Mass Effect 1 "completionist", ME2 exploration..

[spikeyjoey]

yup, its another ME thread

firstly, WTFF is up with exploration in ME2!? fuel? really.. and i purchased more fuel, yet still cant seem to move the neccesary 3 inches to get to the planet i want to get to... what the fuck was bioware thinking??

*sigh*

anyway, when i completed ME1 on my first playthrough, I didnt get the "completionist" achievement, which requires completing 60% (or thereabouts) of the game.. 60% aint much..

the thing is, i wasnt hugely concerned with the sidequests.. fetch quests seem below a spectre, and the reward of credits didnt appeal (unlike the potential of a sweet magic ring or whatever in games like Baldurs gate)..

also, the main story is literally titled "a race against time".. i like to roleplay a little bit, and it just didnt feel right fannying about exploring every last planet in the galaxy when Saren was getting closer and closer to his objective..



So.. how many of you got this achievement? What should be the balance between pacing and encouraging exploration? why did Bioware fuck up in ME2?

 

[TheKruzdawg]

I like to roleplay it up as well a lot of times but I was still more interested in exploring every planet possible. Before I went to Ilos I even went through each system and double checked that I had already been there before. I hate leaving things undone.

After my first playthrough though, I didn't feel the need to explore EVERYTHING and let some missions go, although I'm still trying to get to level 60. Not quite there yet...only 53

 

[Et3rnalLegend64]

Language, dude.

Was it really 60%? I remember it being higher. Anyways, it means whatever the necessary percentage is of every quest, sidequests included. Doesn't matter if you think it's below you. Do it or stop complaining.

I don't know what you're talking about in regards to the fuel thing. I had no problems moving. And if you ever ran out of funds to buy fuel, you did something terribly wrong.

 

[bjj hero]

About the only thing I missed was beating it on hardest and beating most of the missions with Liara... Even though I went to get her as soon as possible. Not impressed.

 

[Littlee300]

I didn't have any problems with fool. What did piss me off though was the fact that

Spoiler alert however you should still read this if you want to be a step ahead of mass effect

You do missions before rescuing your crew and a lot of them die. I don't like it because it is so arbitrary and there will be some parts where this time rule doesn't apply and I just didn't want to miss out on content!

 

[sneakypenguin]

You should never run out of fuel with a full tank you can hit every area in a (nebula?) IIRC.

I didn't get completionist, I did ME1 in about 6 hours lol.

 

[Woodsey]

You found the fuel an issue to cope with? No wonder games have "press F to look" buttons and the like these days.

Anyway, they exploration side missions were pretty fucking boring, so I doubt I got it.

 

[Anezay]

I actually enjoy the feeling of dicking around when you're supposed to be in a race against time. I like to imagine my superiors getting more and more frustrated with Shepard, the specter with a four second attention span. It also lets me imagine that I'm just that much more skilled than Saren, that I can spend half my time shooting at monkeys on random dump of a planet #486 and still keep up with and beat him.

 

[Amakaze]

On the losing crew bit, it is very possible to play through the finale and not lose anyone, something I imagine a lot of people are prepping for in order not to miss anything in ME3. Essentially, its just a matter of fully upgrading your ship and then thinking of the right person for each job. Sending Jack to be a leader is likely to get people killed, but Garrus has experience. Isn't too bad. The only tricky one is the biotic bubble...you need one of the stronger biotics. Miranda just isn't going to cut it.

 

[OmniscientOstrich]

In my first playthrough of ME1 I completely disregarded the vast majority of the sidequests, as with almost all RPG's I'm much more enticed with the main quests and story progression. On my second playthrough, the disembodied voice of the android from Aliens sent me on about 300 identical sidequests which made me fucking glad that I didn't bother the first time around. This is probably my main beef with ME1, for a game that promises about 30 odd hours of gameplay, only about 12 of the hours are particularly engaging. I'm fairly sure I got that achievement second time round, but I wouldn't know since I don't give a shit about achievements and take no notice when they pop up.

 

[spikeyjoey]

You found the fuel an issue to cope with? No wonder games have "press F to look" buttons and the like these days.
.

-_-

well im in the omega system, and i have to go to a certain planet to find an operative..

i literally go as the crow flies, and im out of fuel halfway there.. i start out on 100 and it just shoots down.. the normandy just crawls along the screen, so im out within about 5 seconds..

 

[spikeyjoey]

ok my bad, due to my crappy small tv, i thought it was i had 100/100 fuel, not 100/1000

 

[Thunderhorse31]

I think in terms of gameplay, ME1 did exploration better. Hate the Mako and its controls all you want, getting down onto a planet surface and exploring it gave the game a grand sense of scope to the universe, and was frankly more entertaining than planet scanning.

However, in terms of fitting into the story, ME2 did it better. In the first game, Saren is searching for the Conduit, and there is an impending sense of "if he finds it before we do, we're screwed," so stopping to reign in a VI on the moon or assassinating small-time space pirates doesn't exactly fit the narrative very well. In 2 you at least have time to build a team and sort-of "feel out" the Collectors, so there was less of a sense of urgency.

So yeah, I agree that "fetch quests are below a Spectre" in terms of the first game's narrative, but that didn't stop me from doing EVERYTHING in each game multiple times.

And you ran out of fuel? Srsly?

 

[putowtin]

On the losing crew bit, it is very possible to play through the finale and not lose anyone, something I imagine a lot of people are prepping for in order not to miss anything in ME3. Essentially, its just a matter of fully upgrading your ship and then thinking of the right person for each job. Sending Jack to be a leader is likely to get people killed, but Garrus has experience. Isn't too bad. The only tricky one is the biotic bubble...you need one of the stronger biotics. Miranda just isn't going to cut it.

Samara is best choice for the bubble and for the love of a deity send Mordin as the crews escort or you'll be losing that loveable fast talking scientist!


but more OT, love visiting planets and doing side quests, if you only play a quater of the game waht was the point of buying it (That's my gotten theory anyhoo!)