Mass Effect 2 Opinions With Spoilers
Jan. 31st, 2010 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofelevenSo, spoiler laden Mass Effect 2 comments:
- Favourite character: Mordin, no question. I was a little untrusting of him when it came out that he had a role in the Krogan genophage, but his loyalty mission had real shades of grey, and some great dialogue. The conversation over the body of the dead Krogan female was particularly good. Shepard got to make all the points I wanted to make, but Mordin also managed to effectively defend his actions. Ended on a very ambiguous note, without falling too far into the one dimension GRIMDARK! a lot of the rest of the story had.
Plus, he sings!
- Least favourite character: hard to say, since I didn’t really talk to everyone extensively. Too many crew members, not enough time. Probably Miranda. She’s got a bit of the Mary-Sue about her, like most of the Cerberus characters, and her refusal to accept that, hey, maybe the child-torturing experiments Jack was forced into weren’t a good idea killed whatever sympathy for her I might have had. I had her lead the secondary team in the final mission, hoping she’d bite the bullet there. Sadly, she survived. Then again, everyone survived my mission – my Shepard doesn’t believe in the no-win scenario!
And her outfit looks silly, in black or white.
- Annoyances: Legion. He/They’re a pretty cool concept, and I love that the Geth that served Saren were actually a renegade splinter group. But for such a major plot point, it comes far too late and you get too little time to focus on it. I mean, hell, you wipe out the main enemies of Mass Effect 1 – the Collector plot feels kind of irrelevant compared to that! Legion should have been the focus of the game, you seeing hints of him all through the game until you finally meet him face to face.
- I’d have cut the Citadel from the game entirely. You can’t go to any of the ME1 locations, and you can’t get any help against Cerberus from the Council or Captain Anderson – indeed, they’re now pointlessly obstructionist in an utterly one-dimensional way, still refusing to believe in the Reapers. If Citadel hadn’t even been on the map, I’d have accepted that I have to work for Cerberus because I’m too far from civilized space to get help from the Council or other Spectres. But if I can keep stopping off there to buy new fish… well, why can’t I recruit an Alliance-loyal crew while I’m there?
- The game really needs an antagonist. The Illusive Man should have been your main enemy, but you don’t get to challenge him nearly enough. The Collector General has no personality. And the Human Reaper is possibly the stupidest looking thing I’ve ever seen in a game. Compared to Saren, who you go from despising to pitying, or the menacing tones of Sovereign, this game really lacks a focal enemy. Hell, it doesn’t even have a Benezia level enemy!
- The story seemed annoyingly railroaded at times. Even putting aside the "But Thou MUST work for Cerberus!" aspects, there were oddities like every main character getting in a shuttle to nowhere just so the game could justify Joker having to save the ship. And some of the dialogue options forced you to be pointlessly cruel with no Paragon alternative - talking to the injured mercenary on the planet where you get Grunt springs to mind.
- I like that the Asari aren’t all conventionally sexy blue ladies any more – there seem to be a lot more ‘butch’ Asari than in Mass Effect 1. I particularly liked the Matriarch bartender on Illium. I didn’t like the suggestion in a conversation you overhear that the Asari are telepathically manipulating everyone to see them as attractive, though. I think the game goes a bit too far here and there in making things darker and more grim for no good reason, and I don’t think having the Asari be Vorlon-esque manipulators adds anything to the setting. Hopefully it was just a throwaway joke.
- Oh, and speaking of Asari – man, Liara’s turned into a bitch, hasn’t she? No hello, no I missed you, just a bunch of ranting about the Shadow Broker with no real explanation. My Commander Shepard’s a one-woman gal, but she was seriously tempted to have a fling with Garrus out of spite if that’s all the welcoming her Asari mate’s willing to offer after thinking her dead for two years. I really hope Liara has an explanation in ME3, and she and Shepard can get together again properly.
- Problem, of course, is that Liara’s storyline seems to be tied into the comics, and the game seems to have assumed you’ve read them and all the other spin-offs so doesn’t bother to recap them much in the game. Jacob has the same problem – he’s apparently the star of the iPhone Mass Effect game, but doesn’t really have much going for him besides that. And if you don’t know that (and I didn’t when I first talked to him), he sounds like someone’s Mary Sue OC with his random references to having saved the Citadel himself…
- The end mission, stupid looking human-reaper aside, is a bit of a let-down. After spending the whole game preparing for it, it feels a lot like earlier missions, and lacks the memorably over the top bad-assness that Virmire or Illos had in ME1. Plus, half my team seemed kinda useless – all I really needed was tech specialist (Tali or Legion), plus a couple of soldiers (The Cerberus people you start with.)
- On the other hand, the 'anyone can die!' aspect does help in building tension, especially since it's rather opaque as to what keeps people alive. I'll admit I was holding my breath when Tali was knocked down under rubble near the end. (She was OK!)
