What IS the skinny on this importing of saved games business from
Mass Effect 1 to
Mass Effect 2 that we keep hearing about? Well, BioWare community coordinator Chris Priestly decided it was about time to grace us with the
information we’re all dying to know.
In the BioWare forums we have a nice list of the basic rules for importing your saves:
- Upon starting a new game from the main menu, players can import a character save from Mass Effect 1
- The Player chooses which character to bring in. Bringing in more than one character is possible, this will create a second or additional profile(s), just like in Mass Effect 1.
- For Xbox 360 players need to be signed into your profile that you used to play through Mass Effect 1.
- On PC players will select the .MassEffectSave files to import.
- The profile and save data must be present on the hard drive and not an MU.
- There is a limit of 11 end-of-game saves that can be imported into ME2. This means that if the player was to complete ME1 12 times, regardless of the number of unique playthroughs used, the 12th save will not be available for import, but saves 1 through 11 will be available.
We’ve also heard vague descriptions about our plot being extended from the original
Mass Effect. Our decisions we made in the first game will impact the direction of the storyline in our new
Mass Effect 2 game, yes, yes. Of course, we don't want any spoilers so the more vague on the storyline impact the better, I say.
Thanks to Chris Priestly, however, we now know that character and gameplay bonuses will also be involved depending on your progress in
Mass Effect. These will include extra monies, research material to be used in the Normandy’s Tech Lab, and a much easier time with your Paragon or Renegade abilities depending on which you decided to use.
As a disclaimer, Chris also mentions that gamers new to the
Mass Effect series should not be discouraged from being excluded from the bonuses, as they will not be detrimental to your gameplay and gaming experience with
Mass Effect 2.
The forum post gets into the technical bit with some info on New Game + being revealed in
Mass Effect 2, as well. Catch the rest of the post for more details, or to get any questions you might have answered.
