Why Mass Effect 2 was, and is, the superior out of the Mass Effect trilogy. [No Spoilers]

[RJ 17]

Acts 1 and 4 are indeed, appalling. They're just a giant deus-ex-machina solution to the major conflict of the series. "The reapers are attacking, oh no! What do! Oh hey, there's a magic mcguffin that'll save the day and we're just suddenly learning about it? How convenient!"

I just wanna touch on the "deus ex machina" notion as it seems to be a problem a lot of people have with the Crucible.

Quite simply: just how DID you expect to win the war with the Reapers? Three full fleets were required to take down one Reaper escorted by the Geth armada, and those three fleets still got their asses kicked in the process. Even if you united every fleet in the galaxy and went for just one gigantic space battle, it's established in the first game that there's no WAY you're going to win against the might of the Reaper fleet. Quite literally: a giant space-magic deus ex machina doomsday device is the only chance you'd have at defeating the Reapers. So again I ask just how DID you expect to win the war?

...are you honestly saying that I need to have a better plot in my back pocket before I can point out that a using a mcguffin to solve the central crisis of a series is terrible writing?

I made no effort to predict the plot of ME3 before I played it.

Not at all, I don't expect you to have a better plot, I'm just saying that if you thought there was going to be anything BESIDES a giant magical dooms-day device then you were just deluded and apparently not paying attention to the story. Now, on the other hand...

Acts 1 and 4 are indeed, appalling. They're just a giant deus-ex-machina solution to the major conflict of the series. "The reapers are attacking, oh no! What do! Oh hey, there's a magic mcguffin that'll save the day and we're just suddenly learning about it? How convenient!"

I just wanna touch on the "deus ex machina" notion as it seems to be a problem a lot of people have with the Crucible.

Quite simply: just how DID you expect to win the war with the Reapers? Three full fleets were required to take down one Reaper escorted by the Geth armada, and those three fleets still got their asses kicked in the process. Even if you united every fleet in the galaxy and went for just one gigantic space battle, it's established in the first game that there's no WAY you're going to win against the might of the Reaper fleet. Quite literally: a giant space-magic deus ex machina doomsday device is the only chance you'd have at defeating the Reapers. So again I ask just how DID you expect to win the war?

I was expecting some sort of MacGuffin to come into place SOME TIME throughout the series but it could have been handled MUCH better than it actually was. It was simply introduced far to late in the story, and it's introduction felt both rushed and extremely contrived.... "Oh yeah, we found plans for this mega super Reaper thingie RIGHT when the Reapers attacked and we THINK that it MAY destroy them or something..... LET'S PUT ALL OF OUR RESOURCES INTO IT AND HOPE IT WORKS LOL". And the whole space magic shit in the ending made it all that much aggravating. Nooooooo, they couldn't give you a simple "destroy the Reapers" ending, they forced you to listen to that little hologram twat (and if you don't, the developers give you a big "FUCK YOU" in regards to the refuse ending) and forced you to sacrifice yourself no matter what. And ON TOP OF THAT they made the choices absolutely retarded. Shepard can become Catalyst 2.0 and HOPEFULLY not turn into a genocidal maniac because we all know that Shepard, a HUMAN WITH A HUMAN MIND would NEVER become corrupted over the years. Or the whole synthesis shit not making any sense whatsoever with the DNA changing bullshit with a magical green light. But at least you can destroy the Reapers...... at the expense of destroying ALL synthetic life for some reason and maybe giving you a single breath scene that is never elaborated upon whatsoever.

So yeah.... the gist of that nerd rage is that they could have done it better.

This I can understand: complaining about how it was handled, not about the existence. Now here's where I'd normally launch into a defense of the ending to try and convince you that it wasn't AS bad as you thought it was, but just like all the developers trying to convince gamers that the XBone's DRM was actually a great thing that just wasn't explained well, trying to change your mind about the ME3 ending is an argument that's doomed to failure.

To Ruzinus:
Now if I misunderstood your response that I originally quoted and you were upset mostly with the handling then I apologize for even bringing it up, but it seemed to me you were more upset with the mere existence of the Crucible than the handling of it.

