“If you recall, Empire Strikes Back was the darker chapter and that is how we designed the ME2 story and experience: to try and make the player reflect on the challenges of the character,” co-founder Greg Zeschuk told IGN. “If you put ME2 next to the original it is definitely a darker, harder game.”

Mass Effect 2 picks up at the end of the original with another threat to the human race. My guess is the game focuses on Sheppard’s struggle with race/species and the obvious allegories to our own society. I’ll be interested to see how fleshed out it gets. For me, a lot of that emotional stress in a game is lost in the effort to complete quests and move the story along.