Entertainment Electronics Blog

The announcement of Mass Effect 2’s new Cerberus Network was left pretty vague, and left us with a lot of questions. EA, at the time, was tight-lipped about them when asked, but we’re starting to get more details that paint a complete picture of how Cerberus will be used in the game. Joystiq reports that DLC through Cerberus will be free, but other for-pay downloadable content will also be made available that doesn’t require Cerberus access.
“We’ll definitely have for-pay DLC down the road too,” said Dr. Greg Zeschuk. “It’s not going to be all free DLC for Mass Effect 2 — far from that. There’ll be paid DLC packs, and there’ll be stuff available through Cerberus as well.” So essentially, it seems the Cerberus Network will act as lifetime access to any free goodies BioWare puts out — likely smaller items like armor or weapons. But if you didn’t buy it new and don’t care for using Cerberus, you can still access any of the planned paid DLC, which will probably consist of larger content like mission packs.

The wait for the second game in the Mass Effect trilogy is now done to just a few months — BioWare has announced that the release date for Mass Effect 2 is January 26 in North America, and January 29 in Europe. As promised, the release will be simultaneous on both PC and Xbox 360, unlike the first game.
“Our fans are in for a genuine thrill in the New Year with Mass Effect 2 — the second installment in the trilogy will be of amazingly high quality,” said BioWare co-founder Dr. Ray Muzyka. “BioWare’s fans worldwide have been eagerly awaiting this epic sequel, and we couldn’t be more excited to reward them for pre-ordering by delivering some awesome bonus content!”

Along with the release date, which is obviously the big news, BioWare also revealed two different pre-order bonuses, one of which is, of course, exclusive to GameStop.

Those who pre-order at GameStop will receive “Terminus Gear,” which consists of:

The Terminus Armor is designed for use in extreme planetary conditions, increasing run speed and personal shields, and augmenting weapons with an additional magazine of reserve ammo.
The M-490 Blackstorm Heavy Weapon generates a high-powered localized gravity well, accelerating particles to near-infinite mass, and ultimately expanding the selection of heavy weapons available to players when they gear up for combat missions in Mass Effect 2.
If you choose to pre-order somewhere else, you’ll instead be treated to “Inferno Armor,” which gives you faster running speed and improved damage with combat powers.
Now that a release date is locked in, expect to hear plenty more about Mass Effect 2 as we approach January.