- Going back to Liara – Am I the only one bothered that ME2 doesn’t have a single same-sex romance? Not that big a deal, I guess – but it bugs me, especially after Dragon Age went out of its way to ensure someone playing as a gay man or lesbian would have plenty of romantic options. And I want to see the Tali romance, but I don’t like male Shepard’s voice.
And in the ‘unfortunate implications’ section, the only reference to a same-sex relationship I found in the game was that the psychotic Asari black-widow’s latest victim was a woman… Real step backwards for BioWare.
- Minor packaging thing: Anyone else dislike how much default Male Shepard dominates the artwork and advertising? Even assuming you’re mad enough not to prefer Jennifer Hale’s Shepard to Mark Meer, does anyone really play with the default bald space marine face?
And it’s kind of disconcerting, since I’ve played so much with the same character, I just instinctively think of Shepard as being the dark-haired black woman I play her as.
- Favourite character: Mordin, no question. I was a little untrusting of him when it came out that he had a role in the Krogan genophage, but his loyalty mission had real shades of grey, and some great dialogue. The conversation over the body of the dead Krogan female was particularly good. Shepard got to make all the points I wanted to make, but Mordin also managed to effectively defend his actions. Ended on a very ambiguous note, without falling too far into the one dimension GRIMDARK! a lot of the rest of the story had.
Plus, he sings!
- Least favourite character: hard to say, since I didn’t really talk to everyone extensively. Too many crew members, not enough time. Probably Miranda. She’s got a bit of the Mary-Sue about her, like most of the Cerberus characters, and her refusal to accept that, hey, maybe the child-torturing experiments Jack was forced into weren’t a good idea killed whatever sympathy for her I might have had. I had her lead the secondary team in the final mission, hoping she’d bite the bullet there. Sadly, she survived. Then again, everyone survived my mission – my Shepard doesn’t believe in the no-win scenario!
And her outfit looks silly, in black or white.
- Annoyances: Legion. He/They’re a pretty cool concept, and I love that the Geth that served Saren were actually a renegade splinter group. But for such a major plot point, it comes far too late and you get too little time to focus on it. I mean, hell, you wipe out the main enemies of Mass Effect 1 – the Collector plot feels kind of irrelevant compared to that! Legion should have been the focus of the game, you seeing hints of him all through the game until you finally meet him face to face.
- I’d have cut the Citadel from the game entirely. You can’t go to any of the ME1 locations, and you can’t get any help against Cerberus from the Council or Captain Anderson – indeed, they’re now pointlessly obstructionist in an utterly one-dimensional way, still refusing to believe in the Reapers. If Citadel hadn’t even been on the map, I’d have accepted that I have to work for Cerberus because I’m too far from civilized space to get help from the Council or other Spectres. But if I can keep stopping off there to buy new fish… well, why can’t I recruit an Alliance-loyal crew while I’m there?
- The game really needs an antagonist. The Illusive Man should have been your main enemy, but you don’t get to challenge him nearly enough. The Collector General has no personality. And the Human Reaper is possibly the stupidest looking thing I’ve ever seen in a game. Compared to Saren, who you go from despising to pitying, or the menacing tones of Sovereign, this game really lacks a focal enemy. Hell, it doesn’t even have a Benezia level enemy!
- The story seemed annoyingly railroaded at times. Even putting aside the "But Thou MUST work for Cerberus!" aspects, there were oddities like every main character getting in a shuttle to nowhere just so the game could justify Joker having to save the ship. And some of the dialogue options forced you to be pointlessly cruel with no Paragon alternative - talking to the injured mercenary on the planet where you get Grunt springs to mind.
- I like that the Asari aren’t all conventionally sexy blue ladies any more – there seem to be a lot more ‘butch’ Asari than in Mass Effect 1. I particularly liked the Matriarch bartender on Illium. I didn’t like the suggestion in a conversation you overhear that the Asari are telepathically manipulating everyone to see them as attractive, though. I think the game goes a bit too far here and there in making things darker and more grim for no good reason, and I don’t think having the Asari be Vorlon-esque manipulators adds anything to the setting. Hopefully it was just a throwaway joke.
- Oh, and speaking of Asari – man, Liara’s turned into a bitch, hasn’t she? No hello, no I missed you, just a bunch of ranting about the Shadow Broker with no real explanation. My Commander Shepard’s a one-woman gal, but she was seriously tempted to have a fling with Garrus out of spite if that’s all the welcoming her Asari mate’s willing to offer after thinking her dead for two years. I really hope Liara has an explanation in ME3, and she and Shepard can get together again properly.