 

[Something Amyss]

The entire story amounts to nothing within the arc of the trilogy

Indeed. Considering Bioware are supposed to be the great storytellers of our medium, a story that can best be described as "treading water" to pad out a trilogy to three parts is really not something we as gamers should tolerate.

 

[Something Amyss]

.
Secondly, it assumes Sovereign knows what's up with the Citadel and how to fix it. Hint; He doesn't. He just knows that the signal isn't working, and he wants to find out why.

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

He should have called IT.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

:words:

Ignoring the fact that you're just speculating, it still makes Saren and Sovereign idiots. You know whats a great time to investigate what that object is and why the keepers aren't responding? After your invasion has already occurred. You know whats a terrible idea? To take any actions that tip off your hand you have before you have played it. Who gives a crap why the keepers wont respond or what this thing is, no one on the other side knows either so the risk is huge and the effective result is tiny. If you want to call it excessive arrogance, fine. But arrogant people are idiots, and the level of arrogance they put forth made them some of the dumbest villains of all time.

And I'm not saying Mass Effect 2's plot was any better either, although it was certainly less recursive, but it was also pretty much the reapers wasting time and troop lives for basically no reason.

Umm.... you know why else Saren needed the Conduit? So he could, you know, SURPRISE ATTACK THE CITADEL?!?!? You seem to forget that he also needed all of his geth buddies who couldn't stroll up to the Citadel quite as easily.

As someone else mentioned, there are a billion other way better things he could have done so with much more ease and effect. They already had the technology to sneak heretofore unknown Geth through insanely powerful security scanners on Noveria, they could have done the same on the citadel. Or they could just dock and then assault through the security check points while their fleet with Soverign smashed the small, and unalerted by Shepard, c-sec fleet.

In the plot as it is he made it way more difficult for his geth buddies to 'stroll up to the citadel.' Oh and all he would need to do is force the council to flee, then he could have used his spectre status to order everyone out of the council chambers and opened the gate to let the reapers in.

 

[Mikeyfell]

I liked Mass Effect 2 the most out of the two games and the one massive pile of shit.

Mass Effect 2's story was... n't there at all... which is a huge tick against the overall quality of the game but everything else made up for it.

The best leveling mechanics, the best action, Very well written characters (And Jacob, naw... I don't hate Jacob), better level design (arguably)

Those good points out weigh the bad points of
No story... at all.
Bad dialog to gameplay ratio (3 convo's per character 22 missions)

As were Mass Effect 1 had boring stodgy gameplay that you just had to suffer through to get to more of the excellent dialog.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Mass Effect One is the only Mass Effect worth playing, the second is a rather poor excuse for a game and the third is just appalling.

Me thinks you need to play more games. To call ME3's story "Appalling" is really doing the word a great deal of disrespect.

I mean, look at the Resident Evil Games, the latest CoD games, The original Borderlands, some of the newer Final Fantasy Games. They have just awful stories, and these are big budget, triple A blockbusters.

I need to chime in...
Awful stories yes...
But not fundamentally broken on every level.

Every single line of dialog in Mass Effect 3 is contradicting something that happened earlier in the series or even earlier in the game it's self.
There isn't a setpiece in ME3 that holds together in any respect (Except the Tuchanka one but the call backs in that level were so stupid it's hard to care) (It's so important that you save Maelon's data, but the game never even raises an eyebrow if you let him live?) It's a Renegade choice to shoot Mordin in the back? What? Saving the whole Turian and Salarian races from war is a renegade choice? What the fuck?

The Roll Playing was FUCKED. They reduced everything to two choices and arbitrarily stuck them in either a "Good guy" or "Bad guy" option in (Probably) the only game in the series where neutrality would have been more valuable.

The Quarian Geth story was even worse,
You're automatically romantic with Tali (Even if you never liked her in the past)
Every line has a reversed Paragon Renegade thing.
(Literally the first thing you say is
Renegade: Blow up the ship
After the ship is blown up
Renegade: Why did you blow up the ship?
.....WHAT?
It's like they passed the script around a table every line after doing shots of bleach.

The shooting is mostly unplayable because every command is tacked to the A button/space bar (And re-load is on 3 buttons, there are 3 buttons that can "unset squad mate's waypoints) and "Click the sticks might as well have been unmapped because who needs a compass in a game as linear as this)

Biotic classes were stupidly over powered. If you import a level 30 Adept you've won the game! Just so long as you can press the shoulder buttons in rapid succession.

