Out of Sight Out of Mind (Mass Effect 2)

[Insideout Ink Demon]

Snip-

well I haven't met every race, nor heard of every mercenary group or illusive head of the elitist organisations on this planet, nor do I regularly talk about them when I'm busy getting my job done.

So why is it so unbelieveable that alot of these get seen for the 1st time when on the other side of the galaxy?

Sometimes I think people expect too much, especially when Bioware are including multiple cannons for all your major decisions to play out through a trilogy. People are expecting Shakespeare to be written and stuck to word for word throughout an entire trilogy before game 1 is even made.

The reason I personally am regarding this game in such harsh light is if BioWare idealised themselves anymore in the build up to release they would have been wanking in my face.

People are expecting Shakespeare because BioWare have reeled off pioneers of the genre as if they were locals at the pub, insinuating their ability to upstage all of them.

When someone flaunts their tailfeathers in such an extraordinary and quite frankly, completely arrogant, fashion they better be able to cash the cheque their mouth is writing.

Instead we get mere nods at best to supposedly major decisions of ME1 (the Rachni mention was a joke) and a completely fucked story/plot that does absolutely nothing in the grand scale of things.

Bar some master revelation that Shepard has actually been dead for 90,000 years and he's now a mere amoeba in a biosphere being examined by a Salarian; ME2 could be removed from the trilogy and no one would notice. And I can safely say that, because in the grand scale we've done nothing, except ruin the Reaper's "motivations" and so forth.

W#nking in your face? is this a pro or a con

Probably the main reason I feel none of what you feel here is because apart from watchin the trilers for ME2 I didn't really follow any of the build up. Sure I was looking forward to it as an ME1 fan and a Bioware fan but I keep away from many sources of hype (from developers and fans) as it usually leads to disappointment.

That said, ME2 being removed from the trilogy, I can see where your going, but I will wait til ME3 before I make my judgement on that. (Personally I'm hoping the Rachni turn out to me allies in the finally)

 

[Starke]

Everyone in Lazarus project was killed to prevent data leakage - I think this is enough of an insight of Cerberus' philosophies to know they're completely mental.

Is that what happened? I've been wracking my brain for weeks trying to come up with an explanation for this that didn't open up more plot holes than playing with a live handgrenade.

 

[Starke]

Everyone in Lazarus project was killed to prevent data leakage - I think this is enough of an insight of Cerberus' philosophies to know they're completely mental.

Is that what happened? I've been wracking my brain for weeks trying to come up with an explanation for this that didn't open up more plot holes than playing with a live handgrenade.

To be completely honest, I don't know.

The thought was placed in my head somewhere, and I've just taken that as the rule. Rather than prying into, because the real reason is: "Because we needed a tutorial level"

It makes more sense than the implied reasons. Someone bribed him to kill Shepard, which requires that this other group knew about the Lazerus Project. I guess it could be the Shadow Broker, but he's got no reason to want you dead, and the assumption that it's somehow tied to the collectors (which I got shoved at me somehow) is even more non-sensical. If the Shadow Broker had learned about Lazerus, why wouldn't the collector's just drop in for a BBQ? But, unlike the tutorial in the previous game, where it becomes the launch point for the entire story, the tutorial in ME2 makes no freaking sense, (at least it's not alone in that regard.)

 

[mageroel]

That being said, there's a bigger problem here: The inconsistent portrayal of Cerberus.

In game one, Cerberus were, and I'm hesitant to use this phrase, but... were pure evil. Nothing they did seemed to be morally ambiguous. It was all horrific scientific experiments and murder.

Then, suddenly, in game two, they're a mostly heroic organization lead by a somewhat dubious leader.

What the?

I appreciate that we're now getting an inside perspective, but it's a jarring shift. More work could have been done to try and smooth that over.

So, what if this is just a great way to show us how manipulative they are? I mean, look at the Illusive man. His eyes are all weird. Who says he isn't a minion of the reapers? Maybe ME1 was to let you see how evil Cerberus is, and then ME2 to confuse you by seeing how they can do good things too? What if, in ME3, you find out that you have been manipulated by Cerberus?

 

[BlindChance]

So, what if this is just a great way to show us how manipulative they are? I mean, look at the Illusive man. His eyes are all weird. Who says he isn't a minion of the reapers? Maybe ME1 was to let you see how evil Cerberus is, and then ME2 to confuse you by seeing how they can do good things too? What if, in ME3, you find out that you have been manipulated by Cerberus?

Bobcat beat me to the punch. If in so much this happens, we can re-open the discussion. Until then, we look at what we have. And what we have screams incompetent and poorly planned storytelling.

