(2016 Discussion) Mass Effect 2

[Jute88]

By the end of Mass Effect 1, all but one of those advantages had been nullified. They were centuries past their intended culling date,

Wait, centuries? That... raises even more plotholes. Why wait that long hoping, that Sovereign may come up with a plan, when they could just travel to our galaxy in a few years? Granted, starting from the Citadel is probably the best plan, but surely they realize that the technology the organics have has a chance of becoming even more potent against the reapers. I always remembered them being behind their schedule by mere years, decades at most.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Going from infinite ammo in ME1 to thermal clips in ME2 felt disjointed and forced. While it was nice having less downtime between shooting, combat became more about hunting for ammo than killing the enemy. I didn't like the global cooldown system, it rendered the biotic classes all but irrelevant. With the exception of being railroaded in to joining a terrorist organisation, the game's story was kept tight, evenly paced and enjoyable.

The inclusion of heavy weapons was a nice touch. The Black Hole gun was my favourite until I unlocked Cain. The dumbfire missile launcher was only every used once in my dozen or so playthroughs of the game. Cain made me miss my explosive round equipped sniper rifle from ME1. The Widow rifle helped to ease the pain. The lack of vehicle missions was an annoyance. If they were able to squeeze a few more polys in to ME1's driving areas, the Mako wouldn't have been as maligned as it was.

Lair of the Shadowbroker and Arrival are easily the two best pieces of DLC of all Mass Effect games. Yes, better than Citadel. Citadel worsened the (default) ending of ME3; You go out with your friends have a huge party and generally a good time, then you go and die. Imagine having a heart attack on your birthday. It's not fun at all. Unless you have the Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod (PC only) installed. Then Citadel is a blast. Arrival really set the stage in terms of urgency and excitement.

Overall, I really enjoyed ME2. Martin Sheen is a total scene thief.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

I'll make these my last comments on ME3, as I don't want to drag the OPS thread any more off-topic. / Good conversation but I think we'd better save any future talk for (2016 Discussion) Mass Effect 3.

I'll reply fairly briefly, but in PM form on 3.

Also, a (2016) Discussion?! Bah! Go (2014/Q3) Discussion, or go home!

Martin Sheen is a total scene thief.

That's something I never mentioned. Yeah, the structure's interesting in ME2 and Sheen anchoring the whole thing is just perfect. BioWare tend to get good or great performances out of most of the people they hire, but I think Sheen's a standout across everything they've done.

 

[Asita]

By the end of Mass Effect 1, all but one of those advantages had been nullified. They were centuries past their intended culling date,

Wait, centuries? That... raises even more plotholes. Why wait that long hoping, that Sovereign may come up with a plan, when they could just travel to our galaxy in a few years? Granted, starting from the Citadel is probably the best plan, but surely they realize that the technology the organics have has a chance of becoming even more potent against the reapers. I always remembered them being behind their schedule by mere years, decades at most.

It's not confirmed, but it's strongly suggested. The possibility was first broached by Vigil in Mass Effect 1, who noted that after realizing that the signal to activate the Citadel failed, Sovereign could have been piecing together what happened, gathering allies, and planning the events of Mass Effect for centuries, as would fit the Reapers' usual patient and methodical nature, bearing also in mind that Sovereign also had to do this (and learn about the Conduit in the first place) without revealing itself. The Rachni Queen also hints in the first game that the Reapers were behind the Rachni Wars through indoctrination, and all but confirms it in the second where she identifies Shephard's enemies as the ones who soured the song of her people. Similarly, when asked about Sovereign, Legion mentions that "Nazara contacted many species over the millennia, seeking allies".

We can reasonably presume that Sovereign would not have seen a point in recruiting allies if he didn't know that the signal to activate the Citadel wouldn't work. If it really was responsible for the Rachni as implied, that puts its realization (and consequentially the intended culling date) back at least 2100 years (Rachni Wars started in 1 CE (Council Era), the events of Mass Effect occurred in 2183). Even ignoring that, Legion's comment about Sovereign's search for allies implies at the very least that the search lasted far longer than just decades.

