**Official Mass Effect 2 Thread** - The Thread of Unique Planets, New Species and Amazing Scores

[R Nilla]

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer

Originally posted by: R Nilla

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer
I hope it goes off of your achievements and not save games...save games can and will be deleted, but achievements stay forever.

Yes, I deleted my Mass Effect saves to create more room...darn the old 360's 20 GB hard drive!

That sucks. It will definitely use the save games--the achievements don't save any character information and are not indicative of the choices your character made while you were playing. Especially if you have all of them.

This is incorrect. I deleted all of my Mass Effect save data from the hard drive a long time ago. I just bought the game and started it up, and when I selected "Start from Existing Career" or whatever, it had my old character that I beat the game with: levels, equipment, skills and all. There wasn't even an option to Load Career, because all of my save games were long gone. But, he was available for use to restart from an existing career...

It was quite bizarre...I don't understand how it did it, but there he was...with no save games or Mass Effect data on my hard drive!

It's not incorrect. Achievements have nothing to do with your game saves and don't store character information or equipment. If you truly do not have any ME data on your hard drive then my guess is your character information is stored out in the XBL/BioWare/EA cloud somewhere.

If true, that is pretty odd--but without your saves you probably still won't have your character's choices to import into ME2.

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

Originally posted by: R Nilla

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer

Originally posted by: R Nilla

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer
I hope it goes off of your achievements and not save games...save games can and will be deleted, but achievements stay forever.

Yes, I deleted my Mass Effect saves to create more room...darn the old 360's 20 GB hard drive!

That sucks. It will definitely use the save games--the achievements don't save any character information and are not indicative of the choices your character made while you were playing. Especially if you have all of them.

This is incorrect. I deleted all of my Mass Effect save data from the hard drive a long time ago. I just bought the game and started it up, and when I selected "Start from Existing Career" or whatever, it had my old character that I beat the game with: levels, equipment, skills and all. There wasn't even an option to Load Career, because all of my save games were long gone. But, he was available for use to restart from an existing career...

It was quite bizarre...I don't understand how it did it, but there he was...with no save games or Mass Effect data on my hard drive!

It's not incorrect. Achievements have nothing to do with your game saves and don't store character information or equipment. If you truly do not have any ME data on your hard drive then my guess is your character information is stored out in the XBL/BioWare/EA cloud somewhere.

If true, that is pretty odd--but without your saves you probably still won't have your character's choices to import into ME2.

All right man, I'm telling you what I saw from first hand experience, and you're speculating about an "XBL/BioWare/EA cloud". Everything from my character...his name, class, level, skills, equipment, etc. was available for use in "start from existing career", without any save games on the hard drive, having been deleted many moons ago.

I can't really explain it either, but if there was some sort of "cloud" out there storing my character data, then why was there no option to load career? It only kept track of the careers that I completed the game with (which was one).

It's not totally beyond the realm of possibility that they save this information to your profile just in case you delete your saves/your hard drive dies/you get another 360, etc.

 

[R Nilla]

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer
It's not totally beyond the realm of possibility that they save this information to your profile just in case you delete your saves/your hard drive dies/you get another 360, etc.

I don't disagree, but this has nothing to do with what achievements you have or have not earned which is what you were trying to connect this to earlier. And this is pretty much what I'm talking about when I say "cloud". It's stored out on an Xbox Live or BioWare server somewhere. Either that or there's another piece of ME data on your hard drive separate from your save games that you missed or aren't aware of.

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

Originally posted by: R Nilla

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer
It's not totally beyond the realm of possibility that they save this information to your profile just in case you delete your saves/your hard drive dies/you get another 360, etc.

I don't disagree, but this has nothing to do with what achievements you have or have not earned which is what you were trying to connect this to earlier. And this is pretty much what I'm talking about when I say "cloud". It's stored out on an Xbox Live or BioWare server somewhere. Either that or there's another piece of ME data on your hard drive separate from your save games that you missed or aren't aware of.

