Fhaileas wrote...
There were plenty of ways to make the ending dark. 1) Have the Collectors abduct either Kaiden or Ashley (depending on which one survived) and either convert or indoctrinate them in such a way that you are forced to kill them on the Collector base (or they will kill you). Double points if you use that as an example of what was going to happen to Shephard when they captured her/him. Triple if you do it in such a way that truly messes with Shephard's head.
Basically telling the players "Don't bother caring for the characters, they'll die anyway." I hated 24 Season 5 for that alone.
2) Have any party member who is not loyal to you when on the Dead Reaper become indoctrinated while on board and you are forced to kill them (or you die).
Uh, last time I checked, I thought we're supposed to shape the story the way the players want to shape it. This is no Reaper PC game with Christopher Walken (i.e. ending is always randomized).
3) No matter how fast you get there you cannot save the Normandy crew.
A main reason why I hated Fallout 3 besides the ****ty programming, no matter what we did, we'd almost always lose. What kind of gamer wants to have that experience?
4) Shephard destroying the base was actually a catalyst that the Reaper's needed all along to open a second jump gate (or send a signal that reactivates the Citadel) and have the entire Reaper fleet enter our galaxy. The Reapers have been playing Shephard all along.
Sounds good in theory, though didn't the final product have a similar effect? The Reapers just started entering the Milky Way after the Collectors were blown up/irradiated.
5) No matter what choices you make or upgrades you did there is no way for all your team members to survive the final assault on the Collector Base, the more you do the fewer die but you cannot save them all (or even most of them). And you should get an achievement if you managed to kill all of them off (on the same hand it should be difficult to do this). Just like you should if you fail ME 2's suicide mission.
Same problem as Fallout 3. You're basically telling the players "Do whatever you want, but you lose regardless." A lot of gamers would have avoided Mass Effect 2 if it ended up being the case.
6) Get rid of the human slushy machine and instead have the Collectors converting the humans they've taken into Reaper servants (read not husks) to send out as sleeper agents to begin deactivating the galaxy's defenses. But they are covering this by transforming the other colonists into husks as mindless foot soldiers and weapons of mass destruction. Then this becomes a plot thread in the third game.
I'll agree with this.
7) Have one of the team members you collected already be an indoctrinated servant who turns on you at the last moment, killing Shepherd just as she has completed her mission. Have it on a rotating basis so the player cannot intentionally kill that person when they replay the game. (Don't reveal this in the player's guide) In the same vein, a writer could also make them turn on you at the Collector Base.
Uh, no ***ing thanks. Again, this boils down to "don't care for the characters or the game if it ends up being the royal F---- you" to the player.
8) Do the Lazarus Project at the beginning of the third game instead of the second, leaving the player with the realization that Shepherd has died right as the Reapers are invading the galaxy. Bonus points if you have the Reapers clone Shepherd and fake out the player at the beginning of the third game with a Shepherd clone acting as the Reaper's messiah. Even more if Shepherd's remains were recovered by the Geth and that they are the first beings Shepherd sees when she/he wakes up (though not the only ones who brought Shepherd back). Stage One will be getting rid of Bionic Shepherd, Stage Two will be wiping out the Reapers.
No thanks. Like the others said, ME2's format is done so that we can play the DLC without having to replay the game multiple times.