It has nothing to do with how many games we've played. It has everything to do with how much attention we pay to the games we do play

 

[Silverbeard]

SNIP

I agree with all of this and let me add one more reason:
ME 2 was the middle child of the series. They did not need to worry about tedious world building or the dangers associated with ending a franchise- which is something that ME 1 and ME 3 did need to worry about. The middle position in a best of three setup will always have the potential to be the best of them all and ME 2 fits this position rather well.

 

[LetalisK]

Roleplay: ME1 again, it had the most conversations and choices within those.

Erm...actually ME1 has the fewest lines of dialogue of all three games. I can't say how many times you were told to pick a response in each game, though, not that it mattered most of the time in any of the games. <.<

Since when? Everyone on your ship and the main npc's outside of it all had a lot to say. Quite a few less important npc's too. Only most of the background npc's didn't have a ton of conversation going on. I'm not just talking about the main story here, but about dialogue as a whole.

Since ME1 had 20k lines of dialogue, ME2 had 25k, and ME3 had 40k.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/13/mass-effect-3-contains-twice-as-much-dialogue-as-the-first-game/

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

ME2 superior to ME1? Bullocks.
Fucking Thermal clips. Yea, ME2 had tighter gunplay, but that means fuck all when you don't have any ammo.
Turning my Infiltrator from a snipping god to a fireball hurling wizard wannabe? Unforgivable.

This.

Snipers were less than useless in ME 2, and only moderately more useful in ME3. And I play a Sniper Shepard.

Both ME 2 and 3 are too "close" to the action. Which is great if you want a gritty cover-based shooter.

However, in ME1, I could get through missions by finding a nice quiet spot, zooming in on my foes, and picking them off one at a time before they even knew what-the-fuck. It was immensely satisfying to clear an area solo while Garrus and Tali stood there saying "All Clear" over and over again (as massive energy blasts from the Geth Colossus sailed merrily over their heads).

I will admit, Biotics were tons better in ME2 and particularly in ME3, but that only helps when you're playing a Biotic character.

 

[CloudAtlas]

I need to chime in...
Awful stories yes...
But not fundamentally broken on every level.

Every single line of dialog in Mass Effect 3 is contradicting something that happened earlier in the series or even earlier in the game it's self.
There isn't a setpiece in ME3 that holds together in any respect (Except the Tuchanka one but the call backs in that level were so stupid it's hard to care) (It's so important that you save Maelon's data, but the game never even raises an eyebrow if you let him live?) It's a Renegade choice to shoot Mordin in the back? What? Saving the whole Turian and Salarian races from war is a renegade choice? What the fuck?

The Roll Playing was FUCKED. They reduced everything to two choices and arbitrarily stuck them in either a "Good guy" or "Bad guy" option in (Probably) the only game in the series where neutrality would have been more valuable.

The Quarian Geth story was even worse,
You're automatically romantic with Tali (Even if you never liked her in the past)
Every line has a reversed Paragon Renegade thing.
(Literally the first thing you say is
Renegade: Blow up the ship
After the ship is blown up
Renegade: Why did you blow up the ship?
.....WHAT?
It's like they passed the script around a table every line after doing shots of bleach.

The shooting is mostly unplayable because every command is tacked to the A button/space bar (And re-load is on 3 buttons, there are 3 buttons that can "unset squad mate's waypoints) and "Click the sticks might as well have been unmapped because who needs a compass in a game as linear as this)

Biotic classes were stupidly over powered. If you import a level 30 Adept you've won the game! Just so long as you can press the shoulder buttons in rapid succession.

It has nothing to do with how many games we've played. It has everything to do with how much attention we pay to the games we do play

You obviously didn't pay that much attention yourself.

You know, guys like you are the reason why developers are hesitant to give players morally ambiguous choices. You encounter a moral choice problem, you come to the conclusion that one alternative is clearly superior to the other, and then you blame the game for your own failure of not recognizing the moral ambiguity of the problem.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Mass Effect 2 is and always will be my favorite of the series. It still did some things that I didn't appreciate, but it's hands down the best one out of the entire series, side story or not, it's a damn good side story. And, rather than yanking control of MY Shephard away from ME for ninety percent of the game... looking at you Mass Effect 3, it let me pick my dialogue choices and didn't restrict me to 'good guy' 'bad guy' responses.

