that.
"

So everyone go into a fuss for nothing? "

Bioware, masters of contrived reasons for things that actually MAKE SENSE in the EU. "

" Now we have to discuss the fact that they made the health regenerative.  Does anyone else see that as kind of lazy game design? "

" @EvilTwin said:

" Now we have to discuss the fact that they made the health regenerative.  Does anyone else see that as kind of lazy game design? "

WHAT???????????

Please say it's a cruel joke.

"

I'd rather reloading over overheating.

There is one problem with this 'solution'. I've seen some of the recent gameplay videos, and the HUD definitely has ammo counters. So what, heat sinks can only fire a certain number of shots before needing to be 'ejected'? If it truly is a heat sink, then can't it just cool down normally like heat sinks from the first game? Like in the sentinel gamplay video, Shepard was using some sort of SMG, and the HUD said that each 'heat sink' could fire 50 shots, and he had a total of 500 shots in his inventory. Since when do heat sinks become unusable after a specific number of shots, and have no chance of recovery? And when the counter gets low, it advises the player to 'Reload', not 'Change Heat Sink'. Hell, this system even recycles the unused shots from each 'heat sink' back into the total ammo pool, like how every other FPS does. Mass Effect's heat sinks don't work like that. Let's just face it, we are firing bullets from a magazine, no matter what the 'official' explanation is. I propose a system that is a hybrid of old and 'new'. First of all, get rid of the ammo counters, and put something similar to the old heat bar back in. Now when the gun shoots, it generates heat that will be dissipated after a short amount of time. But if you need more shots NOW, you can eject the spent heat sink. They wanted 50 shots per clip, and 500 total ammo? Fine, make the SMG's overheat point at 50 shots and give the player 10 heat sinks. Of course, some players could play the game in a similar fashion to the first, never 'relaoding', so we'd need balance, making the player need to reload more often. Perhaps the heat dissipation rate could be lowered accross the board. While I hate having to 'downgrade' existing mechanics, it seems like a feasible solution. Perhaps out of combat it will cool down much faster. So in combat it would be a choice of either having to wait for the gun to cool down, wasting time, or to change their heat sink, of which they only get so many. Another thing that could be changed is that when gun actually 'overheats', the heat sink breaks, and will have to be changed in order for the player to fire again. But if the player does not pass this threshold, the heat sink will recover. This seems a like a fair compromise, but I think it breaks lore, as the guns in the first game had no such problem. The exception of course would be the heavy weapons. As they won't operate like mass accelerators, they'll need finite ammo counts.

Like it's been said in previous post you'll have the option of ejecting the heat sink from the gun, thus granting an instant cooldown.
Special weapons will probably have ammo though...

Old weapons still reheated every once and a while, though, which may not be preferable to some. Mass Effect weapons used a type of steel that automatically created bullets through the barrel of the gun, so each block held about 1000 rounds. Reloadable weapons will probably just be a different type of gun.

We'll have to see more weapons in action before I can confirm my theory, but I actually do think that BioWare has changed how all the mass accelerator weapons work, so now they have ammo counters and magazines that need to be reloaded. VIGG: from what I've seen I don't think they've kept the option to let the weapon cool down over time. Why else would they use an ammo counter? If you let it cool down over time, would the ammo count rise back up to 50 in the case of the SMG? And that doesn't even explain why it would come with 'spare ammo'. And how those shots ger recycled when reloading. Bullet counters wouldn't be necessary in a heat sink system. I know how the guns are supposed to work in the lore, they are designed so that you shouldn't have to reload in a fight. Ever. All you needed to know was heat management. I just looked at the Engineer and Adept videos. The old pistol, which we all know works so that it doesn't reload, also has an ammo counter. It holds 12 shots per 'heat sink'. The funny thing is that BioWare is still trying to act as if they are actually heat sinks, so whenever the player 'reloads', what appears to be a superheated metal object falls out of the gun. This is stupid because they aren't letting the guns cool down anymore, you can only 'reload' to set the heat back to 0. It's not an instant cooldown, its the only way to let you fire more shots. So now heat sinks are so crappy that they don't cool down anymore? They can only fier a certain ammount of shots? And how does that even work with the spare ammo? How does unused shots get recycled into the ammo pool?

 And how does that even work with the spare ammo? How does unused shots get recycled into the ammo pool? "

Yeah, I hate that this game will have reloads too. It's going to change the entire pacing. 

That's the thing Wise, it doesn't make sense. The thing is that I liked how the weapons worked in the first game. They had a different feel than most other games, not having to reload and all. And they had a pretty cool explanation for that in the lore. Now it feels like we are taking a step backwards. They just wanted to make their guns behave like everyone else's, and in doing so, screwed up their pre-established lore.