
“If we can assume you’ve already done a playthrough, we can assume you’ve acquired some bonuses, in addition to getting the experience of beating it on a lower difficulty level which will help you beat it on insanity.” “Effectively this means insanity would need to be easier,” she continued. We can’t release a difficulty level where it’s impossible to complete.” “If we give access to insanity on the first playthrough, we need to show that it is possible to beat the game with all classes without any bonuses from achievements. Consequently, the hardest difficulty becomes ‘easier’,” she wrote. “As you play through ME1 you unlock bonuses via achievements that actually make your character more powerful. But in a post on the Mass Effect forums, BioWare Lead System Designer Christina Norman claimed it was necessary to do so in order to ensure that the difficulty was truly “insane.” Mass Effect required players to beat the game not just once but twice before access to the “insanity” difficulty level was allowed, a point that irked players who felt they were being denied the opportunity to fully flex their hardcore gaming muscles. BioWare says that while it was necessary to lock new players out of the highest difficultly level of Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 might allow players to take on the toughest settings right from the start.