In Mass Effect 3 I felt like my Renegade Shephard was acting WAAAAY out of character. Why does my renegade care about some stupid little shit kid? This is war, he's spilled innocent blood, he shouldn't care. Why does he like Anderson? I never had him being all palsy with him. Why was he suddenly so nice to everyone for no reason? It was FUCKING BULLSHIT and it's still my biggest issue with the game, ending be damned.

I felt like the combat was vastly improved in 2, but was still deep enough and offset by enough talky walky bits to not feel like the dudebro COD slog that ME 3 turned out to be. So, ME 2 wins again there.

And, I feel like the characters in ME 2 beat out the characters in ME 3 by a huge margin. Seriously, why did my crew in ME 3 consist largely of boring characters I didn't care about?

I dunno, I guess in the end it's all subjective. But I'll always personally consider ME 2 the best of the trilogy.

3 was terrible about defining your character for you, but it started with 2.
My Paragon Shepard would never work for Cerberus.
(Select "I don't work for Cerberus")
"I'm only working for Cerberus right now."
(Sigh)
Bit by bit after the first game Bioware took control over your character and defined him/her. I made every effort to distance myself from the Alliance in 1 (Denying that Admiral an inspection of your ship is one of my favorite parts of the first game). In the third one? I'm Alliance to the core. Wat.
The series had so much potential, but anything not directly related to characters made Bioware have a stroke.

 

[PrimitiveJudge]

I loved the scanning planets for minerals, I was pissed when they took that out in ME3. I never played ME1 so I do not know if that was in the first one.

 

[Mikeyfell]

You obviously didn't pay that much attention yourself.

You know, guys like you are the reason why developers are hesitant to give players morally ambiguous choices. You encounter a moral choice problem, you come to the conclusion that one alternative is clearly superior to the other, and then you blame the game for your own failure of not recognizing the moral ambiguity of the problem.

...um...

morally ambiguous choices

um...
Did you respond to the wrong comment?
Are we talking about different games?

I'd love to respond to this but I don't know how.

The choice system in ME3 was binary. it was presented in a way where there were only two possible outcomes to any situation.

The choices are extremely ambiguous, but the writers didn't give us any chance to acknowledge them.

Do you cure the genophage?
Paragon:Yes the Krogans deserve a second chance
No the Krogans will kill the Salarians
No they'll overpopulate their planet and resort back to waring clans

Renegade: No, I'm an asshat lololol
Yes, keeping the Krogans, Salarians and Truaians locked in galactic war will give humanity a good chance to claim more galactic power
Yes, the Krogans deserve revenge.
No, I'll hold the cure ransom for my own Krogan army

Neutral: Yes, but the council controls birth rates and restricts access to import and export
Kind of, Cure the genophage in certain Krogans who meet council approved criteria
Yes but if they step out of line the council will reinfect them again.

That's pretty ambiguous. In the game however
Yes the Krogans deserve a second chance
and
No I'm an Asshat LOLOL
are the only two options given to us
Both of those are equally bullshit.

Or if you want to look at it as Short sighted: No. Salarian Aid is more important
and Extremely short sighted: Yes, Exploding Krogan population is a problem for Future Me

The writers didn't even leave Shepards motivation ambiguous because you explain it to Mordin before you shoot him or not.

 

[Agayek]

Ignoring the fact that you're just speculating, it still makes Saren and Sovereign idiots. You know whats a great time to investigate what that object is and why the keepers aren't responding? After your invasion has already occurred. You know whats a terrible idea? To take any actions that tip off your hand you have before you have played it. Who gives a crap why the keepers wont respond or what this thing is, no one on the other side knows either so the risk is huge and the effective result is tiny. If you want to call it excessive arrogance, fine. But arrogant people are idiots, and the level of arrogance they put forth made them some of the dumbest villains of all time.

Oh, from an out-of-universe quasi-omniscient perspective, that is absolutely what they should have done.