- Problem, of course, is that Liara’s storyline seems to be tied into the comics, and the game seems to have assumed you’ve read them and all the other spin-offs so doesn’t bother to recap them much in the game. Jacob has the same problem – he’s apparently the star of the iPhone Mass Effect game, but doesn’t really have much going for him besides that. And if you don’t know that (and I didn’t when I first talked to him), he sounds like someone’s Mary Sue OC with his random references to having saved the Citadel himself…
- The end mission, stupid looking human-reaper aside, is a bit of a let-down. After spending the whole game preparing for it, it feels a lot like earlier missions, and lacks the memorably over the top bad-assness that Virmire or Illos had in ME1. Plus, half my team seemed kinda useless – all I really needed was tech specialist (Tali or Legion), plus a couple of soldiers (The Cerberus people you start with.)
- On the other hand, the 'anyone can die!' aspect does help in building tension, especially since it's rather opaque as to what keeps people alive. I'll admit I was holding my breath when Tali was knocked down under rubble near the end. (She was OK!)
- Going back to Liara – Am I the only one bothered that ME2 doesn’t have a single same-sex romance? Not that big a deal, I guess – but it bugs me, especially after Dragon Age went out of its way to ensure someone playing as a gay man or lesbian would have plenty of romantic options. And I want to see the Tali romance, but I don’t like male Shepard’s voice.
And in the ‘unfortunate implications’ section, the only reference to a same-sex relationship I found in the game was that the psychotic Asari black-widow’s latest victim was a woman… Real step backwards for BioWare.
- Minor packaging thing: Anyone else dislike how much default Male Shepard dominates the artwork and advertising? Even assuming you’re mad enough not to prefer Jennifer Hale’s Shepard to Mark Meer, does anyone really play with the default bald space marine face?
And it’s kind of disconcerting, since I’ve played so much with the same character, I just instinctively think of Shepard as being the dark-haired black woman I play her as.
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no subject
on 2010-02-09 07:10 pm (UTC)I think we've covered most of the issues when you commented on my LJ about this, but for the other points:
-I do agree that it would have been nice to have a better defined antagonist. Saren in ME1, while not the final antagonist, was still a visible presence throughout the game, and I felt kind of sorry for him at the end because he's sort of like an example of what you might end up being if you jumped off the slippery slope (similarly, Benezia). I don't feel any real connection to Harbinger or the Collectors in general, so it was harder to grasp the main conflict.
-The majority of ME2 seems to be about the characters, which worked out well for the characters, but because of the modular format of the game (each character's quests being self-contained) they could not integrate this into the meta-plot. As someone from a jRPG background I feel that this is an intrinsic issue with games that focus on "choice", because everything has to be easily written in and out, nothing but the most basic things (in terms of characters, this is Miranda/Jacob and maybe Mordin) can have a huge impact on the metaplot because the player may not have access to it.
-I'm not a fan of GrimDark myself, because I feel it to be somewhat puerile. I get that some people like it, but I'd have preferred a bit more of a choice, if that is what the game is focused on, to make my experience less so.
-With regard to the same-sex romance thing, I have to say that whatever decisions they make are probably less based on homophobia than marketing - after all, they are a game company, not civil rights activists, and I can only assume that they considered the amount of resources required to implement it to be not worth the % of audience for whom it would be a major draw, as it is ultimately a fairly small part of the game (and I say this as a female gamer who plays mostly mainstream games; it's nice when it happens, but for the most part I do not expect my particular interests to be specifically catered to because I know I'm a minority).
no subject
on 2010-02-10 02:02 am (UTC)SSR - I think mainly I'm just disappointed since this is BioWare's first game in a very long time with no same-sex content. Might even be their first since Knights of the Old Republic - and that was meant to have a same-sex romance, but LucasArts insisted they cut it. That, combined with a marketing push that seems intent on casting Shepard as a generic angry space marine, makes me concerned that they're pursuing the mainstream shooter audience at the expense of a lot of the things that I like about their games...
And, as I said, the Samara loyalty quest taps into some very dubious tropes, and really needed to be balanced out with a positive portrayal of a same-sex couple somewhere.
no subject
on 2010-02-10 03:12 am (UTC)I think with the Morinth quest they cast a girl as the victim just because it evokes more sympathy (which in and of itself is a sad cultural thing, but), but yeah, they could have put some more acknowledgment in the background. I heard you could get together with Kelly as a female Shepard, though I haven't looked into it myself.
Either way, I also do have some doubts about the mainstream shooter crowd marketing - some of the pre-release stuff put me off rather badly and, even though the game did not turn out nearly as advertised, there were still elements that I thought were a little unnecessary, and I hope they don't go down that route. There are a lot of people developing Generic Space Marine Shooters, not so many companies making sci-fi RPGs.
And yeah, Default!Shep on everything was admittedly a little odd. I'm pretty arbitrary on protagonist gender (played a male character in DA, for instance) but I could not for the life of me make a male Shep that did not look like a generic space marine. Not, mind, that I have anything against space marines, I just prefer them to stay in 40k :P