Mass Effect 2...seriously, wtf?

[Xaositect]

Yeah, pretty much agree.

ME2:

Story sucked.

Characters were expendable and poorly developed. Felt like "mission resources", rather than a band disparate folks coming together for a tough mission.

Dialogue got worse, despite making conversations look more dynamic, what they say is a lot less.

Gameworld was a series of loosely connected shooting galleries.

All in all, I thought ME2 was a dumbed down pile of trash. Certainly need to bring back some RPG in ME3, actually concentrate on the supporting characters this time, and stop trying to pander to the shooter demographic. Sure, keep the shooter element as a part of the game, but stop trying to make it into the centrepiece to try and rake in cash, since it doesnt look like they are buying it.

 

[DeadMix]

I disagree with the characterization point, but I completely agree with your ending argument.
What I found the problem to be was:
In 1 there was a clear villain, everything that went wrong you could shake your fist and yell: "SSSSSSSSSSAAAARRRRRRRRREEEENNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!" or "KKKKKKKKKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!"
In 2 there was more of this faceless evil entity known as the Collectors. Sure they did things, but because there was such a focus on the party members, the villains got pushed off to the side and they didn't feel like they were doing anything particularly evil. The threat never seemed real for me.

Exactly this. It was the only problem I had with ME2, besides resource gathering (which basically replaces the only problem I had with ME1, the inventory systaaaaaaargh).

 

[Abedeus]

Oh, you are a console gamer.

Enjoy your games' life-extending mods. Oh, yes, I did it.

I've never really been enamoured of mods, even before I dumped the PC as a serious gaming device. If they were good enough to compete in the real world, they'd release as real games (Y'know, like Half Life did, which started life as a Quake mod).

Because every mod that is good must be commercial.

I can't imagine playing Oblivion or Fallout 3 without at least 5-10 mods installed.

 

[Awake-]

Oh, you are a console gamer.

Enjoy your games' life-extending mods. Oh, yes, I did it.

I've never really been enamoured of mods, even before I dumped the PC as a serious gaming device. If they were good enough to compete in the real world, they'd release as real games (Y'know, like Half Life did, which started life as a Quake mod).

Because every mod that is good must be commercial.

I can't imagine playing Oblivion or Fallout 3 without at least 5-10 mods installed.

I've always found installing mods to be troublesome. Maybe I should start now though, finished Fallout 3 and really bored.

Anyway, we're getting seriously off topic.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I can't imagine playing Oblivion or Fallout 3 without at least 5-10 mods installed.

That's because "Make half a game and hope the modders finish it" has been Bethesda's favourite trick since Morrowind

 

[Manji187]

When you start looking out for tropes...you'll find the game riddled with them.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tropes

Are you being serious here? Saying that the game is using tropes, thus it's bad?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropesAreTools?from=Main.TropesAreNotBad

Tropes are not bad things, at all.

As for this whole thread, I find it funny people have become so nostalgic for ME1 in so quickly. They've blinded themselves to see that they're giving ME2 negative marks for the exact things that were already present in the first game.

English is not my original language and although my vocabulary is alright, this is the first time I encountered the word trope and I assumed the word had a negative connotation. Should've used a dictionary I guess....thank you for the additional information by the way. It's definitely an eye opener. For instance:

"The problem isn't the tropes, the problem is they don't know how to put them together or just don't have anything to say. They don't know how to use the tools. Not the tool's fault."

"Remember, while this site is fairly snarky, most of the snark is directed towards shows that don't use tropes well."

In the light of this I revise my statement:

For me, Bioware has made bad use of tropes in ME2.

 

[Lizard_viking]

I might have criticised ME2 before. But I still think that it was a good game, just not as good as ME1.

To start with. I'll think the gameplay was hugely improved in ME2, if you ever spend 10 minutes converting useless armor and weapons into omni-gel then you know what i'm talking about. And also the Mako must be one of the worst vehicles ever. And ME2 fortunely got rid of both them and more. So yes, ME2's gameplay was good enough to keep me enjoyed when I wasn't having dialog or progressing the story.

Story department is sadly another story. To begin with I completly hated the main plot in ME2. Everything from Shepard's death (which was nothing more than an excuse to reset the story and preserve status quo) in the intro, to the failure of a villain that was Harbinger (who spend most of his time saying one-liners). The only good thing was TIM. The suicide mission was also good, but the human-reaper was just downright silly.

