Eacaraxe said:
CloudAtlas said:
Maybe I'll make a little wannabe screenwriter's competition out of this sometime: fit the plot of ME2 in the greater narrative. I'm not a very creative person, so that might not mean much, but I haven't found a way myself yet that doesn't involve scrapping the Collectors altogether.
Without access to the technological trap that was the Citadel, and the element of surprise lost to the Reapers, Harbinger who through the Collectors has kept an eye on on organic species' genetic and technological progress (as well as kept genetic records of sapient species to determine who can be made into the next cycle's Reaper capital ship, who is to be processed into Reaper destroyers, and who would serve as ideal indoctrinated slaves and foot soldiers), needs a means to keep the galaxy's organic species fractured, consumed by infighting, and ultimately ripe for conquest when the Reapers return from dark space via conventional FTL. So, Harbinger activates the Collectors to go about the galaxy raiding human and batarian settlements, antagonizing species, promising cures to the genophage to the krogan (which are really experiments to indoctrine and husk krogan), and the like. The Collectors also launch on a series of targeted assassination missions to kill anyone who might be a unifying force for the galaxy, Shepard included.
Meanwhile, TIM who has some awareness of indoctrination and the Reapers' plans thanks to his experiences with Saren and Desolas, and is beginning to recognize signs of high-functioning indoctrination in himself, launches a last-ditch endeavor to stop the Reapers before he himself succumbs. He creates and compartmentalizes the Lazarus cell, with the mission to stop the Collectors.
The rest of ME2, including the Arrival DLC, proceeds
exactly as it actually did. The Collectors are still dicks, the species of the galaxy are still in their various *****-fights, Shepard dies and comes back, and the Collector base is taken care of. The Human-Reaper then becomes a large-scale experiment to catalog the human genome as the race chosen for "ascension", and a proof-of-concept/working prototype.
I like the "observer justification" for the Collectors. I'm not really buying the need to sow distrust between the species however. The Reapers are much more powerful than everything even a united galaxy could muster, and seem to be very convinced of their superiority.
But scrapping the main plot of ME2 altogether has big problems too, of course, not least dramaturgical ones.
Apart from eliminating the main plot, I thought about removing all secondary characters and plot lines that are not related to central themes of the overarching story (which are a lot), thus also giving the themes that matter more room, and move some of the relevant plots to ME1 and ME3 where feasible, and use the others for a sort of interlude between ME1 and ME2. You can fuse some characters on top of that by combining their most interesting features to both reduce the number of characters you have to introduce and make the other characters more interesting.
Not related to the big picture are Thane & all missions involving him, Garrus' missions, Grunt's loyalty mission, Liara's info broker / shadow broker stuff, the finding Jack mission, finding Mordin mission, Jacob & his mission, Zaeed & his mission, Kasumi & her mission (although I'd like to keep her around, Asians are oddly scarce in ME anyway), and possibly Samara. Samara could be fused with Liara; the justiciar concept appears only once in the game, Liara being Samara's age would make her more interesting, and more credible as scholar, and with Tali you already have another character for dudes who want to hit on young virgins.
This interlude would still have Shepard be affiliated with Cerberus, at least mostly. Cerberus would be presented in a more favorable light in ME1, Council & Alliance will be more hostile towards Shepard after the end of ME1, because of all the shit she's done during ME1, both serving to make working for Cerberus more palatable. You'd just have to come up with some credible "mission" for Shepard & Cerberus, maybe something happening to humans in the Terminus systems, like in ME2 just on a smaller scale, so Alliance doesn't feel responsible and Cerberus has a reason to care (Batarian slavers maybe? Batarians are disgruntled anyway, indentured servitude is already a theme in ME2, on Illium, but not really developed, and can be connected to the Quarians).
It would feature and expand on the Mordin storyline, since he's major character in ME3 as well and the Genophage is a central theme. It would also feature and expand on Tali, her loyalty mission, and connect it with Legion & the Geth heretics. And then you still have Miranda, Grunt, possibly Samara etc and all their stuff... unfortunately I'm not abundantly creative, and fortunately I'm not a screenwriter.