 

[Daedalus1942]

In my opinion there's only a certain amount of new content a sequel to a game could possibly introduce realistically. Like in Mass Effect 1, how come we never heard of Asari Justicars? Or Omega? Or the Bloodpack or either crime syndicates? Or Cerberus and the Illusive man? Being a fan of both games, I'm surprised no one asked this before. Comments?

The illusive man was explained in the books as is most of all that crap you brought up, and I have to agree. It's stupid that people who've only played the first game won't understand any of it, and It's one of many reasons I was really disappointed with the sequel.

 

[Daedalus1942]

So, what if this is just a great way to show us how manipulative they are? I mean, look at the Illusive man. His eyes are all weird. Who says he isn't a minion of the reapers? Maybe ME1 was to let you see how evil Cerberus is, and then ME2 to confuse you by seeing how they can do good things too? What if, in ME3, you find out that you have been manipulated by Cerberus?

Something I theorised, and genuinely hope is the case.

I think I'm just going t have to accept ME2 for what it is though: a slap in the face.

I pray the 3rd game is better, because as it stands now, they just gutted the first game. The story, the gameplay, the actual length of the game, the inventory system, exploring planets, everything. The only thing that kept me playing were the characters.

 

[Boxmeister]

keep in mind that some of this stuff may have developed in the two years that Shepard was being rebuilt. I can't recall though if there were time-lines given for things like The Blue Suns,, whether it's just like "They've been around for a couple years", which could just be the two, or "they've run this district for the last three years"

 

[Starke]

keep in mind that some of this stuff may have developed in the two years that Shepard was being rebuilt. I can't recall though if there were time-lines given for things like The Blue Suns,, whether it's just like "They've been around for a couple years", which could just be the two, or "they've run this district for the last three years"

There is a time line for the Blue Suns. It's been TWENTY YEARS since they had a schism in their ranks that lead to their current leadership.

 

[mageroel]

So, what if this is just a great way to show us how manipulative they are? I mean, look at the Illusive man. His eyes are all weird. Who says he isn't a minion of the reapers? Maybe ME1 was to let you see how evil Cerberus is, and then ME2 to confuse you by seeing how they can do good things too? What if, in ME3, you find out that you have been manipulated by Cerberus?

Something I theorised, and genuinely hope is the case.

I think I'm just going t have to accept ME2 for what it is though: a slap in the face.

I'm sure it'll all make sense when ME3 comes out.. Or it won't and we'll decide on calling it a slap in the face.

[edit]
Also, something occurred to me. When you help out Liara T'Soni, she tells you all about The Shadow Broker. Say he's the Illusive man (& possibly working for the reapers), wouldn't that make a hell of a storyline? I'd say it's a bit of a dead giveaway that we haven't seen the last of that guy...

 

[Talshere]

In my opinion there's only a certain amount of new content a sequel to a game could possibly introduce realistically. Like in Mass Effect 1, how come we never heard of Asari Justicars? Or Omega? Or the Bloodpack or either crime syndicates? Or Cerberus and the Illusive man? Being a fan of both games, I'm surprised no one asked this before. Comments?

Omega is a backwater slum station, hardly the focus of a milatary operation. Since the bloodpack are mainly merc's who run out of omega, you as a milatary ship have little to fear from them and no reason to go anywhere near there operations. Some with the other 2.
Cerberus is mentioned in a few side quests, I wont put what since I cant be bothered to learn how to spoiler hide stuff, and the name "the illusive man" is a closly guarded secret. In ME2 many of the charactors express suprise when someone knows his name. Asari Justicars are similaly very rare and when present make even the Asari uneasy, given this knowelage about their nature, it is unsuprising that noone brought it up in casual conversation in ME1.

In such a huge universe there are aspects that you can classify as an assumption that you know it there its just it never came up, so you, as the player, never found out.

 

[Doc Cannon]

I think the short answer would be "it's a sequel and they needed new stuff". I wouldn't try to make sense of it, because the story and background are not perfect.
Sure, some say the galaxy is mind-boggingly large and you can't hear about everything. Ok, I'll agree with that. So why does Shepard meet every party member from ME1 if it's so big? Isn't that stretching it too much? I think the answer is "it is Mass Effect 2, they wanted to make sure you saw what happened to those guys, plus they had to add something new to get the story moving again". Maybe they didn't think the whole trilogy through when they wrote the first one, who knows.

I liked ME2 a lot, but I found a few things in it that killed my suspension of disbelief with a two-barreled shotgun blast to the right eye.