WarpZone said:
I dunno about this. This is the same problem I've *always* had with the Fallout franchise (even though I still Play Fallout 2 and 3 from time to time.) They make success or failure contingent on some kinda obscure bullshit they don't tell you about ahead of time. Effectively detaching the game's win state from its core mechanics and making it impossible to succeed without cheating by consulting a guide.
Fair enough - "Guide Dang It" is a trope for a reason - but in ME2 you have characters telling you
in-game that if you want your team functioning at 100%, you might want to help them clear out some baggage that's holding them back. Granted, it's a suggestion and you don't
have to do it... but in that case, be prepared to face the consequences.
Wolfenbarg said:
Let's just hope it isn't as simplistic and annoying as last time. In Mass Effect 2, you had to *try* to fail in order to make Shepard die. If you made a single right decision, you still lived.
Actually, to get Shepard and everyone else killed, all you have to do is follow orders: recruit your team, go to Horizon, get the Reaper IFF and attack the Collectors.
To look at it from another angle, let's focus on the final mission. If you're not a completist, you might not have bothered to get the ship upgrades when they become available: they don't affect your gameplay in any way and you could use the money to improve weapons and health instead. That's three squadmates lost before you even reach the Collector Base.
After that, it comes down to how well you know your NPCs. Sending Tali or Legion to hack the gate seems like a no-brainer, but if you send Mordin because hey, he's a scientist? That's another one down. Zaeed and Grunt might seem like tempting choices for team leaders: they're tough, they're fighters, etc. The only way you'd know they're wrong for the job is if you stopped by and listened to Zaeed's stories,
every single one of which ends with his entire team dying while he gets away, or figured out that Grunt doesn't really understand what it means to be responsible for
other people.
The game even misdirects you at one point, when Miranda tells you that any biotic could keep the shield up. If you haven't talked to her, you'd have missed the part where she admits she sometimes makes mistakes that result in people getting killed. And if you take her at face value, you lose another team member.
In other words, it's
very easy to make mistakes during the suicide mission, and the casualties add up. If you make it to the end with less than 2 surviving squad mates, Shepard dies.
