Mass Effect 2 Preview

VideoGamer.com: For me Wrex pretty much stole the show in the first game. I understand if you didn't kill him in Mass Effect 1 he will turn up?

JH: Absolutely. He is in the game. Well, if you didn't kill him.

VideoGamer.com: Why did you decide not to have him play as big a part in Mass Effect 2 as he did in Mass Effect?

JH: Well we've never officially said that he wasn't a large part in Mass Effect 2. I'm not saying he is. I'm not saying he's not. I don't want to put any more spoilers than there already are. I can just tell you straight up that we've never actually said, and if you've heard this it is absolutely not the case, we've never said he's not a large part of Mass Effect 2. If he's there, he's going to be a part of the story. To what degree I can't say, but we haven't said one way.

VideoGamer.com: What can you tell me about Grunt, the new Krogan you announced during EA's gamescom press conference?

JH: Grunt is your up close ass kicker. One of the things that we've been doing in Mass 2 compared to Mass 1 was, you know Mass 1, the henchmen AI was very similar across the board, as was the enemy AI. There was not a lot of variation. There was some, but not a lot. But every henchman has now custom AI built for them. Grunt's role is to be the guy who's literally in your face with the shotgun and the melee and he's there to kick the living crap out of you. Krogan in general cross the board are scary. He's even scarier in combat.

VideoGamer.com: Is he bigger than Wrex?

JH: Well he's a Krogan so physically he's around the same size, but he's one scary mother fucker! When I play Mass I like to play a bit more in range...

VideoGamer.com: I played infiltrator in Mass Effect.

JH: You'll like the new infiltrator. I'm not going to tell you any more, but you'll love the new infiltrator. I'm in the same role. I love the sniper rifle and I love pistols, so infiltrator was great for me. At any rate, having Grunt in my party right now is an awesome experience. I just let him go up front. He takes a lot of fire, he just kicks the living crap out of everybody and I just sit back and have a good time of it. We wanted to give you more choices on how you build your squad, have each of them be unique and fill their own role to match your gameplay and be able to fill out that gameplay more. They're not the basic classes any more. Thane is an assassin, it's not one of the archetypes you can take. It really is its own class. Grunt's the same way.

VideoGamer.com: So you will be able to pick up party members that will be classes you won't be able to be?

JH: Absolutely. Some will be definitely be classes you can't be. Thane and Grunt are both prime examples. There is no Krogan weapon of mass destruction.

VideoGamer.com: Is that the name of his class?

JH: I wish! It should be!

VideoGamer.com: Finally, one of the things I enjoyed most about Mass Effect was messing about on the Citadel doing more role-playing stuff, picking up quests and working on my persuade or intimidate skills. What you've shown so far of the game has been combat focused. What balance will there be between the two in Mass Effect 2? Are we still going to have an area in the game that will allow players to get knee deep in role-playing?

JH: I won't tell you how many, but I can definitely tell you there is going to be more than one area this time around. So Citadel is still there. You can't have Mass Effect without Citadel. We've also talked now about Omega, which is another large hub area, as we call them. There may or may not be more [laughs]. That being said, one of the big changes that we wanted to make is not have you spend so much time running around these areas, but still be involved in them. So you'll find the area layouts are designed to be quicker but still giving you that RPG experience, that role-playing experience. And you're going to find that they feel a lot more like cities, too. They're much more populated. We don't have the same kind of constraints that we had in Mass 1. The population in Mass 1 was so limited. The Citadel felt a lot emptier than we ever wanted it to feel. This time around you're going to find that it feels a lot more populated. Omega especially, when you go into Afterlife, which is the bar in Omega, you're going to see how completely filled it is.

Mass Effect 2 is due out early 2010 for Xbox 360 and PC.