If you were planning on using your all-powerful Shepard from Mass Effect to take out those dirty aliens then you’re out of luck. Bioware has stated that the abilities and statistics you earned in the first game won’t carry over to Mass Effect 2, at least in an obvious fashion anyway. Instead the game will explain why Shepard has lost his level 60 and ultimate badass Renegade status, but hopefully that won’t mean the cliché’ of amnesia.

“It’s something we can’t go into detail about for obvious reasons, but it actually happens the other way around. Our goal with the story, in terms of getting the game started quickly and players into really compelling story situations… that dictated and allowed us to do certain things including changing the way that your abilities work and the way you develop your character.” - Computerworld

The reason behind the loss of your hard work – development wise - is that the retooling of the game’s core systems would make using the abilities from the previous game impossible. Of course, that’s totally understandable as plenty of new games in a franchise tend to use completely new or updated engines where things from the previous game just wouldn’t work without series headaches on the development team’s behalf. In this case Casey Hudson, Mass Effect 2’s lead designer, explains that “literally every system” in the game – which includes the inventory, guns, abilities, etc. – have been improved, making the transfer of systems from the last game impossible.

However, he did go on to stress that “all those things have been dramatically improved” and that “we’re taking into account all of your accomplishments in terms of building a character from the first game”. He then added; “So things you’d expect to be acknowledged, like if you were a level 60 character, or you were highly Renegade and don’t want to start out at the middle again”. Importing your characters game save from Mass Effect will be “acknowledged in ways that map across to the new system” so you will ultimately feel that “you are continuing as that character”.

This makes complete sense, as you can hardly expect to have a fully levelled up character from the get go as it would defeat the object of Mass Effect 2 which, let’s not forget, is rooted in the RPG genre. You also have to respect that new players may be joining in on the franchise, even if it is a little odd why you’d want to play game that continues a story you know nothing about. In the end all I wanted was for Mass Effect 2 to acknowledge some of the decisions I made in the previous game, just so it didn’t break the flow of the story with something that would seem completely out of character for the Shepard I had created.

Mass Effect 2 is set for release sometime between January and March 2010.

Mass Effect 2’s producer talks about the game - Computerworld (Via 1UP)