I suppose I wanted Shepard to try to get more answers and if the Illusive Man wouldn't tell him, find it another way.bug_of_war said:The Illusive Man holds out on information so that he is always in control, hence why decisions in hindsight seem to be more sporadic rather than carefully planned. Remember, the Illusive Man doesn't want to destroy the Reapers, he wants to control them, Shepard on the other hand is damn well determined to get rid of the threat permanently, hence why he is kept mostly in the dark.-Dragmire- said:we are doing very important things but are not given all the known info to make sound decisions.
Jack Shouldn't have been a candidate, the mission(or any mission for that matter) is too sensitive to allow a biotic murderer who's history is hating Cerberus on board. I like Jack once I got to know her but she's on board for stupid reasons.
Archangel is a vigilante that specializes in hit and run tactics against corrupt mercs. No great reason to search him out as he doesn't fill a needed roll other than being another gunhand.
Samara is a powerful biotic who is more stable than Jack until her code tells her to kill things... I'm not being fair, she's not bad but her reasons for recruitment are not great. If the biotic bubble was the solution to every fight against collectors because they always had Seeker Swarms with them then I could see the need for as many powerful biotics as possible.
Thane specializes in small scale combat and taking out priority targets(from a lore standpoint anyway), this doesn't mesh well with large scale combat. He does have amazing cutscene sneak powers going for him, though this is counteracted by the biggest reason to not bring him... He's dying, his health is declining and doctors are no longer able to predict how long he'll last. He's a liability to the team and we only have his word on it that he he'll last the mission. (It was pretty funny, I skipped his loyalty mission and he died in the ship getting hit in the head with a metal beam or something. Had all ship upgrades too... )
Once we find out they have a giant ship, that stops the need for infantry. Especially when you don't know how many ships the enemy has. I would have been far more lenient with the story if we got a probe through the Omega 4 relay and had some idea of what to do before hand.
Where do you draw the line when getting conflicting info from codex to cutscene to gameplay?bug_of_war said:While Jack is quite unstable, it comes down to the simple fact that at the time you recruit her there was no better option. It was either get a powerful yet unstable biotic and hope that Shepard can somehow guide her or go into the unknown with relatively weak biotics such as Jacob and Miranda. Archangel is Garrus and the Illusive Man knows that and uses this to, as with Tali, someone from Shepard's past of whom he can trust. Samara is recruited to be more like back up for Jack. She's a better biotic, and more stable, and the reason they didn't recruit an army of biotics is due to the base line fact that they literally have no idea on what they're getting into. They don't know what's on the other side of the Omega Relay, they don't know what strength they'll need most and they don't have the luxury of time. Thane is recruited for similar reasons, they have little idea of what they're up for and have little time to figure out, thus it's build a very powerful, multi-talented team that is prepared for almost anything.
Yes, we find out that there's a massive space ship, but until then we're fighting many foot soldiers, hence why you recruit most of your infantry members in the first third of the game. You keep them afterwards because you still require stepping on the ground and exploring potentially dangerous terrain, hence why you still have infantry members on you side.
It's too bad none of the characters ever play as they're characterized. They're pretty much on par with all the regular shooting enemies. If Jack was actually actually able to tear up the battlefield outside of cutscenes, I'd be able to see her usefulness to the mission. In game, each character is interchangeable though probably less so on the hardest difficulties. If enemies had the ability to vanguard charge you, you would have a reason to respect and fear biotic power. In game though, biotics are often less efficient than conventional weaponry. The gameplay really sells the lore and cutscene lore short. You are often told one thing and experience another which is why I see collecting infantry to be a waste of time.
I know Archangel is Garrus but it's another stupid detail to leave out. "Go get Garrus" is quite a bit better than being coy with"Go get this random vigilante, you may find someone familiar", to me anyway.
The Illusive man uses Shep like a talking gun, kind of irritating how well Shep taks that. Sending Shepard in blind makes me question why the hell he brought Shepard back in the first place.bug_of_war said:Yes, that does make sense, however Shepard is a Spectre, and does what the council tell him to do. They told him to look for signs of Reaper activity, he did, he died, 2 and a bit years later he's alive again and working for a group whom tells him that humans are being taken. It's not so much as he just up and forgets about the beacon as it is he's become preoccupied with other crap.-Dragmire- said:At the end of ME1, Shep could completely understand the Prothean language. It seemed logical to me for Shepard to use this ability to decipher more Prothean tech to help against the Reapers. Since Shepard is our character, it's nice to have our character have agency in getting more info rather than a constant passive listener.