Achievements are stored in...your XBOX Live profile! I suppose I should have worded it better.

 

[R Nilla]

How did you delete your save games--did you use the ME menu or did you browse out to your hard drive through the Xbox menu?

Instead of further speculating, I've been looking at the BioWare forums and apparently each time you complete the game a separate file is created that stores all of your character data. A new one is created for each playthrough you complete. This file cannot be loaded and is a separate format from your game saves. It's possible you didn't delete this file and that's why it was still available.

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

Originally posted by: R Nilla
How did you delete your save games--did you use the ME menu or did you browse out to your hard drive through the Xbox menu?

Instead of further speculating, I've been looking at the BioWare forums and apparently each time you complete the game a separate file is created that stores all of your character data. A new one is created for each playthrough you complete. This file cannot be loaded and is a separate format from your game saves. It's possible you didn't delete this file and that's why it was still available.

I deleted the entire "Mass Effect" entry from my hard drive using the XBOX 360 Memory menu from the Dashboard.

 

[Kev]

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer

Originally posted by: R Nilla
How did you delete your save games--did you use the ME menu or did you browse out to your hard drive through the Xbox menu?

Instead of further speculating, I've been looking at the BioWare forums and apparently each time you complete the game a separate file is created that stores all of your character data. A new one is created for each playthrough you complete. This file cannot be loaded and is a separate format from your game saves. It's possible you didn't delete this file and that's why it was still available.

I deleted the entire "Mass Effect" entry from my hard drive using the XBOX 360 Memory menu from the Dashboard.

User error.

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

Originally posted by: Kev

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer

Originally posted by: R Nilla
How did you delete your save games--did you use the ME menu or did you browse out to your hard drive through the Xbox menu?

Instead of further speculating, I've been looking at the BioWare forums and apparently each time you complete the game a separate file is created that stores all of your character data. A new one is created for each playthrough you complete. This file cannot be loaded and is a separate format from your game saves. It's possible you didn't delete this file and that's why it was still available.

I deleted the entire "Mass Effect" entry from my hard drive using the XBOX 360 Memory menu from the Dashboard.

User error.

Reading comprehension error.

Did you even read what the heck R Nilla and I were discussing before making your comment?

 

[imported_hopeless]

Originally posted by: R Nilla
How did you delete your save games--did you use the ME menu or did you browse out to your hard drive through the Xbox menu?

Instead of further speculating, I've been looking at the BioWare forums and apparently each time you complete the game a separate file is created that stores all of your character data. A new one is created for each playthrough you complete. This file cannot be loaded and is a separate format from your game saves. It's possible you didn't delete this file and that's why it was still available.

I cleared ME 1 just the other night, and have a save right before the end.

I re-loaded it and made a new save.
After clearing it again I deleted that new save.
When I went to start new career using existing ID there are two entrys for my same character to pick from.

ME1 must be saving the char data after clearing it somewhere besides the actual save game file. Now if I could just find a way to delete the second listing from that list it would be nice.

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

Originally posted by: hopeless

Originally posted by: R Nilla
How did you delete your save games--did you use the ME menu or did you browse out to your hard drive through the Xbox menu?

Instead of further speculating, I've been looking at the BioWare forums and apparently each time you complete the game a separate file is created that stores all of your character data. A new one is created for each playthrough you complete. This file cannot be loaded and is a separate format from your game saves. It's possible you didn't delete this file and that's why it was still available.

I cleared ME 1 just the other night, and have a save right before the end.

I re-loaded it and made a new save.
After clearing it again I deleted that new save.
When I went to start new career using existing ID there are two entrys for my same character to pick from.

ME1 must be saving the char data after clearing it somewhere besides the actual save game file. Now if I could just find a way to delete the second listing from that list it would be nice.