The problem is, they didn't know that. All they knew was that the Citadel Relay wasn't turning on with the remote signals and that it was somehow related to the Conduit. Now, they could have just assaulted the Citadel as you suggest, but such a plan comes with very, very large risks. Specifically, it requires that Sovereign gambles literally everything on the Conduit not being a vital part of the Citadel Relay or some other necessary item in order to turn the thing on.

No matter what happens, if they did as you propose here, Sovereign would be tipping its hand and revealing itself. In the very heart of enemy territory. Surrounded by a fleet explicitly said to be able to destroy him.

If the Conduit ended up being necessary to activate the Relay, then Sovereign would have to fight its way out, search for the Conduit while the entire armed forces of the Citadel hunt for it, then if, by some bizarre and cosmic coincidence, it actually manages to find the thing, it would then have to fight its way back through a prepared and forewarned Citadel Fleet in order to activate the Citadel Relay.


Or, alternatively, it could seek out the Conduit and find out exactly what it is and why it's important, sacrificing one of its many pawns, and stupid-easy access to the Citadel, in the process, so that it a) keeps itself and its purpose both secret and safe, and b) knows ahead of time what it will need to complete said purpose.

The latter is especially attractive when one stops to consider that it could always sit back and play the "I'm just a spaceship that Saren found, won't you use me as a personal ship by right of conquest, Mr. Spectre-Who-Killed-Saren" card and be no worse off than it was originally.

Edit:
ME1 definitely had problems, you absolutely won't hear me arguing against that, but the plot (the writing in general really, but there were places where it was sub-par) was not one of them.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

...are you honestly saying that I need to have a better plot in my back pocket before I can point out that a using a mcguffin to solve the central crisis of a series is terrible writing?

One of the things about the Mass Effect trilogy that detractors of its ending are entirely too quick to lose in the message, is that the trilogy's antagonist faction (the Reapers) and its dramatic question are lifted wholesale from Lovecraft. Ancient, forgotten, unknowable eldritch horror of deific power plans to return and eat and/or destroy everything, and people who get clued into the true nature of the threat have a tiny tendency to lose their sanity and collaborate in hopes of merciful treatment (in Lovecraft's case, in hopes of being killed and/or eaten first). To wit, going back six years, that was one of the biggest selling points and points of interest to the trilogy for the same people who are now complaining.

One of the chief traits of Lovecraftian horror is the bad guys always win. The best protagonists can hope for is a pyrrhic victory that comes at horrendous cost, that really changes nothing in the long run, and as per Lovecraftian horror that generally comes via MacGuffin. Mass Effect 3 managed to stay relatively close to that original theme and genre interweaving, leaving the more disturbing questions of the ending even in the best-case scenarios to inference and interpretation. So, again, what did you expect?

That said, the ending isn't even a deus ex machina. Deus ex machinae must first be unexpected, sudden, and resolve dramatic questions in a manner that subverts or contradicts what expectations the audience have. In the case of Mass Effect 3, the audience is specifically informed more than once in the course of the game itself the Catalyst is an unknown factor. Players are told it exists, and that it is instrumental in the use of the Crucible -- that's it. The audience cannot form reasonable expectations of a plot device that is not just intentionally left un-exposited, but the audience is specifically told to not form expectations. Moreover, the true identity of the Catalyst is even foreshadowed during the Vendetta conversations, in which there is exposition the Reapers are tools of some greater entity for carrying out the cycle.

ME3 is one giant MacGuffin hunt, with trilogy-long plot resolutions in the middle. The central plot is finding, building, deploying, and using the Crucible. The audience is specifically told what the Crucible will do, and even if it will work, is an unknown and a last-ditch attempt by the organic species' to stay their own eradication. The original three endings are very heavily foreshadowed throughout the entire game if not trilogy, yes even Synthesis, if not outright told during the course of the game's exposition are possible outcomes. What the Crucible does in the end, does not reasonably subvert or contradict audience expectations -- and neither does the Catalyst, since its identity is not merely foreshadowed but expectations are explicitly not built over the game's course.

Therefore, ME3's ending is not definitionally a deus ex machina. It might be a plot device you dislike, but that doesn't make it a damn deus ex machina.

 

[CloudAtlas]

You obviously didn't pay that much attention yourself.

