Even the relatively predictable space opera that is the main plot has sinister moments, and you sense the characters struggling with that heavy burden.
Rich characterizations invite you to look more closely at each crew member's personal stake in the sprawling galactic backdrop. The shooting is more immediate and satisfying, which keeps the pace moving and intensifies the violence of each encounter.
More so than its predecessor, Mass Effect 2 possesses an identity, and most of the obvious changes and improvements over the original are beholden to the shift in tone. You’ll catch your first glimpse of this in the game’s intense and much-improved art design, but that dance of light and shadows is also an apt metaphor for bleak undercurrents in the story, as well as the moral quandaries and past indiscretions that haunt the main characters.
Mass Effect 2 takes the bleak vacuum of space and flushes it with color-the light of stars and galaxies, the red and violet swirls of far-off nebulas, and the glimpses of comets as they burn through the void.