I agree, Saren was a very well written tragic villain, but the triumph still doesn't seem as personal as being killed by a species that then goes on to take large proportions of your own species for reasons yet unknown (at least that's how I see it). Is Harbinger 1 dimensional? Yeah, he's also a robot that was programmed to do one thing, so I'm cool with that.-Dragmire- said:Saren gave us a perspective that, while flawed, we could empathize with. We both struggled to reach our goals, making the triumph far more personal.
Shepard's death has no bearing on his/her character until Mass Effect 3. It's hard to care about a character's death and rebirth when they themselves don't care about it.
Everyone is fallible, even husks controlled by giant machines. there's always a chance that a Seeker got trapped in doors, or left behind, or just plain left behind. It's stupid on the Collectors end, and it can be seen as lazy writing, or even a Deus ex Machina to a degree, but it's still a possibility that could occur and just so happened to.-Dragmire- said:For all we know, Seekers are built by the Collectors and they are apparently very careful never to leave a trace of themselves. Personal influence doesn't mean much to husks controlled by reapers.
While it's nice to know other people in the galaxy are helping, I feel out of touch when our team is given info at the last possible moment. I'm pretty sure we could get at least alliance support when showing them the derelict Reaper.
Having Shepard find things out would be a more proactive roll, as things stand we are very passive as we wait for more info from the Illusive Man rather than trying our own investigation.
As for Shepard always being the last to know things this is because knowledge is power. Illusive Man is withholding information so as that he is always in control.
Cerberus seems to be able to do anything at any time, though it didn't reach truly stupid levels until ME3.bug_of_war said:Yes, but there seems to be only one crater left behind as there is only one ship. The Alliance can't do much since the colonies are out of Council space, and Cerberus, while not lacking in resource, don't have the time to engineer multiple ships, hell as far as we've been led to know it took the 2 years to rebuild the Normandy. As for infantry, they aren't investing much resources in them, seeing as how no one on your team seems to be getting paid.-Dragmire- said:Examining the crater would at least indicate the scale of ship they use and be another reason to invest in more large scale ships and munitions rather than more infantry.
Payments from Cerberus come during the Mission Complete screen. Seems like a payment upon success plan, husk insurance not included.
The council, or at least the Alliance, are willing to put gigantic ship sized cannons on the planets though.
The IFF just says if the ship is friend or foe, there's no reason to believe it can only be used on a single ship.bug_of_war said:We do establish though that the Collector home-world is past the Omega relay, a relay that destroys all ships that pass through it. The only reason the Normandy past through the ship unharmed is because they had the Collector signal thingamajig that they got during the mission you acquire Legion. That's one signal that works for 1 ship, and fighting in a ship stops you from rescuing survivors. How the hell was Shepard suppose to save Chakwas if he was in the Normandy and just fired away at the base?-Dragmire- said:Until you saw the collector base(thankfully it wasn't a home planet or something else that would have made the team building pointless), you had no idea what to expect making the need of grunts over combat cruisers questionable to say the least.
~10 specialized foot soldiers hardly accounts for much when fighting on such a large scale.
After getting the IFF, it's installed straight to the ship instead of copied onto a probe and tested in the relay. Nobody from the ship had been taken yet. Installing it and hoping it works out is insanely reckless.
Speaking of the relay,
Would have been nice to get the option to destroy the relay/system as a renegade option but I suppose they were going by ME1 lore for relay strength at the time.
Pre-ME2-dlc had established that relays could survive supernovas while post-ME2-dlc has them vulnerable to rocket propelled meteors.
bug_of_war said:Fair enough.-Dragmire- said:Ok yes, I can agree with you there, I just don't like how it was implemented in the game.
Again, fair call on your half.-Dragmire- said:I understand the lore behind the heat sinks but I don't like it from a gameplay perspective and from the uniqueness lost by making the game an ammo dependent system. Also stacking biotic abilities was fun, while the game might explain why that can't be done anymore, it hurt my enjoyment of it. Vanguard Charge was an excellent addition though.