As for why...see again the point about advantage piled on top of advantage. The Citadel trap was the perfect decapitation strike. It wiped out galactic leadership, crippled galactic communications, isolated systems into much more easily manageable pockets and prevented reinforcements, and gave the Reapers comprehensive records on the galaxy's maps, research, censuses, and probably tactics. To borrow from Starcraft for a minute, the effect could be likened to turning off the fog of war and dividing the enemy zergling swarm of 200 into 20 isolated groups of 10 that you could individually focus your efforts on. That decapitation strike was their ace in the hole, the one advantage they would want over anything else.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

The Mako had a real sense of adventure. You were actually in spaaaaaace getting into all kinds of crazy space adventures. The fact that people are being so dramatic over its mechanics also drives me nuts. It's not a car, it handles differently. Once you got the hang of it, and stopped using your boosters like an idiot while on a near vertical slope, it handled quite consistently and you could traverse some crazy terrain with it. I'm sorry, just "get gud".

Spot on.

I actually quite hate a lot of the people who criticized ME1 for this, as to me they're opinion's were too shallow and short-sighted to grasp & appriciate the overall effect having the Mako sections in the game gave it, and sadly Bioware listened to them.

All the bull I read about handling, targetting etc. - who cares? It was a side-section of a game designed just to make you feel more like a Space Explorer, and for that purpose it worked wonderfully.

 

[Potjeslatinist]

PS: I think the suicide mission is vastly overrated. It was a rather standard end game. Not bad, but nothing special, although that music was certainly epic.

I don't think so, it was very well done. The only problem was that I always went in making sure no one could die, so that really took a lot of tension out of it. I think Garrus died on my first one because I didn't know the conditions, and that made the mission way better because it actually felt like a suicide mission.

To each his own, I guess. I felt that the whole climbing-the-citadel-in-near-vacuum-with-enemies-being-blown-away-into-the-void-and-with-Sovereign-roaring-in-the-background-thing was far more epic than the beehive-fight (that we'd already done before) of the sequel. But you know, de gustibus et coloribus non disputandum.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Loved the game. Only thing i hated was that you were given a bunch of files of the people to recruit to your team. Wish they had let you explore and find the team members yourself.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

All the bull I read about handling, targetting etc. - who cares? It was a side-section of a game designed just to make you feel more like a Space Explorer, and for that purpose it worked wonderfully.

How do forty or something reskinned uncharted worlds to bounce around make you feel like an explorer? After a few you just wanted to wrap an elastic band around the left thumbstick and just point the damned thing in the general direction of 'something important' - although barely any features on those worlds were worth discovering, unless you were an OCD completionist. Which, annoyingly, I kinda was...

I think RPG's need to be built for replayability, and those uncharted worlds became some kind of torture.

They gave a sense of scale to the galaxy, sure, and that was a commendable side-effect. But it was surely wasted and wasteful design. I think BioWare overreacted in just ditching it for 2 and 3, though, and I feel they could've aimed for a compromise between trying to lend a sense of scale, and more focused, purposeful areas/worlds. It'll be interesting to see what they go for in Andromeda.

 

[AD-Stu]

Massive fanboy, love all three games (insert standard ME3 ending caveat here) but when I think about it ME2 is probably the one I feel least strongly about. Some random thoughts:

- The thermal clips change was beyond idiotic in the context of the game universe. But I got over it after about five minutes because let's be honest, the unlimited ammo thing was completely broken in ME1. So I'm prepared to give the game a pass on that. And I think they got the ammo distribution about right too: yes your favourite gun would often run dry but that added a level of interest and challenge that I quite enjoyed, having to pick and choose when to use your secondary weapons or balance them more with powers etc.

- The combat mechanics were improved on ME1, but they're nowhere NEAR as good as ME3.

- I thought they went a bit too far with the streamlining of the RPG / character building elements, and again ME3 probably struck a better balance in that respect. But I did like how the classes all started to take on their own unique character and play styles. ME1 suffered a lot from that, where a few of them (Sentinel, Engineer) just weren't as good. ME2 made them ALL playable and awesome in their own right.

