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

[CloudAtlas]

I'm surprised at the HUGE responds to this, a one of the things I noticed is that quite a few people think Mass Effect 2's story is pointless. I disagree, the story is focused on your squad, think of it like a war film where the characters are going on a suicide mission. As for the main quest, your mission is to stop the Collectors to save human colonies, like the Arrival DLC, it's about delaying the Reapers to buy to galaxy time to prepare for war.

It is not so much about the plot of Mass Effect 2 being pointless in itself, although it has problems as a standalone story too, but within the context of the trilogy. There's just not really a reason why the Reapers would order the Collectors to build a human Reaper, the existence of such Reapers wouldn't change anything in the actual war, and nothing you do in the main story of ME2 has any lasting effect on the grand scheme of things.

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.

 

[Monster_user]

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.

Scrapping them altogether seems a bit much, the Collectors actually do serve some plot functions other than Reaper builders. In ME1 Saren proposed a solution which doesn't really appear in the end of ME3. We saw what Saren was becoming, and the Collectors are a significant portion of a race that met with the same fate. The Keepers were an unknown, but the Collectors were Protheans, and with Javik we actually see who they were.

In the overarching plot, it might have been better if the Keepers were former Protheans, and that Collectors were disfigured Keepers. Though, I wouldn't give them a major role in the series.

I think the biggest reason for Collectors was that the Reapers needed ground troops for ground combat, once the Geth were rewritten to be allies and not enemies.

ME1 = Organics vs Synthetics

ME2 = Retcon lore, team building. Synthetics are allies. Cerberus is not evil, just questionable. Plot becomes Cycle vs Reapers.

ME3 = Retread of team building from ME2. Reapers are secretly the "good guys". Cerberus is evil. Synthetics are genocidal. Plot becomes Reapers vs Synthetics from the organics' perspective.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

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.

 

[Glongpre]

The 3 main reasons why Mass Effect 2 is the best out of the series are:
1- A perfect balance of Role-playing and Action.
2- Interesting Hub worlds.
3- The ever present tension of the impending suicide mission.

Explaining these reasons:
1- In ME1 the combat was unrefined but had very good role-playing elements. In ME3 the combat was very polished but there was way too many fights and the role-playing elements became simplified to the point where there didn't seem to be any at all. ME2 on the other hand, had the balance just right; the fights never felt forced and having dialogue conversation during missions was always interesting.

2- ME1 let's you explore each planet you find, though most were barren, the main hub world is the Citadel, this is the same for ME3 but on a smaller scale which causes it to get boring after a while. ME2 however didn't have one hub world but four: The Citadel, Omega, Illium and Tuchanka, all of which had plenty of stuff to do.

3- Throughout the course of ME2, there is constant build up to the final mission and making sure everything and everyone was ready for it. ME1 was more about finding and stopping Saren which did have so tension to it but not a lot. In ME3, the first half did have some build up to the final push but after craving through tons of enemies the game starts losing tension.

Forgive me for not reading 5 pages, I am lazy

1- Fights always felt forced because all the levels were linear. I believe they all had dialogue during missions.
2- ME2 doesn't get boring? Every world you do the same missions every playthrough.
3- No. There is no tension because the main objective shoved in your face is to find your team.

This sounds like a lot of bias.

For me ME1 is the best because it was the first one I played and therefore was the kind of game I was looking for. However, ME2 lost it's identity and went down a different road and so ME1 will always be better despite the obvious flaws.

 

[wulf3n]

ME2 for me was synonymous with missed opportunity. There were so many things they could have done but didn't.

For example:

Saving the council in ME1 resulted in practically nothing. They could have quite easily added in something like, level of anti-human sentiment around the citadel based on the decision, which wouldn't have had an impact on story but still made the decision appear to have consequence.

Also Shepards death meant absolutely nothing, but it could have used to explore shepards character, Was he/she brought back to life or is he/she a clone? Is he/she synthetic? are his/her choices really his/hers or is Ashley/Kaiden right and he's/she's just a puppet?

 

[gavinmcinns]

Why Mass Effect 2 wasn't and is not the superior out of the Mass Effect trilogy:

The entire story amounts to nothing within the arc of the trilogy, with the final boss being a ludicrous caricature of the Reaper menace, the final choice amounting to absolutely nothing in the long run, and the player being forced to side with Cerberus a janky, needless derailing of the main narrative thread, forcing Shepard to switch sides and back like he's Italy during World War II.

If Mass Effect was supposed to be a three-part narrative, then ME2 spends the entire middle section swimming around in circles before farting bubbles and leaving part three to try and cram in two instalments worth of actual story progression.

Oh wow look, J-e-f-f-e-r-s and I are on the same page, imagine that. And, yes, i did take the 8 seconds to go ahead and dash those letters.

I prefer to think the ea-quels didn't count.

 

[Ascarus]

i would say ME3 was as good as ME2 except for the reasons that have been rehashed again and again.

ME2 barely moved the story forward at all but was still a really enjoyable game. ME3 was completely plot driven and well paced but completely crashed and burned at the end.

ups and downs in both but they were equally good games all in all.

 

[CloudAtlas]

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.

 

[Frokane]

I think mass effect 2 had the wittiest script, and I liked the overall tone but, it wasnt the best.

 

[Yuuki]

The reason ME2 was superior for me was the thrill of making the "perfect" character to port into ME3 (and the thrill of the suicide mission). The best part of ME2 was the PREPARATION for ME3.

Not to mention Firewalker DLC is some of the most fun I've had in a long time. I don't know whether people commenting on ME2 have played all the DLC's available for it (and there are quite a few) - Shadow Broker was incredible, Overlord was also nice.

I think I spent well over 50-60 hours in ME2 just doing different playthroughs, taking different options just to see what happened. I only played ME3 once to get through the story.

 

[Zeldias]

I find playing through ME2 kind of a trudge, now. I want to replay the series, and I worked through ME1 and had some fun, but I'm doing Tali's loyalty mission now in ME2 and I just don't give a shit anymore about these characters.

The gameplay of ME2 is satisfying, but I'm not really a shooter guy. I'm not really finding the story that compelling and I miss the ragdolling of ME1. I'm trying, but it's just not that interesting to me.

I found ME3 to be a blast to play through, probably because the sidequests felt so neatly integrated into the game. I wish the series had been a duology, with just ME1 and ME3, frankly. That's not to say that ME2 was bad, I just didn't find that it added anything to the narrative. Would've been better as a side-story, I think, because as others have said, what has been added? The Collectors aren't interesting enough to carry the game as antagonists, Shepard joining Cerberus was rendered entirely pointless by the beginning of ME3, and the suicide mission can be completed without a single death. None of this stuff added anything to ME3, because ME1 trained us to buy that Cerberus is unequivocally evil, and so finding out they were bad all along in ME3 isn't a shock.

I feel like ME2 was trying to make us have a sense of moral ambiguity, but it just failed. The game never got me to question my Shepard's decisions and I could reject Cerberus at every single turn without repercussion. The Council began stupid and continued to be stupid, Cerberus showed me that there were some cool folks in the outfit even though the outfit continuously perpetrates evil shit, then I killed a giant Terminator. This would've been cool if it was the story of a Cerberus unit that gradually went rogue and was sent on a suicide mission or something, but as a part of Shepard's trilogy it was lacking.