You can go to Load Career, hit Y to switch careers, and a list of all the careers in the current save data on the hard drive will be displayed.

The situation you described though is not what I did...it's actually what R Nilla described. I actually deleted ALL Mass Effect data from my hard drive, using the feature on the Dashboard. When I played Mass Effect at a later date (many months later...like almost two years), it remembered what careers I had finished the game with, even though all of the data from Mass Effect was wiped off my hard drive.

 

[R Nilla]

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer

Originally posted by: hopeless

Originally posted by: R Nilla
How did you delete your save games--did you use the ME menu or did you browse out to your hard drive through the Xbox menu?

Instead of further speculating, I've been looking at the BioWare forums and apparently each time you complete the game a separate file is created that stores all of your character data. A new one is created for each playthrough you complete. This file cannot be loaded and is a separate format from your game saves. It's possible you didn't delete this file and that's why it was still available.

I cleared ME 1 just the other night, and have a save right before the end.

I re-loaded it and made a new save.
After clearing it again I deleted that new save.
When I went to start new career using existing ID there are two entrys for my same character to pick from.

ME1 must be saving the char data after clearing it somewhere besides the actual save game file. Now if I could just find a way to delete the second listing from that list it would be nice.

You can go to Load Career, hit Y to switch careers, and a list of all the careers in the current save data on the hard drive will be displayed.

The situation you described though is not what I did...it's actually what R Nilla described. I actually deleted ALL Mass Effect data from my hard drive, using the feature on the Dashboard. When I played Mass Effect at a later date (many months later...like almost two years), it remembered what careers I had finished the game with, even though all of the data from Mass Effect was wiped off my hard drive.

Based on your experience, and the issues in this thread on the BioWare forums, it looks like the character data file that is created once you complete the game is stored in a different location. I was looking at my ME data last night on my HDD and saw all of my saves but I did not see any of these character data files.

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

Originally posted by: R Nilla

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer

Originally posted by: hopeless

Originally posted by: R Nilla
How did you delete your save games--did you use the ME menu or did you browse out to your hard drive through the Xbox menu?

Instead of further speculating, I've been looking at the BioWare forums and apparently each time you complete the game a separate file is created that stores all of your character data. A new one is created for each playthrough you complete. This file cannot be loaded and is a separate format from your game saves. It's possible you didn't delete this file and that's why it was still available.

I cleared ME 1 just the other night, and have a save right before the end.

I re-loaded it and made a new save.
After clearing it again I deleted that new save.
When I went to start new career using existing ID there are two entrys for my same character to pick from.

ME1 must be saving the char data after clearing it somewhere besides the actual save game file. Now if I could just find a way to delete the second listing from that list it would be nice.

You can go to Load Career, hit Y to switch careers, and a list of all the careers in the current save data on the hard drive will be displayed.

The situation you described though is not what I did...it's actually what R Nilla described. I actually deleted ALL Mass Effect data from my hard drive, using the feature on the Dashboard. When I played Mass Effect at a later date (many months later...like almost two years), it remembered what careers I had finished the game with, even though all of the data from Mass Effect was wiped off my hard drive.

Based on your experience, and the issues in this thread on the BioWare forums, it looks like the character data file that is created once you complete the game is stored in a different location. I was looking at my ME data last night on my HDD and saw all of my saves but I did not see any of these character data files.

Possibly, but where? It would seem odd that a game would just create random, hidden save files on your hard drive. Seems like it would be a violation of developer principles. I doubt the info is still stored in my cache, since like I said, it was almost two years since I last played Mass Effect.

Storing the information in your profile or in an alternate save file seem to be the only two plausible explanations.

But, it's still weird, nonetheless...one would think that if you delete a game's data from your hard drive, it would be gone, not have some hidden files lingering somewhere else. What's up next...games store information in an XBOX 360 Registry?