- I liked that there was a lot more variety in how the weapons worked too. In ME1 all weapons within a class were basically the same, it was just a question of how much damage they did and how fast they overheated. Your whole goal was just to get the Spectre-level weapons then game over.

- Harbinger and the Collectors were a pretty awesome big bad, I liked them a lot.

- Some of the new characters were awesome. Mordin in particular, obviously. Grunt too. And Jack. I don't even mind Miranda. Jacob didn't need to be there though.

Most of my problems with ME2 are story related I think. Killing Shepard off at the start of the game only to immediately resurrect him/her was pointless. I liked the destruction of the Normandy SR1 - that was cool, it showed the power of the Collectors, and it allowed a bigger and better Normandy to be built. But Shepard dying was silly.

The thing where everything relates back to the first game bugged me at the time, and still does. Like the asari on Illium who's upset with humans because her daughters were killed during Sovereign's attack on the Citadel, and it turns out one was the receptionist at the ambassador's office and the other was the greeter for the consort... it's funny when the occasional character comes up again, but I don't need to know what happened to literally every NPC that was in the first game. Bioware seemed to think we did though.

Most of all though I think it suffered from the inconsistency of having two main writers, neither of whom seemed to have a firm idea of the ending they were shooting towards. ME2 is FULL of narrative dead ends and contradictions, especially once you've played ME3. I mean ME3 makes the whole main plot of ME2 stupid - there was no longer any reason for the Reapers to have a special interest in humans, there was no reason for the Collectors to be specifically targeting humans, and the less said about the human reaper itself the better...

 

[Dango]

I thought it got rid of pretty much anything unique, or interesting, or innovative that the original Mass Effect brought. Mass Effect 2 let go of an atmospheric, fleshed out space society that was genuinely wondrous and imaginative in favor of the same boring ass grim-dark style that had been making the rounds for years. Anything that made me want to play it was gone. The fantastic writing, the world-building, the RPG management, all taken away in favor of the same generic game I could get from anyone from Ubisoft to EA to Activision.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

PS: I think the suicide mission is vastly overrated. It was a rather standard end game. Not bad, but nothing special, although that music was certainly epic.

I don't think so, it was very well done. The only problem was that I always went in making sure no one could die, so that really took a lot of tension out of it. I think Garrus died on my first one because I didn't know the conditions, and that made the mission way better because it actually felt like a suicide mission.

To each his own, I guess. I felt that the whole climbing-the-citadel-in-near-vacuum-with-enemies-being-blown-away-into-the-void-and-with-Sovereign-roaring-in-the-background-thing was far more epic than the beehive-fight (that we'd already done before) of the sequel. But you know, de gustibus et coloribus non disputandum.

The reason I like the ending of Mass Effect 2 better is that it actually takes into account things you did in the main game, and there were actual consequences for your actions. Characters could die if you didn't get their loyalty or used them wrong, and even upgrading your ship affected what happened on the mission. It also gave you a pretty big choice to make at the end. (Well it seemed like a big choice at the time, even though Mass Effect 3 made it practically meaningless)

 

[Danbo Jambo]

How do forty or something reskinned uncharted worlds to bounce around make you feel like an explorer? After a few you just wanted to wrap an elastic band around the left thumbstick and just point the damned thing in the general direction of 'something important' - although barely any features on those worlds were worth discovering, unless you were an OCD completionist. Which, annoyingly, I kinda was...

I think RPG's need to be built for replayability, and those uncharted worlds became some kind of torture.

They gave a sense of scale to the galaxy, sure, and that was a commendable side-effect. But it was surely wasted and wasteful design. I think BioWare overreacted in just ditching it for 2 and 3, though, and I feel they could've aimed for a compromise between trying to lend a sense of scale, and more focused, purposeful areas/worlds. It'll be interesting to see what they go for in Andromeda.

Personally I operate with senses & emotions more than mathmatics. I can see past the mathmatics of what's happening and soak in the artistry & atmosphere. I'd sometimes just stand on a hillside and look at the suns.

I see you're point though, and some world did need more depth & variety for sure.

I'd agree, a middle ground would have probably been best for everyone, but I personally just really enjoyed those ME1 world anyway.

