14 DAY TRIAL // You know that a game is actually good when people begin to complain about the silliest things. BioWare's Mass Effect is, without a doubt, one of the good games out there, but the elevator-transitions bickering is one of the many confirmations. Instead of deploying standard loading screens, the title made use of a static gameplay scene to depict area-to-area transitions. To switch from one map to another, players had to embark upon a somewhat lengthy elevator ride, in which, instead of staring at a blank and somewhat repetitive picture, you could watch your party travel in the above-mentioned elevator and listen to some of the conversations held by the NPCs.
In truth, the actual difference from a static picture and the elevator gimmick isn't really that big, nor it was really meant to be. It was just an attempt to cut back on the immersion-killer. Still, transitions were quite often in the game, especially in Citadel Station, and BioWare's idea took a lot of flack from players. As such, the developer tried to find another way to ease the transitions for the upcoming Mass Effect 2, and, in April, it announced that it had taken a step that "turns the loads themselves into part of the game experience."
The official statement at the time came from BioWare's Ray Muzyka and said that, "We have a completely new system to handle transitions between areas that speeds the load times and turns the loads themselves into part of the game experience. It's one of many points of feedback we've heard and directly responded to in enhancing the gameplay in Mass Effect 2."
Some seven months have passed since then and, today, the concept stands slightly altered. While not going back to the old elevator scene, BioWare decided to take the middle ground when it came to loading screens. On Friday, Thomas R. Roy stated that, "The elevators were made in ME1 so we didn't have to show boring loading screens. However there were a lot of complaints, so we've gone back to loading screens and movies."
"We still have elevators in ME2," he added, "but you don't wait inside them. We'll cut to a loading screen instead. [emphasis added] We've tried to make the loading screen more interesting this time by adding interesting visuals and information." If this turns out to be a good thing or not remains to be seen during the actual gameplay, but it is nice to see developers listening to the fans, even if, sometimes, they shouldn't.