AntiChri5 said:
On the Xbox, Mass Effect comes on one disc. Mass Effect 2 comes on two. Better textures can't account for enough of a difference that the game needed to be halved and put on separate discs.
You would be surprised. Textures and models take up the majority of a lot of games' space. Case in point, my Skyrim folder:
18Gb.
4.5Gb of that is in the game's default textures, models and voice acting.
1Gb of it is in the game's default sounds other than voice acting.
3Gb is in the assortment of models, textures, sounds, animations and such for the expansions.
9Gb is in texture mods and model changing mods.
That leaves around 2Gb unaccounted for, most of which goes into the assortment of other assets for the game or mods. The entire world of Skyrim, every chunk or W/E and the placement of items in it, comes to a grand total of 250Mb. That 250Mb also includes the data on every creature, trigger, building - basically everything in the game outside of the textures, models, animations, sounds shaders and interface. The rest of the code not found in this folder totals to 100Mb.
Even in the default game, without the high-res patch, 350Mb is the game, 4.5Gb is in models, textures and voices. I suspect you'd find the same thing for Mass Effect. Textures aren't small in size, they're some of the larger files you'll find next to pre-rendered cutscenes.
After checking the folders on my install, the binaries for both games are 34.6Mb for Mass Effect one, and 25.7Mb for Mass Effect 2. Mass Effect 2, however, comes with 2.52Gb of movies. Without the DLC the Mass Effect 2 folder contains 2Gb more data overall than Mass Effect 1, with 2.52Gb of that being in movies - which conveniently the Mass Effect 1 folder does not contain. Remove the movies [Which I'd guess to be the Lazarus Project cutscene, the battle for the Collector Base, and other things like that] and its half a Gb less of data. I'm not going to bother trying to find out where all that is, but odds are that half a Gb was the planets in ME1.
Mass Effect 2 simply has much more content. ME1's padding was picked on more for a very good reason. It was mostly "exploring" planets that had next to nothing to find and the same feel and geography. I love exploring in games. I have about 900 hours in Skyrim, from just wandering from place to place and looking in every nook and cranny. Same for Morrowind and Oblivion. But in Mass Effect? Identical locations, identical enemies, almost nothing to discover, what little there is to discover is usually fairly identical as well.
I heartily disagree. They have the same number of quests in total. The quests in ME2 are shorter [IMO], and just contain prettier environments. Also find it amusing that you don't think Skyrim is filled with the same terrain, same dungeons, same enemies over and over. Its one of the things I hated about the game. ME1 at least had good writing for a lot of them that made them interesting despite being the same thing over and over, Skyrim rarely ever had context to a dungeon other than "Its here, loot it", and after 50 Nord ruins, 50 Dwemer Ruins, 50 caves, 10 castles - ect. - I had seen everything repeated over and over so many times it wasn't funny. Just got mind numbingly dull after a while.
Areas in ME1 had atmosphere in one way, from the direct narrative, while areas in ME2 had atmosphere drawing from both narrative and area design.
Places like Feros, Noveria, Virmire and the Citadel also had the area design atmosphere. The areas they didn't have the time and funding to put effort into I'll agree had little beyond the quality of writing for them, but funny thing that I prefer the quality of writing to a more visibly diverse level. The heavier action focus in ME2, and the often less interesting context to places, left me feeling not as interested in its levels. The ones where you get new Squadmates are good, but otherwise... Nothing. The collectors were too much of a joke to take seriously, and most of the N7 missions consisted of "There are enemies of Cerberus here, kill them" - and that was the end of your context. Sure an agent, or a supply cache might have been thrown in there sometimes, but rarely. Probably the most atmospheric side mission in ME2 was the one with the destroyed station that had a rogue AI, the others were all rather lacklustre.
If you think gameplay in ME2 is ridiculously easy, you need to do an Adept Insanity NG+ playthrough. Planet scanning was a massive and obnoxious pain in the ass, but didn't actually take that long. It is about three hours per playthrough.
Still ridiculously easy. Only time its a challenge is when I get bored and decide to do something stupid to make it interesting. It doesn't make the game harder, it just slows it down a lot - and then once you get singularity it can actually speed up a bit 'cause you can pick enemies up [If their shields/barriers/armour is down] and not have to worry about ducking to cover every few shots.
Mass Effect 2 doesn't have hard gameplay. It has tedious gameplay, but there is nothing challenging about it.
