Is morality a black and white issue? Senior Producer on The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, Tomasz Gop, clearly explains the game will not be heading down the conventional “good versus evil” path familiar to Mass Effect and will instead draw inspiration directly from award-winning Polish fantasy writer and short-story author of The Witcher, Andrzej Sapkowski; Geralt, the main character of The Witcher, operates on his own moral code in an ethically hazy universe or in “grey areas,” so to speak and Gop wants The Witcher 2 to closely resemble the novel in this regard. Also, The Witcher likes boobies.

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Posted via Major Nelson’s blog is a large round-up of incoming deals and marketplace goodies, some of which look more or less  promising. Hydrophobia, particularly, is an XBLA title that caught my eye and has since held it for quite sometime now. Hydrophobia is a survival adventure game developed by Dark Energy Digital featuring a female heroine, Kate Wilson, defending her ocean vessel utopia from Malthusian terrorists during the Great Population Flood. Just FYI, It’s already made a name for itself and has received multiple awards, including Best Downloadable Game from GameTrailers at E3 2010. According Rob Hewson, it’s all about player versus environment interaction and, well, the imagery featuring Dark Engery Digital’s “HydroEngine” is fairly impressive. Ooh, just look at the pretty, flowing water. Check out the entire list of updates scheduled to hit the Marketplace in the coming weeks.

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In lieu of a very PS3-critical announcement via Gamescon, one would think that Microsoft would be a very jealous and bitter ex-lover of Bioware and their Mass Effect franchise—what with their previous choice to see each other exclusively and all. Whelp, not exactly. “Xbox 360 remains the best place to experience the Mass Effect franchise,” a Microsoft Representative seemed very matter-of-fact about declaring to IGN. So, you’re probably thinking, “How am I supposed to enjoy Mass Effect 2 if I’ve never played Mass Effect?” Good question, Aguado.

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Some Mass Effect fans noticed something strange with the “Lair of the Shadow Broker” screenshots: the guns in them don’t exist in the current game or DLC. Quickly responding was BioWare community manager Jarrett Lee, who explained that these new weapons were part of an upcoming DLC weapon pack that will be released before “Lair of the Shadow Broker.”

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If there was one major plot concern that wasn’t addressed in Mass Effect 2, it was why the hell the Shadow Broker was so interested in Commander Shepard’s body. The Mass Effect comic mini-series, Redemption, lightly explored the struggle my ex-girlfriend Liara went through to recover Shepard’s body. In the latest DLC that BioWare has announced today titled “Lair of the Shadow Broker,” you, your crew and Liara T’Soni will join ranks to seek out the Shadow Broker and hopefully find out the secret behind his plans. It could be just plain greed with the intent to profit off the body of a strong Commander of the galaxy, Saren’s killer, but it has to be more than that.

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In the original Mass Effect game it was a player’s job as Commander Shepard to stop a Reaper invasion of the galactic government body known as the Citadel.  Leading this invasion was the rogue Spectre agent Saren, who had uncovered an ancient Reaper mind-controlling ship and was using it to wreak havoc upon the galaxy.  This ship, the Sovereign, succeeds or fails to destroy The Citadel’s ruling body, The Council, based on the player’s decisions.   With Revelation, Drew Karpyshyn, lead writer for the game, gives us an origin story of sorts.  It does not relay any information about Shepard or any of his crew (Shepard isn’t even in the book), but it does uncover something probably equally important.  Revelation reveals how Saren came into possession of the Sovereign, or rather how the Sovereign came into possession of Saren.

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Lately we have seen a renaissance of gaming tie-ins.  Tie-ins can include movies, comic books, novels, and even television series.  Big publishers like wringing every cent they can from a popular IP, and thankfully this will often bring fans some extra material about the universes that we’ve fallen in love with.  They aren’t always done well, but I would argue that there is an increasing movement towards hiring quality writers and artists for these projects, and it has made for some fantastic tie-ins.  This will be but a brief overview of a few of the better ones from recent games, with possibly more to come in the future as I expand my own collection. 

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While we are all waiting to get our hands on the much anticipated Mass Effect 2, lead writer Mac Walters is working hard on creating a brand new story for the Mass Effect universe in the form of a comic book titled Mass Effect: Redemption. The story is exclusive to the comic and will follow a member of Commander Shepard’s team Dr. Liara T’Soni on a “deadly mission of extraordinary importance in Milky Way’s Lawless Terminus System’. Judging from the first few pages the story looks to take place around same time frame as Mass Effect 2. The comic brings with it some veterans to the Sci-Fi space genre with John Jackson Miller (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) handling the scripting and Omar Francia (Star War: Legacy) creating the artwork. Check out the first 7 pages after the cut.

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There are two types of RPG players, specifically speaking of Mass Effecters out there: Those that play it to say that played it and enjoy the storyline, and those that go diehard to attain total completion. Every sidequest, see every nook and cranny of each and every celestial locale. I am most certainly the latter. The controller was in flames when I enjoyed my first session of Mass Effect. There was so much to do, so much to see. I had to make my presence known as the respected Spectre I was across every realm by assisting those in need, slaying the immoral, and, well, making some proverbial fat cash. If you are the latter, feel free to venture forward and continue down the path. If you are the former, there’s little worth convincing you on spending $5 for a sidequest when you didn’t have interest in the fully fleshed out platter of sidequests available with the original game to begin with.

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