 

[Silverbeard]

If there's one major criticism to be made of Mass Effect 2 is that it ultimately didn't advance the plot in any meaningful way. If the script leak for Mass Effect 3 was to be believed, its main contribution to the series would have been establishing points that would later form the basis of the Reapers' motivations[footnote]Solving the problem of Dark Energy, which was a very long term but accelerating and ultimately catastrophic problem[/footnote] and methods[footnote]To lift a line from the Borg, "we will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us."[/footnote], but this was ultimately thrown out in favor of...well a sloppy attempt at echoing Asimov's Zeroth Law, which brings us back again to ME2 ultimately not contributing to the plot in a meaningful sense. It had excellent character focus, and the suicide mission remains one of my favorite climaxes in gaming (oversized terminator notwithstanding), but ultimately it probably should have had Shephard cultivating allies (ie, most of the priority missions from ME3) before getting sidetracked by the Collectors instead of being left out in the cold and focusing on the collectors for the whole of the game.

All that said, it's also probably my favorite installment in the Mass Effect franchise because of that character focus, gameplay and suicide mission.

I'd agree with all of this and I'd add that ME 2 should have ended with the Reapers invading. The suicide mission should have ended with Shepard-Commander discovering that the Collectors had already opened a portal to the Warp and the Reapers were pouring out into Batarian space. Then the game could have ended with the Normandy fleeing desperately through the rapidly-collapsing lines of Batarian defence and trying to get Citadel space to sound the warning that the foes were here. Not only would this have removed the Super-Terminator but it would also have given ME 2 a solid space in the overall plot. We wouldn't then have needed to start ME 3 with the Reapers invading. That would have already been aptly seen to in the end of ME 2. We could just get straight into the action with maybe a few text dumps to explain how poorly everyone was doing when it came to stopping the Reapers.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

I find it to be generally a bad game.

I mean, the gameplay is a improvement but it's still not a fun shooter. The plot is basically a joke and entirely tertiary to the characters, and most unfortunately for that, many of the characters are unimportant and have no substance to the story which makes them mostly pointless. They're basically cool temporary NPC's but have nothing more then that. Besides Garrus, Tali and Legion.

There are cool things in the game, but it lacks all of the tension, dread and suspense of the original without making up for it in any way. The Collectors are shells of organics who have no individual will, and I fight so many robots they kind of blend together with the Collectors. When i'm fighting pissed off Krogans and Asari biotics, i'm way more invested but that happens far too little.

Honestly if you went from one to three, you'd miss very little. And probably walk away with a more cohesive experience then remembering all the nothing that happened in 2. Including the nonsensical baby reaper that looks nothing like any other reapers for no good reason besides having a boring giant boss enemy. Or have the main characters work willingly with the Cerberus asshats that if you met them in one like I did destroys any of the underlying tension as you know they're bad. I mean, it's obvious anyways but still.

So, in hind sight, it's kind of fun on it's own, but due to it's predecessor it walks away with a C- and is barely passing.

 

[Glongpre]

PS: I think the suicide mission is vastly overrated. It was a rather standard end game. Not bad, but nothing special, although that music was certainly epic.

I don't think so, it was very well done. The only problem was that I always went in making sure no one could die, so that really took a lot of tension out of it. I think Garrus died on my first one because I didn't know the conditions, and that made the mission way better because it actually felt like a suicide mission.

To each his own, I guess. I felt that the whole climbing-the-citadel-in-near-vacuum-with-enemies-being-blown-away-into-the-void-and-with-Sovereign-roaring-in-the-background-thing was far more epic than the beehive-fight (that we'd already done before) of the sequel. But you know, de gustibus et coloribus non disputandum.

No, I agree, ME1 had an awesome ending. Seeing him in the background was so cool, and all the vacuum effects and stuff.

I loved using my rocket launcher sniper rifle to blow up the charging krogan and see them fly by me, haha.

It is just, I wouldn't exactly call it overrated, because it had some good ideas, and was largely one of the more memorable parts of the game because of how all your decisions effected it. The fact that Shepard can actually die if you don't do enough is pretty cool.

Also, latin, don't know what it means but it sounds cool. I am gonna guess it means, to each their own