Mass Effect 2 teaser

[a completely inoffensive name]

I think Mass Effect 2 will be close to perfecting the RPG genre. Mass Effect was a revolutionary leap forward, with its more dynamic dialog system, but it was obviously new and not taken to its full cinematic potential, shown by the relatively lack of animations when it came to the dialog as compared to the more refined sequel. I don't want to go on a limb here, but really, when we were nit picking the first one, what were the four big complaints:
1. Mako (enough said)
2. Inventory system
3. Combat
4. Same environments/buildings on every planet (for side quests)

Those four were essentially the only thing people said were holding Mass Effect 1 from being a true work of art (aside from the texture popping that was patched a bit I think). let's look at how they have been handled:

1. No more Mako, one of the first things they came out with.
2. Unknown but obviously will be worked upon due to being complained about a lot.
3. Has been the main focus of all the previews so far, showing the tremendous advancements they have made.
4. has been discussed a bit in one preview, shows massive improvement including a bit of additional planning involved in dropping down to a planet.

So not only has all four critical flaws been (according to the available evidence with an optimistic interpretation) solved, but they also manage to bring out the true potential of the dynamic dialog system to make the conversations more fluid, more life like then ever before, almost to the point of having 15 minute conversations act as an interactive movie.

If they keep up the superb writing and plot and not pull a Matrix Trilogy fail, as well as not have any implementation failures of any new additions they have put in, I think this could be something really special that all other RPG's will be compared to as the bar for greatness. Granted, were there other flaws you could point out? Absolutely, but those four were the big ones and they are the ones that have been worked on and shown to have had a lot of time put into them. When I heard January 25, I swore like a madman at my computer, now i realize that not pushing to hit a fall and/or christmas deadline might be the extra time for this game to become what Mass Effect flirted with. A repeat of KOTOR 2 with this game would be one of the biggest tragedies in gaming I could think of.

tl;dr I think mass Effect 2 has a very good chance of being everything that we saw Mass Effect 1 could have been.