ME2 has roughly 700 Plot hooks to Original ME
During a talk titled "Get Your Game Out of My Movie! Interactive Storytelling in Mass Effect 2," Armando Troisi, BioWare's Lead Cinematic Director for the Mass Effect franchise dropped a data bomb that falls into the latter category.
BioWare has repeatedly said that Mass Effect is the player's story, and that the series is a different kind of role-playing experience than some of its previous RPGs. That's partly because the games track your actions and assign varying levels of importance to the decisions you make on behalf of your Commander Shepard.
Troisi described Mass Effect's built-in ability to read your game save files as the series' "uber-feature," and said there are roughly 700 "plot hooks" in Mass Effect 1 that carry over one way or another into Mass Effect 2. To illustrate just how granular BioWare gets with these player choices, he showed a brief segment of Mass Effect 2.
In the scene, a male Commander Shepard walks up to one of the advertising pillars on the Citadel, and a trailer for a fictional film begins to play. Because this particular Shepard had chosen to let the Citadel Council die in the final moments of the game's ending, the trailer reflected that and announced that the film would have a fall release date. Then Troisi showed the same interaction with a female Shepard who had chosen to spare the Council. The trailer played out differently, and a summer release date was given.
It's a small detail, and one that most players would likely never notice. But it's illustrative of just how much decision detail BioWare has woven into Mass Effect 1 and 2. Troisi specifically mentioned that Mass Effect 3 will place the same importance on save files and player actions
-IGN.com