Another thing I completly hated was how terrible Liara and the Vimire survivor cameo's were. In Liara's cameo, there's is no romance exclusive dialog, Shepard's dialog is forced down to either be indiffrent or angry at her. I get that Bioware was going for the "rocky second chapter of the love story and we want you to cheat" but it was bad how much they forced Shepard to be an emotionless rock.

As for the new characters. I enjoyed most of them. Mordin, Legion, Samara, Zaeed and Kasumi were all very good. But then you also have characters like the average Miranda, Obnoxious Jack, Pointless Thane and the boring Jacob and Grunt. So while I liked most of them and their loyalty mission, I also couldn't give a damn for a good chunk of them.

At the end of the day ME2 while having good gameplay was a mixed bag when it came to story.

PS: Shame on all of you who cheated on Liara!

 

[cerebus23]

While the ending was no where near as epic as me1, aside the very last shot of your ship staring down a gigantic reaper fleet, it sets up the third act of the trilogy rather well and i think number 3 will be mind blowing epic, with that reaper fleet vs the rest of the galaxy how could it not be epic. I wonder who is pulling the strings behind the reapers tho, seems there is more to it than just them.

The problem i see with the ending is how are they going to imperment you fighting them, unless they add space combat it will fill pritty anti-climatic if you just do what you have done before by goin to diffrent places and investigating them.

I bet it will end with you chooseing to send out a virus or somethin' to kill the reapers or chooseing to make peace.

OT:The only problem i have with ME2 is they make people appear more strong than they are in gameplay e.g. they show Jack take down two big mechs but when it comes to the game she can't do that type of shit.

I agree with the power point, these people are supposed to absolute bad asses in the galaxy and a thug with a gun can off them. Seems they should have been more godly to start and should have put the player up against over the top odds to even things out. So yea that did bother me to.

Far as in how they do the battle thing, it being a bioware game and all you probably take your data you have collected back to the citadel and throw it in the councils face. then have to seek out alliances and gathering the fleet and/or seeking out some weapon to help defeat them. you also got the rachnai if you spared them from the first game, who tell you they will be there to stop the reapers when the time comes.

You could also find out something else is controlling the reapers and have to track that entity down while the citadel races gather for war.

And you could have to end up fighting cereberus depending what choices you made at the end of me2.

And you also have a potential genphage cure you could give to the krogans depending what choice you made there.

And the geth you have the choice to reset and maybe gain another ally there.

You have a ton of forces that could be on your side depending what choices you made from me1 and 2 either way i suspect there will be a war that you will be off doing some vital missions to aid the war effort. gathering allies weapons and forces and maybe tracking down an unknown bad guy.

But your guess is as good as mine really. But i think we will have a ending that is every bit as epic as the battle of the citadel in me1 at the end of 3.

 

[stormyfs]

I liked the Mako.

Yeah, you heard me. I LIKED THE GODDAM MAKO.

I want bouncy cars back.

 

[Knight Templar]

Okay, yes...they had the moments where they MADE you do stuff..but when they MADE you do it, it wasn't screaming demons that the world will die unless you do it right then.

So everything must be a matter of survival or the totaly distruction of earth? That would get old after the third mission.

I'm not sure why exactly you're complaining. Lack of motovation?

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I disagree with the characterization point, but I completely agree with your ending argument.
What I found the problem to be was:
In 1 there was a clear villain, everything that went wrong you could shake your fist and yell: "SSSSSSSSSSAAAARRRRRRRRREEEENNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!" or "KKKKKKKKKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!"
In 2 there was more of this faceless evil entity known as the Collectors. Sure they did things, but because there was such a focus on the party members, the villains got pushed off to the side and they didn't feel like they were doing anything particularly evil. The threat never seemed real for me.

I'd say this is entirely fair. Given that we don't really know what the collectors were DOING until the end game (and even then it didn't make a lot of sense), and the fact that I spent most of the game shooting at various lowlife criminal scumbags it really seemed like I was missing a villian. Sure, there is the threat of the reapers present and the reality of the collectors harvesting humans but there wasn't a villian against which you matched wits. Honestly, in spite of the fact that I like the game immensely, the narrative doesn't seem to serve a purpose beyond expanding the supporting cast. It is almost as though they wanted to make a trilogy but couldn't come up with a good second act and just put in filler instead.

