That sucks. I know that when you do a NG , you can change from lower difficulties to higher ones and it will count so long as you do it before you beat Eden Prime.

Just don't toggle them in the menu AT ALL

I pretty much stayed away from the Options screen altogether.

On a related note, I got my last achievement in the first game today. Freaking AI Hacking Specialization! I may never play this game again after this run is finished.

ME2, though. I will play that plenty.

The day came when I wanted to update my desktop pc. My goal: to play most of the games that were on XBox 360 that I couldn't play. Basically both Mass Effect games. A couple of days later they announced Mass Effect 2 for PS3.

I don't know what I would have done if I knew this earlier. Maybe I wouldn't have been so happy the day I purchased the new computer. Anyway, I am still playing the first game and it's really awesome. I love it. A lot. And it's great to know that the second one awaits me and it's supposed to be even better.

On a whim, my wife went to the Century system in ME2 - that's the one I mentioned earlier.

Looking at all the planets, she noted that the entire solar system is a wreck. One planet is surrounded by hundreds of moons and the dust from other, shattered moons, all of that probably a result of mass accelerator cannons.

Two planets have no atmosphere, but evidence shows that they did have atmosphere before.

One planet has a gigantic freaking bullethole in it.

There was a battle that tore the entire solar system apart. A fight on that scale beggars the imagination, and I don't use that term lightly - multiple planets were rendered uninhabitable or had enormous chunks blown out of them, forming entirely new celestial bodies. Small planetoids were obliterated altogether.

Whatever happened 37 million years ago is goign to com up again, of course. It's already come up once. I'm just kind of marveling at the suggestion of scale here.

The idea of a fight that could tear apart a solar system is glorious and terrifying in its scale. This universe has some scary shit.

This is what makes these games so great: the depth and detail of the universe that has been created.  You don't even have to pay attention to it for the games to be enjoyable, but the fact that it's there adds so much atmosphere and interest.  A multitude of alien races that have their own distinct backgrounds and histories of interaction with one another; hundreds of planets with details on size, atmosphere, colonization attempts and so forth; all sorts of fantastic technology that seems entirely plausible in the universe it inhabits.  It's got everything.  And that's not even beginning to talk about the game itself.

Mass Effect was the first game I achieved all 1000 gamerscore on, and Mass Effect 2 was the fourth.

damn khuutra that just makes me wonder and even more excited when thinkingabout the scale of mass effect 3...that can't come soon enough

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure for ME1 that you have to clear the game once to unlock Hardcore difficulty. Then you have to clear it again on Hardcore to unlock Insanity difficulty.

Yeah I know.

I beat it once. Then started from the beginning on Hardcore with my Shepard. I actually changed the difficulty TO Hardcore while you're stood in the cockpit after Joker and Kaiden are talking.

That's strange, then it should have been alright. From what I've read, you have to have the difficulty set before you land on Eden Prime and you should be ok. I wonder why it didn't give you the achievement?

I never actually played the harder difficulties as I already had ME2 when I finished ME1, so I just started playing ME2 right after clearing ME1.

I thought you had the set the difficulty during character creation.

Nope. All you need to do is set the difficulty before clearing Eden Prime (I think; to be safe I always set it on the Normandy) and then DO NOT TOUCH IT for the entire rest of the game.