Mass Effect 2 goes from emulating the structure and themes of A New Hope to something totally unique: an episodic, interpersonal, character-driven story where the real adventure really is the friends we make along the way.

More than this, the role-playing aspect is more focused here than in Mass Effect, limiting the total potential number of possible "shades" of Shepard, but giving the player more maneuverability within those shades. This might sound like a drawback -- fewer versions of Shepard to play as -- but in Mass Effect, a mostly-paragon Shepard would have been incentivized to keep playing as that version of Shepard, lest they accidentally become a petulant, mostly irredeemable Shepard; this could create some serious disconnect for the player. The reduced extremity in how Shepard can be characterized in Mass Effect 2 allows much more player control over the kind of Shepard they want to role-play as, sometimes renegade, sometimes paragon. If you even liked Mass Effect, you will love this.