by Christina Norman
One area we wanted to improve in Mass Effect 2 was enemy power resists. In ME1 enemies would sometimes resist your powers, but it wasn’t clear when they would, or why. More importantly, if your enemy was resisting your powers, there was nothing you could do about it.
For Mass Effect 2 we’ve combined enemy resists with defensive shields, armor, and barriers. These defenses are displayed in a bar over the enemy’s health bar. As long as the bar is visible, your target is resistant to powers, but all powers deplete his defense bar. Once the defense bar is gone, he is vulnerable to all your powers. Only powerful enemies have a defense bar, weaker enemies are always vulnerable.
Shields: The most common enemy defense is the kinetic barrier, or shield. Shields are effective at blocking most powers, but are vulnerable to rapid-fire weapons like submachine guns and assault rifles. Shotguns are also effective as they launch many projectiles with each blast. The best way of getting rid of shields is using disruptor ammo, or the engineer’s overload power.
Armor: While most enemies will wear light tactical armor, only enemies wearing the heaviest or most technologically advanced armor will have an armor defense. Armor is effective at blocking most powers, but is vulnerable to hard-hitting weapons like sniper rifles and heavy pistols. The best way of breaking through enemy armor is using incendiary ammo, incinerate, or warp.
Barrier: Only biotic enemies like vanguards can generate defensive biotic barriers. Like shields, barriers block most powers, but are vulnerable to rapid-fire weapons. The best way of getting rid of a defensive barrier is the warp power, but the soldier’s concussive shot is also quite effective.
Defenses add significant tactical depth to combat. While weaker enemies can be defeated with powers alone, strong enemies require teamwork to drop their defenses so they can be finished with powers. This adds depth to character progression for you and your squad: It’s important to invest in both finishing-move powers like throw and cryo-freeze, and defense-killers like warp and overload.
Christina Norman is the Lead Gameplay Designer for Mass Effect 2. This is the first in a series of blog posts Christina on the RPG systems of Mass Effect 2.
Only twenty days to go! w00t!
How exciting! I can’t wait. Damn Europe, why must we wait three extra days!? Also, interesting to see some new unit types there. ‘Gatatog’, eh? And Collector assassins? Cool!
Ahhh, this could be helpful in a few weeks
At least it’s more clear than ME1, where an enemy’s health bar would change color and you’d have no idea what’s happening. With that said, is it made clear throughout the game what is effective against what?
I love how combat has become such a focus for Mass Effect 2! After beating the first and reading the books, all I could think about was where the story was going, but it’s just amazing what you’ve got cooked up.
Cool article, thanks for the info, Christina. What about falling damage? If I use Lift or a combo of biotic powers to slam someone against the wall, how does it affect their defences?
Great in-game presentation.
I can’t wait to see the rest!!
Great blog post Christina! I’m loving the attention to detail being put into combat in Mass Effect 2! I rolled a soldier before in ME1, and will continue to do so in the sequel, so this new system will definitely allow me to use my teammates a lot more to overcome enemies.
Nice job!!! Bookmarking this one!
Certainly glad that I will be playing Sentinel. He will take charge of the battlefield, no matter the defense.
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NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICE!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can’t wait to see any of the other new soldier abilites avalible. And all the new story characters and events look they’ll blast gamestops door with a crowed of fans!
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Thank you for the information.
Please don’t forget you said you’d tell us how to best make a Soldier ‘tank,’ as I’m looking forward to playing one.
Nooooo! I can’t take it! it MUST come out today!!!=)
It’s rare in this age of franchise gaming to see real chances being taken, doubly so in an existing series. Completely overhauling Mass Effect 2′s combat was a great move with this emphasis on tactical thinking, and in the hands of the many talented Bioware developers such as Christina Norman, we can rest easy knowing it’ll turn out the better for it.
Christina Norman has once again out done herself with supplying info to all mass effect fans on the upcoming game. Super bad ass.
I cant wait i reserved the collectier additon and i like how the added a diffrent class the infotrater and i thnk there a nother one and the grapic look amazing and what i heard that it a pretty asome game and the new story line looks frekin amazing and only 13 more day until the greates game come out and i reserd the limed addition of the firt one and that game was amazind i spent 1 month siting on my game chair playing it until i past out and i cant belive that their going to be a third one iam going to buy the collecter additon and the new charters look cool and the new setup look cool and i going for the stonget class the soldier and the enemy defene chrt look alot esayer sorry for my spelling hope who evers reading this likes the game i will
Christina’s pieces here and elsewhere have really gotten me interested in ME2. It’s great to see promotional material that focuses on the game’s characters and design elements, rather than graphics and gimmicks.
Is there going to be a demo released for public download?
I believe that all these defenses are useless when the “singularity” in use.
Just an after the fact notice (POSSIBLE SPOILERS):
). That’s when I ran into the unpleasant surprise that virtually all enemies had armor and were immune to all abilities except charge. My only other applicable abilities were Barrier and Infernal Ammo (passive). This in affect reduced the game play to shoot, take cover, barrier, shoot, repeat. The problem is that most enemies now seem to have at least half their durability in Armor so once that’s gone what’s the point (shockwave one enemy or use Barrier to keep myself alive)? Now I am all for a bigger challenge but taking away the abilities that I previously poured dozens of points into seems a little cruel. This highlights something that was a problem in the higher difficulties that I think was also present in the first Mass Effect. Hardcore and Insanity level troops have to much health (Actually this is something of a problem I have seen in Dragon Age Origins and ME2 where both end fights had little extra mechanics and came down to you and a boss that was only really special because he had a massive amount of health). When it comes down to higher level difficulties I would like to see more than enemies simply having more health (I like the extra firepower they though makes me choose my positions more carefully) but perhaps more perceptible AI improvements and an increase in complex scenarios and enemy abilities. Instead of having it feel like I’m chipping away at their health bar I would prefer that the changes requires the player to adapt and become more creative, something that can make feel like I am honing my abilities. (And I’ve dragged on for far too long I’m sorry)
Last weekend I beat ME2 on Veteran and finding fun but a tad on the easy side i was all pumped up to take my level 28 Vanguard on a spin in Hardcore (I’m a sucker for achievements plus it will give me an edge in ME3
After I joined up with the guy shooting the mech’s how do I get through the next door? When I get to thedoor it says examine door but I can’t get through it. Please help me.
I’m afraid this was actually a serious downgrade. The way it was, it meant biotic powers were essentially useless. This meant you no longer feel powerful as a vanguard or a adept. By the time enemies have exposed health, you might as well just shoot them to death. This meant, gamewise, that combat was utterly boring and repetitive on higher difficulties. You’d go forward, attack. One of your team mates (due to the terrible AI) would go try and headbutt a ymir or hug a praetorian (about as effective as those actions) and die or something.
You would then, slowly, wittle down the enemies, by ducking out of cover (no chance to escape cover since enemies only focus on you on higher difficulties). Eventually the enemies would run out. You’d then repeat. Barrier wouldn’t do much- you still only last 3 seconds since the enemies ignore your squadmates. You can’t use your powers, since it would only effect already dying enemies. Mass pull/push was useless, since only one enemy would have shields down at a time. And as such, you completely undermined the mass field aspect of the game. Also, charge is useless since enemies aren’t effected by the knockback. I could only really enjoy the game once I artificially disabled that aspect, with a code hack.
It was worsened by the new cooldown system, since we could only use the best abilities. In this game you have annoying tried systematically to limit our choice, hurting an otherwise awesome game.