14 DAY TRIAL // In order for Mass Effect 2 to be as good as it is, and you can actually see how close to perfection it came in our own 10/10 review, the first videogame in the series had to actually die. It's not often that we see this kind of meta commentary in a game but at the very beginning of the experience, Commander Shepard, the character you used in the first game, the bearer of the hopes of the galaxy and the vessel for choices already made, dies.
It's a symbolic death of the first game, which was a nice story but had its flaws, which allows for Mass Effect 2 to be reborn, as is Commander Shepard, to deliver a science fiction narrative combined with a cover-based squad shooter that has a shot at being Game of the Year in 2010 although it came out at the end of January.
The name of the Cerberus run project that brings Shepard back to life (in my case, as a female Renegade leaning soldier who saved the Rachni, took out the Council and liked Kaidan more than Ashley) is linked with Lazarus, the biblical figure who came back from the dead.
Interestingly, the return of the past is one of the main themes serving as the foundation for Mass Effect 2. The threats to the Milky Way galaxy that Shepard and his crew are fighting are the Reapers who were assumed to have disappeared in the mist of time. Almost all the people you can recruit for the suicide mission have ghosts in their closets and they all need to stop running from the past and face it in order to be able to perform in the trials ahead.
Even Shepard is haunted by the things she (or he) did in her (or his) previous incarnation as the first Alliance Specter. The Rachni Xenocide, the New Krogan Genocide, the Thorian Extinction, the Council Abandoned, all these are events whose course was decided by Shepard and which will be linked to her (or his) name in history books.
The burden of them all is what weighs down on her (or his) shoulders in the second game, making her (or him) less sympathetic to the needs of those around and showing a universe even more threatened that previously thought. BioWare has managed to create a game atmosphere for Mass Effect 2 that superbly reflects the concept of past, time and responsibility, all forming a necessary and welcomed darker tone.