You know, guys like you are the reason why developers are hesitant to give players morally ambiguous choices. You encounter a moral choice problem, you come to the conclusion that one alternative is clearly superior to the other, and then you blame the game for your own failure of not recognizing the moral ambiguity of the problem.

...um...

morally ambiguous choices

um...
Did you respond to the wrong comment?
Are we talking about different games?

I'd love to respond to this but I don't know how.

The choice system in ME3 was binary. it was presented in a way where there were only two possible outcomes to any situation.

The choices are extremely ambiguous, but the writers didn't give us any chance to acknowledge them.

Do you cure the genophage?
Paragon:Yes the Krogans deserve a second chance
No the Krogans will kill the Salarians
No they'll overpopulate their planet and resort back to waring clans

Renegade: No, I'm an asshat lololol
Yes, keeping the Krogans, Salarians and Truaians locked in galactic war will give humanity a good chance to claim more galactic power
Yes, the Krogans deserve revenge.
No, I'll hold the cure ransom for my own Krogan army

Neutral: Yes, but the council controls birth rates and restricts access to import and export
Kind of, Cure the genophage in certain Krogans who meet council approved criteria
Yes but if they step out of line the council will reinfect them again.

That's pretty ambiguous. In the game however
Yes the Krogans deserve a second chance
and
No I'm an Asshat LOLOL
are the only two options given to us
Both of those are equally bullshit.

Or if you want to look at it as Short sighted: No. Salarian Aid is more important
and Extremely short sighted: Yes, Exploding Krogan population is a problem for Future Me

The writers didn't even leave Shepards motivation ambiguous because you explain it to Mordin before you shoot him or not.

Just because there are only two or three alternative courses of action presented, just Shepard isn't explicitly talking about the moral ambiguity of the problem, just because she isn't explaining her reasoning for why she made this or that choice, all that doesn't mean that the moral ambiguity of the problem magically evaporates. In a way, the reasoning behind each decision are your, and her, own.

What you seem to want here is simply impossible for any game to deliver. All of the major choices in Mass Effect touch upon deep philosophical or moral questions. Now I have studied moral philosophy a bit, and any justification for this or that choice that wants to intellectually satisfy me would have to be pretty differentiated, and pretty long. And of course several lines of reasoning would have to be included for every alternative in every choice problem. Now, even if that was possible, would it be desirable? Would I want to listen to Shepard to muse about moral philosophy and such for hours? Hell no! Right now, I want to kick some Reaper's ass; about the complexity of the issue, I can think later.

 

[-Dragmire-]

The problem is, they didn't know that. All they knew was that the Citadel Relay wasn't turning on with the remote signals and that it was somehow related to the Conduit. Now, they could have just assaulted the Citadel as you suggest, but such a plan comes with very, very large risks. Specifically, it requires that Sovereign gambles literally everything on the Conduit not being a vital part of the Citadel Relay or some other necessary item in order to turn the thing on.

There's a piece of lore I don't remember, how did Sovereign know the Conduit was involved/exists?

Just remembered, beacon's can't be used by machines so the sensitive data was there for anyone to take and the Reapers just needed an organic pawn to use it.

.... I suppose, at that point, the writers hadn't come up with the 'Reapers are made of organic sludge' thing yet.


Just thinking about Saren finding out the Conduit is just a back door to the Citadel and saying, "Fuuuuck, I've wasted a lot of time on this...." is pretty damn funny.

 

[Agayek]

There's a piece of lore I don't remember, how did Sovereign know the Conduit was involved/exists?

Just remembered, beacon's can't be used by machines so the sensitive data was there for anyone to take and the Reapers just needed an organic pawn to use it.

.... I suppose, at that point, the writers hadn't come up with the 'Reapers are made of organic sludge' thing yet.


Just thinking about Saren finding out the Conduit is just a back door to the Citadel and saying, "Fuuuuck, I've wasted a lot of time on this...." is pretty damn funny.

Seriously. It's a kinda awesome mental image.

And I figure Saren found out about the Conduit's existence from the records left behind by those last handful of Protheans that locked down the Citadel. One of them probably left one of those memory stones or a datapad or some other journal equivalent behind when they died and Saren somehow got his hands on it. From there, he learned that the Conduit existed and was fundamental to their efforts to stop the Reapers forever, but not what it truly was.