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Mass Effect 2 screenshot

When publishers give VideoGamer.com an inch, VideoGamer.com takes a mile. After putting Shepard an co through their paces during our behind closed doors gamescom Mass Effect 2 demo, we cornered BioWare associate producer Jesse Houston and scored some hot new gameplay details on what's quickly becoming one of the most anticipated games of 2010. Read on for massive Mass Effect goodness.

VideoGamer.com: Miranda [one of Shepard's party members] - she's got a gob on her, hasn't she? What's her story?

Jesse Houston: Um, there's not a lot I can tell you directly about her. Actually... [whispers to BioWare publicist]. Sorry, I'm just making sure I don't kill myself!

BioWare publicist: I'm meaner than I look.

JH: She is, trust me. She'll come and kill me in my sleep! Not a lot I can talk about her, yet. I know there's some stuff coming down the pipe that's out very soon. She's our leading actress this time out.

VideoGamer.com: She seems to have some anger issues.

JH: She's just aggressive! Let's put it that way.

VideoGamer.com: What about Jacob [another party member]? Are you allowed to talk about him?

JH: There's not a lot to talk about yet. He's still being fleshed out anyway in the storyline. A lot of his stuff is done. He's kind of like Kaiden. He's our leading male. I don't want to have a lot of discussion about him because he is our leading male.

VideoGamer.com: There are some new weapons I noticed. Tell me about the new pistols.

JH: What we've done is we've taken the pistol and split it up. There's a heavy pistol and a machine pistol. What we wanted to do is we didn't want everybody to be complete pistol maniacs.

VideoGamer.com: The pistol was pretty powerful in the first game.

JH: Yeah. It's funny that. A little bit of a side story - I came to BioWare as Mass was ending. I, like everybody else, played with the pistol. It kicked ass. You talk to the game designers though, they're like no, no it's totally balanced. Really? So at any rate we basically wanted to split it up. We didn't want the solider to be such a pistol class any more, which kind of makes sense. So we split it up, given it to some of the other classes, and then made one that's more of a... I don't know how to describe it. The machine pistol is basically weaker, something closer to a sub machine gun. And then the heavy pistol definitely has got that punch. It's a little more punchier than the old pistol, but the overheating range is a little less.

VideoGamer.com: So it won't be as overpowered this time, then?

JH: No. But what we also want to do is for the non shoot-ey classes, like the biotic, we want to give them weapons they can use at a pinch but let their powers be the mainstay of the damage. And you're going to find when you play with some of the new powers that they're really heavily power oriented.

VideoGamer.com: I noticed a few of the new powers - pull I think is new. Can you take us through them?

JH: Pull is brand new. Literally every ability that was in Mass 1 that we've carried over into Mass 2 has been completely revamped. For example pull is new. Throw has been revamped though. In pull's case, its reason to have is if you've got a guy behind some cover and you want to pull him out, then you can let the shoot-ey guys take care of him. Or you can start using some combo abilities. For example, one of the things I'm doing all of the time is I'll use Jacob to pull them out and I'll then fire a concussive shot off at an angle that will up and arc around and knock the guy off the bridge, or off of a ledge.

VideoGamer.com: How does concussive shot work exactly?

JH: Basically it's like a fireball type thing. It's there to deliver a physics punch though, so it's not direct damage like, say crush is for example. You have to make a line of sight. But it also does arc a bit. If you've still got the guy selected but you're off him a little it'll arc around. So you can get guys from behind cover. You can get them from the sides to have the physics hit them on the side or more up front. It'll also knock them out of cover a little bit and send them flying. That kind of thing.

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