[quote]Yeah. They knew the RPG part was great about ME1, but the biggest complaint people had with the game was how poor of a shooter it was. So for ME2, they left the RPG elements intact (and likely improved them), and then enhanced combat a whole lot more. This is why you see a lot more combat trailers probably.
I am hearing from dirty filthy pirates that they did remove RPG elements, not just improve shooter elements. For instance one told me you have half the number of skills and weapons do not have stats, just different functions.
This is all hearsay though, until shown otherwise, and honestly Mass Effect was such a shooter at heart anyway it doesn't bother me... I like shooters.
I think this has some half-truth to it.
In ME1, you could "mix" classes with their abilities and such. So while you may have been a soldier, you could put points in things you didn't really need or care to use. With ME2, from the trailers of each class, they did a lot more specialization to each individual class. There are now abilities that only specific classes can use.
I found this image on BioWare's forums:
There are definitely less things you can level, but I'm fine with that. When you played before, there were really only a couple ways to build a character anyway, with lots of useless stuff in between.
Besides, there's a lot more to a RPG than just putting points into abilities. :)