Xbox Gaming in South Africa

Okay, so Eurogamer via NEOGAF via some guy on the Mass Effect 2 forum has posted a bunch of stuff leaked from the next issue of OXM. Still with us? Here's what we've managed to scrape together:

• Commander Shepard's still around. For how long? Nobody knows. But he's apparently "darker, grittier" this time around. Everyone wants to be Marcus Fenix.
• There's a new recruitable character named Thane, who's some sort of fancypants assassin type, a Krogan called Grunt, a Salarian scientist, and an entirely new Drell race. PREDICTION! The Drell look almost totally human, but they've got three eyes and subtly grey-green skin and/or scales and/or gills.
• The Mako has been completely overhauled. Presumably it no longer handles like a rogue brick.
• Lots of new planets to explore. Let's hope they don't all look exactly the same, with a different bump map and colour filter chucked over it, like last time.
• No texture pop-in. I suppose every game needs some outrageous promise it won't fulfill. I'm guessing this is it.

Bioware's probably going to have this one all over E3, so expect a lot more about it over the next few weeks.