By ths point in a three act story we should be a the height of the action. It is supposed to be at this point that we have a major confrontation that is only resolved in the third act. Notable trilogies of days past have done precisely this. The matrix for example opened with a key villian (Agent Smith) and ended with hope for humanity. In the second after setbacks in major confrontations the stakes were clear (humanity was on the ropes). It was only through sacrifice in the third act (the attempt to hold the docks, many of the main characters) that the over-arching conflict was resolved. The same is true for things like Star Wars, Halo or any number of other three act narrative.

Instead, you spend a game building a team to stop actions you don't understand and are given choices when it's not at all clear what the stakes are. The board should be well and truly set by this point; instead, there's still a lot of maneuvering taking place.

 

[TheAmazingTGIF]

I'd say this is entirely fair. Given that we don't really know what the collectors were DOING until the end game (and even then it didn't make a lot of sense), and the fact that I spent most of the game shooting at various lowlife criminal scumbags it really seemed like I was missing a villian. Sure, there is the threat of the reapers present and the reality of the collectors harvesting humans but there wasn't a villian against which you matched wits. Honestly, in spite of the fact that I like the game immensely, the narrative doesn't seem to serve a purpose beyond expanding the supporting cast. It is almost as though they wanted to make a trilogy but couldn't come up with a good second act and just put in filler instead.

-snipped-

I agree. This is the problem with most second acts, it is the point where you are at the lowest point for the hero. There was the ever present threat of the Reapers, but you never saw one in 2 for the most part. However the set up for 3 leaves me pretty excited.

 

[Ninemanec]

Randomly popping back into this monster, I'd like to say

Characters I LOOOOOVVEEE: Liara, Legion, Garrus, and Jack...Mordin I KINDA' like. Other than that they can all go to hell, lol.

As to my suicide mission..Maybe it would've felt more epic if someone had died when I played it. On my first time through no one died on the suicide mission, and I didn't even know that they could until I was reading through a forum and someone said that one of their characters died....I felt accomplished, lol.

I'm sorry for trolling my let-down caused by ME2...we could talk about something else now that this has basically become

Point in favor of 1,
Point in favor of 2,
Repeat point one with new ideas
repeat point two with new ideas
what that guy said

 

[godofallu]

I really enjoyed ME2. I loved ME1, but there were a few things I didn't like and I posted about on the forums.

In ME2 the things I mentioned not liking in ME1 were cut. Not much more you can ask for.

 

[unoleian]

Regarding the whole "lack of RPG elements/customization", I would point you to this editorial as it pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter: http://www.cynicalbrit.com/gaming-express/mass-effect-2-editorial/
.

Wow. I couldn't have made a better argument if I tried. That guy nailed every point.

 

[FirstOne617]

PS: Shame on all of you who cheated on Liara!

Liara went psycho on me, though. I liked ME1 Liara. She was...sweet. This Liara scares me.

 

[Lizard_viking]

PS: Shame on all of you who cheated on Liara!

Liara went psycho on me, though. I liked ME1 Liara. She was...sweet. This Liara scares me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjFMPaSjAuo

Liara is still the same person. She is just in a bad position right now.

PS: I don't know how to make the video playable on this page.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

The problem is not Mass Effect did the whole inventory-thing well (because it didn't). It is that instead of keeping what was basically a sound idea, with different manufacturers having distinct traits to their equipment (Hahne-Kaedar being all-around, Sirta Foundation focusing on armor over shields etc.) and tuning it so the choice made more of a difference then just what texture was on your armor or weapon, BioWare dropped it entirely. What we get instead is a system of choice, very, very limited choice. Two pistols, of which one is obviously inferior (anyone who ever used the Predator after the Carnifex became available, please post), two SMGs, two Shotguns... And often the choice was clear cut. The upgraded version was usually always better.

Making the old item list more distinct and fixing the whole "Convert to Omni-gel" mouse-breaker would have been far superior to the binary choice we have now. The overly simplified inventory, the feeling that most missions were little more than shooting galleries and the strange pacing of the story dragged a game that could have been stellar down to a "mere" good for me. ME2 is definately not a bad game, but I feel that many design decisions stop it from stepping it up to that special level of awesome where it should have been.