 

[Queasy]

A new Mass Effect 2 video is supposed to debut on this week's GameTrailers TV Thursday Night.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Stoked for this game! Can't wait for my pre-order to ship and deliver.

I really wanted to start a new Vanguard to bring over from ME1 (RROD, lost my saves when I exchanged the console)..but I just can't bring myself to play through for the billionth time. I'll just have to settle for my lvl 53 Adept that I made after the exchange.

 

[Qbah]

I have a lvl60 paragon soldier waiting for my copy to arrive Can't wait!

 

[Pheran]

Stoked for this game! Can't wait for my pre-order to ship and deliver.

I really wanted to start a new Vanguard to bring over from ME1 (RROD, lost my saves when I exchanged the console)..but I just can't bring myself to play through for the billionth time. I'll just have to settle for my lvl 53 Adept that I made after the exchange.

I was under the impression that your character didn't come over to ME2 anyway, since you don't play Shepard there - just the choices you made in the first game affect the ME2 universe. Is this wrong?

 

[Kev]

All the previews I have seen have shepard in them.

 

[Gooberlx2]

I was under the impression that your character didn't come over to ME2 anyway, since you don't play Shepard there - just the choices you made in the first game affect the ME2 universe. Is this wrong?

I don't know if your stats/equipment transfer, but just to make my "ideal" choices, I dunno if I have it in me to do a run though again.

I think my last full run though with my Adept, I played all "evil" choices...so that should be interesting.

 

[warcrow]

Man, less than a week--I cannot wait to get my hands on this game!

 

[R Nilla]

Man, less than a week--I cannot wait to get my hands on this game!

I know!

So, ME2 fans, are you following the game closely trying to scrounge up every last detail or trying to remain in the dark? I'm somewhere in-between; I've watched all the trailers but ignored most of the articles.

I did read about how the game opens though... (SPOILER!)

Spoiler

You know, the part about Shepard dying!? Of course it seems to be an excuse (in part) to let you remake your character since Cerberus brings you back as a cyborg. O.O

Also,

Spoiler

apparently one of the endings has Shepard die--could be interesting for ME3 but how bad could it be since the game opens with Shepard defying-death?

 

[Gooberlx2]

So, ME2 fans, are you following the game closely trying to scrounge up every last detail or trying to remain in the dark? I'm somewhere in-between; I've watched all the trailers but ignored most of the articles.

I've tried to avoid everything I could...but did watch a couple trailers and an article. So I know a little bit, but not much at all.

 

[Qbah]

(spoilers)

Why oh why did I mouse over the first part? WHYYYYY Now I hope it's not true, because if it is, it's a MAJOR MAJOR spoiler... But it makes so much sense with all the official trailers I've seen... If anyone doesn't want to get spoiled, do NOT mouse over those spoilers!

The moment I moused over, I knew it was a mistake... Didn't check the second one.

 

[AeroEngy]

Stoked for this game! Can't wait for my pre-order to ship and deliver.

I really wanted to start a new Vanguard to bring over from ME1 (RROD, lost my saves when I exchanged the console)..but I just can't bring myself to play through for the billionth time. I'll just have to settle for my lvl 53 Adept that I made after the exchange.

I was looking forward to importing my character also ... however your post reminded me that the last time I played this game was on the 360 that got the RROD. Maybe I can find time to play ME 1 again to have something to import.

 

[R Nilla]

Why oh why did I mouse over the first part? WHYYYYY Now I hope it's not true, because if it is, it's a MAJOR MAJOR spoiler... But it makes so much sense with all the official trailers I've seen... If anyone doesn't want to get spoiled, do NOT mouse over those spoilers!

The moment I moused over, I knew it was a mistake... Didn't check the second one.

In all fairness, from what I understand that's pretty much the first thing that happens in the game. But still a big spoiler I suppose.

 

[R Nilla]

IGN has a video about how the ME1 character import will work. Looks like it will give you some information about the choices you made to help you identify which save and which character you want to bring in.