What I believe Mass Effect 2 must do to accomplish the goal of making a TRULY immersive and DYNAMIC storyline with decisions that truly impact the story:

The original Mass Effect promised a lot of things, but perhaps the most ambitious and most heavily pushed was the idea of a dynamic, changing (and more importantly changeable) universe with deep characters, heavy choices, and ever varying plots. Unfortunately, it was rather lacking on any really impacting decisions. There were a few, such as whether or not you would kill Wrex, or the sacrifice of either Kaiden or Ashley, but these were very few, and altogether too close to each other (they occur in the same mission). You cannot actually choose to eliminate members from your party, and when you meet new potential team members, you really have no choice as to whether they join your crew or not. Not only this, but you merely complete an objective and invite them, and suddenly they are convinced to join. In my opinion, Mass Effect 2 could be the answer to all our prayers, and finally deliver a game crafted by our decisions, with major story decisions and alternate endings.

For example, in Mass Effect, you have the ability to travel to virtually any planet in the galaxy that is worth visiting. However, there isn’t a lot of depth to the system with which you go to these planets. For one, they remain untouched by time, and even your heroics (or lack there of) in other regions of the galaxy, no matter how far or close. I believe that this is a great place to start with making significant, important decisions a part of the game. While in the first game the only real impact of the order in which you visit the planets in is who you get as a part of your crew first, I think they could and should take it to a whole new level. In reality, each of those planets’ conditions would alter with time. For example; once you take one planet, the others may become more heavily occupied or troubled, or less so eve, as the Geth or other enemy move from one location to another.

Not only do I think the condition of the planets should change based on the order, but the time. I think that each mission should progress at a different rate, some worsening with great speed, others remaining static, others being forgotten or abandoned. This could have a number of effects on the plots both at large and on a mission by mission basis. You would have to consider things like difficulty, advantages, benefits, and weigh all the options. Advanced players who are looking for more of a challenge for instance could time it to get the most difficulty out of the campaign, meaning more experience, more challenging combat, better loot, and more play time. However, this also greatly increases the risk of harm to yourself, your party, and the inhabitants of the world. The longer an issue is on a planet, the higher the civilian casualties would be. So for example if the Geth are laying siege on a colony of humans on a remote border planet, if you responded with speed, you could arrive in time to stop the Geth from breaching the defenses of the colonists, and prevent a lot of casualties. However, you would also worsen the situation in other areas if you were to decide to take this mission earlier, and this could mean an even bigger loss then if you had waited even one more mission to assault the Geth siege.

This effect on your character, your party, and most of all the people of the planets, should be obvious. You yourself should have more aggressive options open up to you, your team should become more or less ruthless in and outside of combat, and the people of the world should love or hate you, all depending on the choices you make. And most of all, there should not be a one way standard for each of those categories. For example, members of your team should have diverse opinions, some glad for the extra bloodshed, others openly opposing it, and more still that simply stand back and take small actions towards one side or the other. Different factions of people should have different opinions of you based on your actions. For example, doing what ever it takes to get the mission complete, even if it isn’t exactly necessary, might endear you in particular to the majority of the Krogan democratic. Using intellect and diplomacy could attract the support of those of the Salarian persuasion.

It should also affect the plot in significant ways. For example, if you are looking to get information from a character, if that character is particularly fond of you and your actions, they will be far more helpful, however if not, you may be forced to take more drastic actions to get the information from them. But these are simple, numbers based differences, I also believe the story should be more dynamically altered by all of this. Perhaps a villain or two might be decided by your actions, making on character go against you if you perform one deed, another if you commit to a differing act.

This could also be used to decide where certain missions or story events might occur, so that for instance, a boss battle could potentially occur at any number of locations, each with their own pros and cons, and story elements.

I also believe you should be able to really have a dynamic experience when choosing your squad members. I am hoping that there will not be limit for the number of members greater then the number of potential members, but I want the ability to choose if I want to take members onto my team or not. Choosing not to might have them acting else where in the galaxy, opening up new missions, or even having them forming their own teams to act with you, against you, or separate from your issues. This would also allow you to focus more on specific characters and relationships, so you don’t feel like members are useless, something I often felt whenever I spotted Ashley or Kaiden on the squad selection screen.

While I understand a lot of this is very ambitious, it is something I would absolutely love to see realized in some form or level. Very few games, if any, have really given that really, really dynamic experience that was promised in Mass Effect, and is promised again in the sequel. Hopefully Bioware will deliver a satisfying product either way (as I am sure they will) but I will cross my fingers in the hopes that they might take the telling of interactive stories to yet another level. Would it be so much to expect from the developer that has time and again proved their ability to continually step up story and progression in video games to do so at least one last time?